Dear Aiden,
Oh, it's so, so hard to believe what a big boy you are. I can still see Baby AB peek out in your personality. Those giggle moments on the changing pad are now in the big boy wagon you love to bounce in... or in the tub as you splash around and blow bubbles... I got most of your old stuff organized recently and that little bitty tub with the hammock in it seemed like it must have shrunk. You used to fit on that little wet hammock and you didn't even have to curl a toe. Now you might be able to fit one leg on it.
It's amazing to both your dad and I that you now have favorite things to do. Not just simple preferences, but favorite activities. Your favorite this month was color, color?, color! peese, puhleese, colooor - You will ask politely with every inflection in your voice possible until we are able to dig up a marker or a crayon. We prefer the washable markers to the waxy crayon mess, but both are a bit of a mess by the time you are finished.
Your favorite part about coloring with markers is the caps! Oh, putting the cap on and off again, creates the super giggles. Then just recently you figured out how to create a "suuuper marker" - which is a bunch of markers (usually three is your max and then you get just way too excited to balance them) stuck together end to end. Sometimes you will get really determined to get the matching ends together and I have a really hard time trying to explain to you that those ends won't go together. You also figured out how to carefully balance the markers on your tray and say taa-daa!
Your high chair continues to be a popular crafting zone, and luckily it has this cool double tray that can be popped in when it's time to eat. You continue to be a pretty good eater although sometimes you only want one thing we offer. (I read some good advice about how to think of kid's eating habits on a weekly basis instead of meal-by-meal. Since the portions of what you eat are so much less, it's better to arrange a well-balanced diet over a longer period of time rather than just a meal or a day of meals.) You seem to be more and more into dipping lately. Your current favorite is dipping banana bread in yogurt - I made five loaves of banana bread even in this short month (you know we shared). Your double spoon feeding fun went to triple spoon feeding because you want one in each hand and one available for us to step in and help with that 10% that gets dribbled on your superbib.
You are attempting to dress and undress yourself more often lately. You do a great job of helping get your shoes on and you will sometimes pick out which you'd prefer. You prefer wearing the shirt bib or no bib at all lately, instead of the little bibs - and you sure do know how to take that bib off if you want. We're lucky that you're still in cooperative baby mode most of the time. Your least cooperative time led me to wear a bib with you which you thought was pretty funny. We started a new dress up bin (complete with old costumes of a kung fu fighter, mouse, dino, hippo, giraffe, etc) which you generally like to drag all over the room and ask us to put on ourselves. We've had some great giggle moments as you begin to learn to pretend.
You like to imitate us. You will look up at daddy shaving and you will pull your little bath foamies over your face like it's a razor. You tap your foot with dad when you are rocking out. You want to help push the vacuum, so we ended up getting you your own. It rumbles just like the big one and you will play with it for a little while and then usually you try to trade up for the bigger one.
You are our little monkey man. You've taken to not only trying to step on our feet to walk around, but you will just full on grab our leg and hold on. You want us to stomp around with you latched on to our leg like a little monkey. You will frequently latch on like this or keep your knees bent to prevent us from putting you down. You also discovered how fun it is to pound your chest and pretend to be a gorilla. I think your path of destruction compares to that of a baby gorilla too. Especially when we open up the table of the fat legos, it looks like a gorilla has tromped through the room and strewn them everywhere.
You also have quiet-less-destructo-baby-moments. Most of the moments not spent reading are spent kissing, licking, nuzzling, hugging, carrying, petting elmo.... Elmo and his friend Cookie are by far your favorites. You really don't want much to do with any other characters...except for maybe the Count - uhha, uhha. You think that our laptops are elmo game machines and you kept asking to see elmo on the doctor's laptop. You're even starting to learn how to push the buttons (nicely) when elmo asks... blows my mind how computer literate you will be. Our first Apple didn't even have a mouse, and I don't think we had one with a mouse until I was in high school.
You are really into picture books lately. I searched out new good ones that I thought you would really like. Your flap books are big favorites now too, and you are definitely old enough to not try to rip them. You sometimes want to read more than one book at once. You pick out the pictures you know and either sign or attempt to say what it is. Oor you will point and ask "wah?" for the new pictures you want to learn.
This month has been a little bit challenging for us, but you have brightened it up with your roars, giggles, and zurberts. We look forward to another cozy month as this roaring winter continues into March. We will sneak out for wagon rides every chance we get.
Love you, Mama
Oh, mommyhood. Now that spring cleaning is in full effect, I've been sifting through old photos and I honestly can hardly keep myself from welling up with that mommy lump in the throat. That emotion that is hard to explain when you feel happy, proud, worried, and probably a little bit scared of everything you don't know. Then I think of how much I've learned from Aiden and how much being a mommy just fits. 
A good friend just had a baby and her twitter feed explains a lot...She exclaims that she "never thought she'd be so happy waking up every three hours during the night!" I totally understand what she means. It's the best feeling to know that other people are enjoying parenthood as much as we are.
I continue to be so, so committed to my little baby even though he continues to transform into an independent little boy more and more every day. If I could hit the pause button every once in a while I would, but mommyhood has one speed which feels like fast forward. I am happy about this most of the time, but I'm just glad that we at least attempt to capture it on film and save it for later. And I'm lucky that someone else occassionally picks up the camera for me ;)
When it comes to a mommy update, it seems like it's been a lot of the same 'ol, same 'ol around here. The weaning report: He pretty much requests it at least three times a day...most of the time for just a short little bit. I decided to stop trying to stop. Why push it really, if he doesn't want to give it up, why should I? I'm ready to be finished, but if he's not ready that's fine. I'm not going to smear vinegar on anything or make it a discipline/control thing. I know that it works for us (even though there are many reports that try to let women off the hook saying that the benefits aren't as plentiful at this stage, there are still valid benefits). I'm just happy that he's such an active, bubbly kid and you can't ask for much more than that...
