26 months

Dear Aiden,

I have to say that when I think about this month I think about cars. You playing with cars, you pleading to watch the cars movie, and you "helping" dig our cars out from the big snow. You have nearly every noise a car can make down....vroom, brrrw, zoom, grrraw... You like to run the cars down every surface including my leg. You pretend your cars have conversations with each other. You ask daddy to draw pictures of your favorite cars for you. You've suddenly become a cars fanatic. I'm just hoping that you won't be a car snob and laugh at your mom because she would rather drive a car into the ground for sentimental reasons than buy a new one.
I think that singing is the other thing that I will always remember from this month. You rocked the Rock Band mic with the family, singing We Will Rock You with your cousin, and singing songs from your xmas books. You will let your dad sing, but if I sing I usually get a quick "nah, no singing mommy" in your little robot voice. You must have a good ear.
This has been a pretty mommy clingy month for you. You wake up in the morning and greet me with a giggle when you say hiiii, mommy. You've made a big transition into almost always using mommy and daddy now instead of mama and dada. When you first wake up you want to find the pig book and read it on your bed. I don't mind eating breakfast at work just so that I can take some extra time to read with you. Your favorite book - Where is Wibbly Pig? - is actually a flap book where you search for tiny pig. It blew your mind that it including a second word for couch - sofa! Now you inform me that "sofa same as couch" every time.
You like to have us speed read you a book - like the Polar Bear, Polar Bear (a version of Brown Bear where he hears things instead of sees them). Then you say "my turn" and you read it to us. It's pretty funny to hear the bits you remember and the bits you make up. It's my favorite. Your little voice is getting clearer to understand, but I do think that some of the time your dad and I are the only ones that pick it up completely. There is this funny Iphone application on your dad's phone which he had you sing the alphabet into the other day. Your sing song versions of "defghijklmnop" came up with "you be on her. obama." Ha!? We are able to understand you more and more each day and maybe the iphone will catch up too.
Your favorite phases this month included "here it comes," "hold on," and "not yet." "Here it comes" is usually in anticipation of the playdoh coming out of the can or a "big cracker" out of the box. "Hold on" and "not yet" are your nicer ways of saying no. You even ventured into the 16 year old version of no with a little "na-uh, no way" which I promptly ignored. I think you picked that "na-uh" up from Rebecca - We have to be more careful what we say around you ;) One of the funniest thing is when you started imitating us - you say "Rebecca says shhh" and "Mommy says hoorah!" Rebecca was embarrassed, but kiddingly convinced him that Daddy says shhh instead ;)
You have this funny little mystery language of words that we can't quite identify but that you use over and over again. One of the most notable is "tootah" - we still can't figure out what it is, but when we point to things you like to say, "no, that's silly" Your dad asked if it was your forehead and you said "nah, not my fort head." Eventually I think we'll figure it out.
You got in the habit of saying "dats my favorite" when you get excited about things. Our yoga dvd (aka. stretching on tv) was a perfect addition this month since the sand box is buried in snow and the playground is covered in ice. The favorite move is the hot air balloon that inflates and deflates. You kept eating applesauce pops despite the cold outside, because they are your "fav-rit" also. I like to ask you what you favorite part of things are to see what you remember. When your dad asked you what you liked most about ohio when we landed in the airport you said "gran and pop's house." When you got home you immediately declared "this is my house" ran up to the cats and said "hey guys." You were home after a nice visit.
You like playing in the snow where you can shimmy around in your boots and even jump right out of them. Dad asked you as you were going to bed "what did you do today?" and you replied with enthusiasm, "I fell in the snow." You like the little snowman kit we got for xmas last year, but you knew that it was missing "arms to hug." Snow angels wasn't your favorite idea, because I think you have trouble getting back up. We made a legendary seven foot tall leaning snowman in ohio and when I was loading the photos you called him "the funny guy."
You are what Uncle D calls a "repeat repeat" kid. You will hear a word and repeat it really quickly or sometimes a little bit later. Opposites are your favorite reply. When dad jokingly asked you if you were educated, you replied with "nope i ignorant" in the cutest little voice. The saddest cute voice moment was when you got sick from all the sniffles that made your tummy sick. You asked, "what dat?" while you threw up in bed, I replied "it's ok, it's throw up," and you quickly replied "i did not throw, i good boy." I guess we're lucky that you didn't know what that was since you hadn't been sick since you were itty bitty and you were fine the next day.
You stayed up waaay past bedtime to ring in the new year and you were in good spirits playing with stickers while we played women versus men outburst. Not only do I allow you to stay up late like that, but occasionally we share a little luke warm hot chocolate. I like to call that flexible parenting (aka. living on the edge - especially when it's the night before a big flight home without daddy ;)
You can sorta do a summersault sometimes unintentionally because you tip over in your boots. Your like to shimmy and shuffle your feet. You will walk backwards while calling out where you are headed. When I asked where you were the other day, you said "aidenwhere" just like everywhere...
You use your last name pretty consistently now, but you still don't quite understand that is our family name. You use Lauren Mommy and J Daddy instead. If we say our last name is Brennan, you say oh no, no myyy name is Aiden Brennan.
We are looking forward to another cold month of playing all your new games - Uno Moo is your top choice lately. We'll stay warm making some matches! Love you cozy bug, Mommy