Other Roo

I am a big fan of Tigger, Eeyore, and Winnie the Pooh, but up until recently I have been less familiar with other characters, such as "Other Roo." "Other Roo" figures prominently in The Tigger Movie, a video which I received from my godmother, Jo Ann, at Christmastime. (Much like Tigger, "Other Roo" is excellent at bouncing, as I am too since I started consistently jumping with "Two feet!" off the ground last Saturday.)

You may not recognize the character "Other Roo" since Mommy calls him "Roo" (for short I guess). Mommy thinks that I am so used to referring to the "other room," which is how everyone in this house refers to a room we're not yet in, that I have tacked "Other" on to Roo's name. I think that she just neglected to learn his full name and is being too informal.

Red Hat

I'm really starting to enjoy reading books. Currently, there is only one book that I can actually read: it's called Blue Hat, Green Hat by Sandra Boynton. I like to open up the book and read aloud---"Blue hat, green hat, red hat, uh oh" and so on. The key to my reading skills with this book are that all of the words correspond exactly to the pictures. So if I simply say what I see on the page, I end up reading the book. Actually, I'm not quite accurate. The "uh oh" part is my innovation. In the book, "uh oh" is replaced by "oops". Reading is fun.

Grammy's Visit

Click here to see some photos from my Grammy's visit!

My Grammy flew on an airplane to visit me the other week. I really enjoyed having her here. She came with me to Kindergym and "preschool" (a mommy and me pre-preschool experience) and I showed her around. We also went to the Oakland Zoo together, where we saw cool animals like giraffes, camels, and elephants. We spent lots of time at the attached little kids amusement park too, where we all rode the choo-choo together and I took many rides on the neat cars that go around and around in a circle. I chose a different car most times, but my favorite is still a shiny blue roadster.

Like me, Grammy seems to like STOP signs quite a bit, and we enjoyed pointing out each one we saw and anticipating when the next one would show up. This is a fun game on the local streets, but less satisfying on the freeway, where the cars so fast and don't stop often. I am very happy that I can see a stop sign right outside my window over the backyard fence!

Mommy, Grammy and I went on a big adventure her last weekend here. We drove to Monterey to see the fishies there who live at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Since it's a 2 hour drive, we stayed overnight at a motel in nearby Seaside, where I got to sleep in my Pack n Play. I was very happy to see it and sleep in it again!

The aquarium was neat with huge tanks of fishies, plants, otters, penguins, etc. There was a dark little space you could climb up and view the penguins away from the crowds, and I declared that the penguins seen from that spot "Aidan's penguins." We watched the otters play with toys and eat lunch. That was fun too. I have a book at home that I really like called, A lot of Otters, and so I really looked forward to visiting the otters. We all came home with otter merchandise.

On the way back to the car after the aquarium, we spotted a big, brightly lit carousel. I decided to take a ride despite my year-long fear of carousel horses. (This despite my love of horsies everywhere else!) Anyway, while at first I was going to sit on the bench on the carousel, with a little coaxing a chose a white horse this time and had a great time. Then I chose a grey horse for the next ride! I would have chosen an apricot colored horse next, but mommy insisted that out long day was coming to an end, and we went to our "green car" and rode home. It was a very fun day! I miss Grammy!

Happy Birthday Uncle Jack!

Today is my Uncle Jack's birthday. Mommy and I called him at work to wish him a happy day. I listed for Uncle Jack the things that he will require in order to have a perfect birthday : 1) cake, 2) lights (candles on the cake), and 3) Elmo hat. Now that he has this information, he should have a magnificent birthday.

While Mommy tried once again to get me to call Uncle Jack by name while speaking with him, I did not cooperate until after we hung up the phone. Then I clearly said, "Uncle Jack, bye-bye!"

DVD

I like to watch videos and am becoming more skilled in operating the VCR. I now know how to eject a video and replace it in its dust jacket. Mommy and Daddy have also set up my video library in such a way that I have easy access to all my favorites. Right now the current "heavy" rotation includes Maisy, Little People, Wiggles, and Elmo. Sometimes I get addicted to videos and want to watch lots of them. Often, Mommy or Daddy will try to rein me in by telling me that we're all done watching videos or that the VCR is tired and needs a rest. Fortunately, I've come up with a creative solution to the tired VCR problem--it turns out that when the VCR is busy playing videos, the DVD player is resting. Hence, when faced with no more videos, I thoughtfully suggest, "DVD, DVD" as a solution to the problem. While Mommy and Daddy like the creativity of this solution, they still don't let me keep watching stuff.

Asia

Daddy just got back from Asia. After doing pretty well on his return, he's a bit of a mess from insomnia right now. Anyway, he told me to point out to you some pictures he posted of his trip. You can view them here.

No happy

I usually indicate my mood as being either positive (Yes happy) or negative (no happy). Over the last few days, I"ve been no happy a lot. Yesterday, Mommy took me to the doctor and it turns out I've got an ear infection, which is especially painfull when I lie down. This is a problem since I typically sleep lying down. Monday night was an especially "no happy" night for all of us. Fortunately, the doctor gave me some antibiotics (mmm, delicious medicine) and I'm already feeling mre yes happy than I was earlier. I hope I recover soon although Mommy promises that I'll get to enjoy the tasty medicine for the full course of the antibiotics.

People

We've had a whole bunch of visitors come through our house over the last several days. Over the weekend, Aunt Holly and Uncle Ted came to visit. The brought me a present (bows!!!) that I like very much. It's a set of legos (duplos actually) that create an elephant, a giraffe, and, in honor of their Floridian roots, an alligator. I really love my legos. Uncle Ted and Aunt Holly are lots of fun to play with. Uncle Ted especially likes to roll around on the floor with me. The main difficulty is that with so many new people coming through, it was hard for me to keep track of their names, so, throughout their stay, I simply referred to them as "people." For instance, if Aunt Holly would come in the door with her shoes on, I'd suggest (strongly) "People shoes off." And so on.

The morning after they left, I woke up and said "Bye bye Aunt Holly." I finally figured out her name, but just a little too late.

Pool

It's been unseasonably hot here this past week. After the temperature soared into the mid 80s yesterday, Daddy broke out the swimming pool for the first time all year. This was the best. As Daddy was getting out the pool, I flapped my arms up and down and shouted "pool, pool" in my excitement. The pool didn't disappoint. It was nice and cool. I also got to do one of my favorite pool activities: the ritual throwing of all the balls in the yard into the pool. Then throwing them back out again. And so on.

In the driver's seat

Daddy got a new toy yesterday---a driver that his friend Vijay sent him. We were both pretty excited to get the golf club out of its box. It's a Ping TiSI model. It's got a huge clubhead. When I saw the size of the clubhead, I opened my mouth wide and went "ohhhhhh", followed by a couple of "oh boys!". Daddy had a similar reaction. I quickly identified the club as a driver and scurried off to get out the box of golf balls and the putting green. We putted with the "big dog" as Daddy likes to call the new club. It doesn't look much like a dog, but I woofed at it anyway. Then it was my turn to hit with the club. While it's a really long club, since the head is so big, it's rather easy for me to hit golf balls with it. Soon after that, I brought out my own golf clubs ("Aidan's golf clubs" as I refer to them---I always refer to myself in the third person) for comparison. I toyed with them briefly and then went back to the driver. I like Daddy's golf clubs much better than my own.

Woof!

Hum

I know how to hum. Mommy caught me humming "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" in the car today, and then we hummed it together in the car and at home. Hum Hum Hum Hum...

Here are some links to recent photos of me with some buddies:

Click here for photos at Kindergym February 26 and in rain gear afterwards.

Click here for photos taken at the P-Nuts Playgroup group 2-year-old birthday party on Feb 29.

We are still wading through the digital photos taken around Christmas. Some of them will be posted within the next few days!

Wingding

Yesterday, we went to the P-Nuts group 2 year old birthday celebration. P-Nuts is one of the many groups to which I belong. The origins of the name are obscure though. Anyway, on our way there, Daddy taught me a new word to describe this event---wingding. I liked saying it---wingding. The best part of this house, which I call the choo-choo house, is the train table where they have a Thomas the Tank Engine train. I loved playing with that. Indeed, for the couple of hours that we were there, I paid almost exclusive attention to the choo-choo. Occasionally, other children would join me in playing with the choo-choo (and sometimes I'd rather that they'd have gone away) but none were as consistently faithful to the railroading spirit as I was. The other highlight of the event was receiving a balloon. I now officially have a favorite color---yellow. Given the choice of many different colored balloons, I wanted the yellow one. I display similar preferences when it comes to my clothes as well.