Glittery Holidays

Glittery Art 
Recently, Mommy and I have been in the holiday spirit by making various Christmas crafts. A couple of days ago, we made construction paper birds and stockings, decorated them with copious amounts of glitter, and hung them on the tree. Yesterday's project was to make a chain out of construction paper. Mommy began this project, but Daddy took over when he got home. Daddy has an odd idea about how to make Christmas chains, he wanted to make Möbius strips for rings. I kind of liked saying "Möbius," and I have to admit they do make nice rings. Mommy thought that this was an odd holiday choice on Daddy's part.


Glittery Bird 

Aidan Not the Engineer

Last night was "guys" night at the house. Mommy went out with a bunch of other Mommies and, amazingly, they decided they wanted to leave their many children at home. So it was just Daddy and I trying to fend for ouurselves. As a special treat, Daddy decided to set up the electric train. Daddy's train is very small and very fussy. We had lots of difficulties getting the tracks together and even more difficulties getting the trains on the track. Eventually, we managed to get everything going and Daddy handed me the controls to run the train. The main thing I was interested in was figuring out how to make the train go fast. I quickly figured this out and ran the train as fast as it would go. Inevitably, some problem would arise and the train would suffer a catastrophe. After driving the train for awhile, Daddy pointed out the I was the engineer of the train. This was unnerving. "Aidan not the engineer," I said---though I liked driving the train regardless.

Another day at the office

Today I got to go to work with Daddy. We drove together in the green car through the "light tunnel" (the Caldecott tunnel for those interested) and spent the day at Daddy's office. Daddy brought a laptop computer for me as well as one for himself. While Daddy did some work, I worked on the Little People game, Reader Rabbit, and Railroad Tycoon. I also got to visit lots of other people around the office, all of whom remarked on how cute I was. I liked working with Daddy.

A Tale of Two Crankys

Cranky the Crane is one of Thomas' friends. He's also a big item on my Christmas list. Since I have to wait all the way until Christmas (and perhaps beyond) to get Cranky from a store, Daddy improvised a "block" version of Cranky. Can you tell which is which?

 

 

What does that mean?

In the past, I've kin of let some phrases that I don't understand go by without comment. I figured I'd figure it out eventually and not to worry. Lately, I've decided to be more proactive in figuring out what certain phrases mean. For instance, every night Mommy and Daddy say they love me very much. They don't really talk about love in many other contexts. Love doesn't seem to be a thing you run across when wandering about--like a tree, a truck, or a bus. It doesn't seem to be an action like running, jumping or hippity-hopping. So last night when Mommy told me she loved me I asked her:

What does that mean?

Mommy had to pause for a little bit to figure out a good answer. (I guess that meant it was a good question.) She told me that love meant the Aidan was a very special person to Mommy and Daddy and we liked him very, very much. ("Like" is a concept I understood a long time ago. Indeed, it's negation is one of my favorite phrases, as in "Aidan no like buttons.")It made me happy to know that Mommy and Daddy loved me.

Up an at 'em Aidan-eer

I've evolved a morning ritual with Daddy. When I'm ready to get up, I call to him, "Daddy, Daaaaddy". He then asks me if it's light outside and we open the shade to check. Next, he greets me with a phrase from one of my favorite books, Chugga chugga choo choo.

Sun's up. Morning's here. Up an at 'em Aidan-eer

I like that greeting a lot. I then need to get all my animals and other stuff out of my bed. I offer a similar greeting as I eject them from my bed: wake up bunny-neer! wake-up bear-neer! wake up pillow-neer! and so on.

After they're all out, it's my turn to get out of bed too. I like to get out of my nighttime diaper and put on fresh clothes to start the day. I ditch the diaper and jammies and Daddy asks me what clothes I want to wear. Usually, I'm initially indecisive. He helpfully offers to put on my Raiders jammies if I have trouble making up my mind. Since I never like to wear Raiders jammies, this is a strong incentive to pick some clothes and underwear out. I put on my clothes and then we're off to the kitchen for breakfast. It's fun to start the day with Daddy.