Name Trends

The Social Security Administration released their 2005 name popularity data. It looks like the popularity of my name has officially peaked (in 2003) and is now trending downward. "Aidan" ranked 43rd this year. Down three places over last year and four places over its peak. I think of myself as one of a kind, so it's nice to see that the rest of the US is slowly recognizing this fact. Daddy helped me to make this nice graph illustrating the trend.

Secret Mother's Day Gift

I made a Mother's Day gift for Mommy at school earlier in the week. Boy, it's hard keeping it a secret! She knows that some other kids made gifts that are sitting on the drying tables in school. She also knows that my gift is really pretty, involves glue, silk, and some words. But the words are secret, I won't tell her what it says. It's really hard keeping secrets. I begged my teacher to let me take it home today, but she said I need to wait until tomorrow.

Up a Tree

Around Easter, I got to have some pictures taken of me when I was sitting in our apple tree. I liked this idea a lot, so I asked Daddy to take some more pictures in this setting. Here are several in the tree as well as some pictures of me making pictures with chalk. Enjoy them here.

Sticker Poetry

Lately, I've been making scenes with some of my animal stickers. These include stickers of bugs, butterflies, fish, and all sorts of things. I like to tell Mommy about my pictures, and she writes down what I say. Daddy thought my descriptions were sort of like poetry.

Here are a couple of highlights:

Land and water and all different worlds and stuff. There's butterflies in the world and whales and big whales and little dolphins. And there are some bugs, like ladybugs and butterflies and stuff. And there's grass and fish and caterpillars. These stickers are pictures of real things.

and this one:

Fish. There's so many fish I can't even count! These fish are going to swim around the whales and then under and then come back. I can't even count how many fish there are in the whole world!

Finally, a different quote, unrelated to stickers but interesting nonetheless:

Are you as happy as a rockstar singing a happy, happy song?

G. Ometer, Math Detective

This past weekend, we started playing a new game that Daddy and I made up called G. Ometer, Math Detective. In this game, a "victim" makes a shape out of some blocks. Sometimes the shape is a square, sometimes a hexagon and so on. The "victim" then goes on a walk and the "thief" steals some of the blocks, leaving only a partial shape. The job of the math detective is to use the "clues" to figure out how many blocks the thief stole. It's very important that the detective interviews the victim to determine what the shape was initially, so as to know how many blocks there were at the start. Then, the detective examines the remaining evidence and, using the power of math, has to deduce how many items were stolen. Once the detective has figured this out, the victim can call the police lost and found to see if they turned up the right number of blocks. This is a really neat game. It's very cool that you can use the evidence to figure out what the thief took.

The Tale of the Aidan and the Hare

As you know, I love stuffed animal fun stories. Today, I put a big wicker basket that normally holds stuffed animals on my back and became Aidan the Tortoise. With Mommy, I played big turtle (me) and little turtle (a stuffed one)and the "terrible, horrible" crocodile and other predatory animals. Little turtle joined me inside my shell since it was hard for him to pull his whole body inside his own (a mobility problem common in stuffed turtles). Later, Daddy and I played the story of the Aidan and the Hare. Here's how the story went:

Once upon a time in the Hundred Acre Wood, all the animals decided to have a race to sdee who was the fastest. It came down to the Tortoise (Aidan) versus the Hare (green bunny). Green bunny got off to a great start, but got distracted by a lap desk with pictures of dinosaurs on it. Soon the tortoise came into the lead. Quickly, the hare raced ahead, but became distracted by a particularly interesting light switch. Again, the tortoise roared ahead. The hare raced back and was in the lead heading to the finish line, which was located in the office. Unfortunately for the hare, he became distracted by the very interesting door knob. The tortoise plowed on without getting distracted and won the race. Hooray for the tortoise.

I even figured out the lesson here---sometimes if you want to succeed, you have to focus on the task at hand rather than becoming distracted. Interesting how the Daddy stuffed animal stories are often related to things that happen in my life as well as those of the stuffed animals.

Sparkly Show

We've added a new bit to the nighttime routine---dancing. Thanks to Daddy's iPod, we have an amazing collection of dance favorites. Since going to the Wiggles concert, I've discovered that dance concerts are even more exciting when the lights are dimmed and the performers have sparkly lights on them. Every night, we now have a concert in the guest bedroom. To do this, we turn off all the lights, shut the door, and then use my two light wands---one is fiber optic and spins around, the other has colorful strobing lights in a globe. Daddy and I like to dance around. We also have to have an audience for the show. Most of the time the audience consists of the stuffed animals who sit on the bed. Mommy sometimes joins them. For really exicting shows, we pick up a stuffed animal and let him dance on the "stage" with us. The stuffed animals really seem to like this.

We like to dance to mambo music by Tito Puente, fast songs by Paul McCartney, early Beatles stuff, lots of Beach Boys songs---especially the ones about California---and, the final song of every dance party, Yellow Submarine. I also like Lyle Lovett's song "That's Right You're Not from Texas" which is really fast and fun. Mommy is very impressed at all our energy.