Socialization for Fun and Profit

Well, I was honestly wondering last night what I was going to write about this week, but like always, Aidan came through with something interesting and fun. Last night, after a very eventful and messy dinner, we were playing with him in the living room. He's getting really good at pulling himself up quickly, and getting brave enough to even stand a second or two before he leans back on something. Anyway, I pulled his socks off and he started playing with them. It's pretty cool to see a baby so happy that all he can do is open his mouth in a giant smile and flail his arms because the sheer joy overwhelms him. So he's doing this, and I held out my hand to to him to see if he woudl give me one of his socks too. I wasn't expecting it to work, but he very deliberatly put one in my palm. I gave it back, and as if to prove to me that this was not a fluk, he actually grabbed my hand and opened it to put the sock in. He's definitly learned to share, and it's amazing to watch him think about it.

He also managed to connect the dots regarding the "food on spoon" concept. Unfortunatly, he lacks the motor skills to execute it right... basically, he grabs a spoon, holds it straight up and down, and tries to mash food onto it and put it in his mouth. This, however, is an improvement from the previous version, which involved grabbing the spoon, then grabbing the food ON the spoon, and just putting that in his mouth.

Then again, I still prefer to just shovel food in with my hands too.

Of (toy) Mice and (tiny) Men

Well, chalk up another one for bad parenting. This week, Aidan has discovered Darwin and Buckley's cat toys. And, coincidently, Darwin has taken an interest in Aidan's toys. So, dear reader, do visions of Lysol clouds and sanitary wipes fill your head, complete with scenes of hectic scrubbing and whirlwind last-minute grabs before the child puts something in his mouth? Well, get rind of 'em, because it ain't' happening. Aidan will pick up one of the cat's small balls with a bell inside and flail it about happily, sometimes teething on it and covering it with drool. And we. Don't. Care. Not that we don't care, really, more that we don't do anything about it. I think we both decided long ago that there are far worse things that we did as children, and we survived to adulthood (mostly) intact. Plus, you know, it's a well proven fact that childhood exposure to allergens, dirt, and illness makes the immune system less likely to go bat-shit crazy when it encounters the same things later in life. At least, that's how I sleep at night. I like to think of us as extra-gifted parents-- most parents don't achieve this level of germ acceptance until the second or even third child. So really, when you look at it that way, we're downright progressive.

Aidan is also beginning to understand spatial relationships-- specifically, some stuff is smaller than other stuff, and you can put the small stuff INTO the larger stuff! That is friggin' COOL. He's been playing with his stacking cups, and putting his little blocks into the bigger cups. He'll shake them around until the smaller item falls out, grope for it, and the process begins anew. I think that the shining moment in his life so far, to me, was him holding up the cup to show me and smiling. He also seems to be developing ambidextrously (is that a word? need sleeeeep) because he will use his right hand to grab most of his toys, and transfer to the left-- but he uses his left hand for food. Interesting.

Good thing he's not in India...he's be fresh out of toilet paper.

We Have Liftoff

Mere weeks after being put in the BBR at daycare, Aidan has managed to somewhat escape the shackles of gravity. Yes, that's right. He can now officially crawl. It just sort of happened... one minute he was sitting on the floor, playing with a toy, and the next he was moving towards his basket of other toys. I think it kind of surprised him too, honestly. He got a look on his face like "Whoa, I'm moving. Mom? Dad? Not touching me? Soooo....what you're telling me is I'm doing this on my own? THAT is supremely cool." Of course, we made such a ruckus jumping about, clapping and warbling that it kind of shocked him into stopping, and it took a day or so for him to remember how to do it, but still-- he's right, that IS supremely cool.

Of course, his main goal in life now is to play with the cords to our video game systems, thus demonstrating that there is, in fact, a "gamer gene". So far we've managed to foil his attempts by placing a large box in front of the area, but yesterday he figured out how to pull up on said box and was reaching across it to try to get the cords. This has also prompted the cats to realize that this small pink thing is actually a rapidly growing version of us, and as such have begun to treat him accordingly. They're gingerly rubbing up against him occasionally, but still have a healthy, deep rooted, and wholely justified fear of his little grabby hands. He did pet Darwin once, but for the most part he sqeuals, grabs a hunk of feline, and pulls. Since his hands are almost always either sticky or wet, this means he ends up looking like a partially transformed were-baby afterwards. But now that he's mobile, he can chase (very slowly, he's not terribly good at it yet) the cats about. However, in "Crawl Mode" (yes, I think of my son as a small Transformer...what's your point) his field of vision is somewhat limited, and when a cat jumps up and away from he it really confuses him. I think he thinks the cats can actually fly because of this. More to the point, in Crawl Mode, his hands are busy and thus cannot grab the cats-- so they've got a reprieve until he can walk.

Speaking of crawling and walking, this has prompted us top buy and install baby gates. And by "install" I mean "leave the gates in their packages leaning against various walls in the house". To my credit, I DID manage to install the most important gate (the one at the top of the stairs) but at a terrible price. I think that thing took 5 or 6 years off my life, and I'm sure Aidan learned some interesting phrases which will later result in him getting sent home from school with a note. See, we have a metal banister, and gates on stairways MUST be hardware mounted for safety. So, some company (I forge the name right now, and am waaaay too lazy, sleep deprived, and sick to look it up) sells an adapter kit for just this situation. Lucky me. I bought two, with the intent of installing one at the top and one at the bottom of the stairs. Well, for the low low price of only $9.95 this kit consists of: one 1x1 33" piece of wood, 2 oversize zip-ties, 2 screws, 2 wall anchors, and a set of instructions. Seriously. You can imagine how happy I was to find this out. You might also be able to imagine how happy I was to discover that the screws used for the hardware installation of the gates we bought require at least 1.5" of wood, meaning I had to use BOTH kits on one gate. Add to that the fact that the screws included with the gate strip faster than Pamela Anderson in a room full of singles, and you have one supremely unhappy, sweaty, cursing Dad.

The next gate I install I'm going to call to have paramedics on hand so that when I DO stroke out, someone can revive me.

Or at least finish installing the damn gate.

I'm not picky.

Big Man on Campus

This week, Aidan moved into the next classroom at daycare-- known in our house as the Big Boy Room. I bet it's been interesting for the poor teachers there, because the school insists on a schedule at this point. Cause, you know, 9 month old babies really need discipline. anyway, they have 2 naps scheduled in the day, a short one in the morning and a longer one in the afternoon. Riiiiiiiight. Aidan sleeps when he wants to, and if he doesn't GET to when he wants to, he turns into a screaming, whining, drooling, flailing harbinger of death and destruction. I can only imagine what went on the first day there....he lookedc pretty happy when I picked him up, but the teachers looked a little shell-shocked and were drooling a tad.

Being in the Big Boy Room (or BBR) means that his crawling/walking schedule will probably accelerate. Most of the kids in there can at least crawl if not walk...they're all a lot older than he is. They wander the room, hanging out in corners playing craps and drinking 40s in thier tiny satin gang jackets. Maybe not, but it is a little bit like throwing him to the wolves since he's kind of immobile right now.

Also, I forgot to mention we took him to the doctor for his 9 month checkup recently. Every time we go, they ask us a series of questions to check his developmental milestones against. One of them is "Does he understand 'No'?" Yeah. Sure. There's not really anything he does that we need to say no to him for... if he's doing something he shouldn't be, there's a 99% chance it's because we put him in a position to do so. And on the rare occasions I DO say "No" to him, he thinks it's the pinnacle of humor and giggles maniacally. So I don't know if the doctor is serious, but that's got to be one of the dumber questions they ask. While there, he got to have a test for lazy eye, which also made me question his doctor's sanity.

Here's how it works: they have you hold your baby on your lap in front of a screen. They then hook up three electrodes to his head, and put a little pirate eye-patch on one of his eyes. Then they start the test, which, as far as I can tell, also tests for epilepsy. The screen has black and white bars all the way down it which begin to flash rapidly, and get smaller and smaller. Then they reset it, and go again. This continues for like 5 years. I guess if, at the end, you (or your child) isn't convulsing on the floor, you win. The funny thing is that tney never bothered to ask if I or my wife was epileptic....and if I had a little more time to think about it, you better believe I would have faked a nice seizure just to liven up the visit.

I'm nice like that.