A Rather Big Week

This past week has brought a whole host of fun stuff for Aidan. First, the subject of the post: he has definitly developed a sense of "playing" and "games". Right now, it eseems his favorite one is hide and seek. He will crawl away from me in the living room, around the chair and on to the treadmill, little legs churning like mad. I, in turn, will crawl the other way, around the front of the same chair and wait until I hear him give a little giggle. I'll slowly creep around the side of the chair, and he'll start really giggling-- sometimes he'll try to get away, but usually he just rocks on his knees screaming happily until I grab him and make him tackle me. Kid's pretty good at it, he doesn't even fall for the head fake I throw in every once in a while, and he really wraps me up-- no half-assed knee tackles. Anyway, we repeat this until he gets too anxious and won't wait for me-- at that point, he'll climb up the base of the treadmill and peer over the chair. When he sees that I see him, he'll screech with joy again amd go back into hiding. That's really the only place he hides, but to give him credit there really sin't anywhere else he could hide-- at least not until he can walk.

A modified version of this involves me trying to do something (like, oh, say going to the bathroom). He thinks I'm hiding, and will take off in the direction of whatever noise I'm making until he either a)finds me or b) runs into the bathroom door. I'm a pretty liberal parent, but I'm really not comfotrable with leaving the door open while I pee-- not because I don't want him to see (because I'm pretty sure that's how little boys learn to do it eventually) but more because I don't want him getting in the line of fire, as it were. And I'm sure he would, becaus he loves it when we pour water in front of him in the tub. I really don't want to explain to his mother why her son is completely covered in pee. Ever.

Moving on: we had his pictures taken last weekend, and he was a champ. I had to help gget him to smile, but he stayed put pretty well. I chalk this up mainly to the fact that the kid is a born celebrity-- if he sees a camera, he mugs like crazy. He usually doesn't even try to crawl over and grab it, he just throws the "cute as hell" switch and goes with it. So once he realized what the photographer was doing, he was cool. One of the pictures is a little funny, because you can see his top two teeth a little bit-- and because there are no other ones up there yet to squish them together, he kind of looks like Cletus after a good jug of the ol' moonshine.

Lastly, we took him out trick-or-treating on Halloween. Whcih, admittedly, was kind of pointless because he's too young for candy and he won't remember it anyway. Now, that doesn't mean I didn't have a pillowsack with me to collect-- daddy's gotta eat-- or that he didn't have fun. He loves people, so even though he was tired (again, curse you Ben Franklin) he managed to smile at everyone.

Which worked out well, because smiles = candy. Boo-yah.