Big Gordon

I got one of the best new toys ever this weekend---my very own Thomas the Tank Engine train layout. Mommy apparently bought it on eBay for a fraction of its usual retail price. Right now, the train track is laid out on the coffee table and I've got many of my favorite engine friends going around the track. Of course, there's Thomas. I also have James, Gordon, and my favorite, Percy. Gordon is the biggest engine, so I usually refer to him as "big Gordon." One of the best parts of my train layout is the tunnel. I especially like to make the engines poke out of the edge of the tunnel. I exclaim, "Gordon peeking out!" whenever I get them in this position.

Sick One

One of my new jobs this summer is to be a gardener. Daddy has planted a whole bunch of tomato and pepper plants in big pots. Each day, we go outside to check on the plants, given them plant food occasionally, and water them if they need it. I like the plants very much and greet each one individually by touching its leaves. A couple of days ago, an unfortunate drainage incident led one of the tomato plants to get too much water. Now Daddy tells me that this tomato plant is not feeling well. I go over and touch its leaves to try to make it happy. Sometimes, while touching its leaves, I'll ask, "Happy tomato?" It never replies.

Since it's taking a while for this plant to get better, I like to take a survey of the health of the plants. I go over and point to each plant, announcing, "Happy, happy, happy, happy, and so on." Until I come to the sick one, then I point and say, "Sick one." I hope the sick tomato plant gets better.

Picture Time

Here are a bunch of pictures of me taken around Mother's Day for you to enjoy.

Professor Daddy

My Daddy was quite excited to come home from work today. It turns out that he was promoted to something called Full Professor or, more compactly, Professor. I guess he was only a partial professor before. Anyway, he told me that, as a result of this status change, I should refer to him as "Professor Daddy" instead of simply as Daddy. Naturally, I took him at his word and called him Professor Daddy throughout the evening. I'm very proud of Professor Daddy.

A Game of Catch

Daddy has been playing catch with me since I was about 6 months old. In its usual form, Daddy rolls the ball to me and then I throw it "back" (which technically means only that I throw it---without regard for direction). The accurate throwing part has gotten much better. When I want to, I can actually throw the ball to Daddy although sometimes it's more fun to throw it away from him to watch him go get it. This past weekend, though, there was a big breakthrough in my catching skills. I noticed that when I threw the ball to Daddy, he could pluck it right out of the air. I wanted to do that too, so I had Daddy throw the ball to me instead of rolling it. Initially, I discovered that catching a ball out of the air is difficult. I flung my arms outward but somehow the ball did not end up in my hands. With a few practice tosses, however, I got it. I caught the ball---straight out of the air. Daddy whooped for joy and we did a little "catch the ball" dance. Then we repeated it, and I caught the ball again. We even tried with different sized balls and, after a couple of tries, I could catch these too. Catching is great (but still not as fun as throwing.)

Picture Time

Daddy's been in the habit of taking random pictures of me on the days we hang out together. As usual with him, there is no posing. The shot of the two of us was a self portrait taken by me. See the pictures here.

What's "Happy Birthday" without the cake?

Mommy and I just returned from a lunchtime birthday party for our next-door neighbor kids' grandmother, who is visiting from England. (Daddy is teaching a class at "Wharton West" in SF today.) Birthday parties raise certain expectations in me, particularly "lights" (candles) and cake. I was pleased when I arrived to spot a candle on the table on the patio, which I tried without success to blow out. I also told the birthday grandma "Happy Birthday!" Mommy later gave me pieces of some small iced cakes (later identified as brownies).

There was a magician at the party for entertainment, who was kind of interesting but went on for too long for me to sit still, so Mommy and I retired to the kitchen for refreshments and some ball rolling. After a bit, all of the people by the magician started warming up to sing "Happy Birthday" (a comical warm-up led by the magician). After the warm up, Mommy told me that we were going to sing in earnest, so I thought that I'd save the day since there was no cake with lights in sight and, after all, what is "Happy Birthday" without the cake? I ran to the kitchen a hoisted the box of fancy brownies (previously identified as "cake") off the table with the intention of proudly presenting them to the birthday lady. Alas, the box was too heavy and the remaining brownies fell on the floor. This made me a little sad, but Mommy told me that she understood that my intentions were good, and now I have a good story to tell. I got to pet the magician's dwarf rabbit, Fluffy, so that made a good end to the party.

More Stories

At story time, I always want more and more stories. Annoyingly, Mommy and Daddy ration the stories to three per night. (Occasionally I can sneak in a fourth when Mommy's in a really good mood.) Anyway, I figure that the main reason the stories are rationed is that they're time consuming to read. To help with this situation, Daddy helped me to find this site: The PowerPoint Anthology of Literature. As it says on the site: "Great books distilled to their essence and presented in the most efficient form of communication ever devised."

My personal favorite is this one, which reduces the longish story Goodnight Moon down to two convenient slides filled with bullet point "take-aways" from the story.

Aidan Hong Kong

In our conversation at dinner, Daddy started talking about Hong Kong. Apparently, one of his students was just offered a job there. He asked me if I wanted to go to Hong Kong. Mommy frowned. "Yes!" I said. Daddy seemed pleased. What he didn't know was that I wanted to go right then, right that very second. I didn't really need or want to finish dinner as there was no point in delaying my trip to Hong Kong. Daddy and Mommy continued to talk.

"Aidan Hong Kong?" I offered, in case they forgot about our trip.

"Later. When you're a bigger boy." offered Mommy and Daddy.

Checking my height I concluded that I was certainly big enough to go to Hong Kong.

"Aidan Hong Kong?" I repeated.

Later that evening, Daddy got out a big book called an atlas to show me where Hong Kong was. He pointed to California and told me I was here. I then pointed to some other places on the page to indicate where Daddy and Mommy were. I pointed to the horn of Africa and said, "Daddy here." I pointed to the southern tip of India and said "Mommy here."

Daddy pointed out where Hong Kong was. It's pretty close to California on the page in the atlas.

"Aidan Hong Kong?" I reminded everyone since our trip was already delayed by more than an hour.

We looked at some post cards of Hong Kong that Daddy brought me. Hong Kong is filled with boats, which I liked very much. There was also a picture of a bunch of people climbing steps to visit a big golden guy named Buddha. I liked the steps a lot though Buddha was good too. Hong Kong seems like a great place to go.

"Aidan Hong Kong?"

Time is on my side

I'm getting more sophisticated in my speech. I now use things like articles ("Hit the golf ball") as well as prepositions ("Mommy with green car"). One consistent pattern which I've adopted is to append the term "time" to whatever it is that I want to do at the moment. I've discovered Mommy and Daddy have used "time" very effectively in scheduling things (bath time, teeth time, bed time, etc.) so I've adopted this as well to good effect. I choose other kinds of times like "choo choo time", "golf time", "outside now time", and so on. Adding the word time lends a kind of urgency and authority to the request that I think translates directly into results.

Easter & Wheel Day Photos

Click here to see photos of our Easter celebrations!

Click here to see me having fun with all the trucks and cars at "Wheel Day" in Lafayette!

Wheel Day

This morning Mommy and I went to an event called "Wheel Day." It featured lots of cool wheeled vehicles for kids to look at and climb on. I yelled, "Oh boy!" when we got out of the car and saw all of the neat things. I first chose to get on the yellow school bus. I have a schoolbus toy and also know the "Wheels on the Bus" song, so it was really exciting to get on the bus! I chose a seat, sat down, and said, "Whee!" to encourage the bus to go, but unfortunately the bus did not move. I still had a good time though. I sat in the driver's seat and even beeped the horn! I also sat in the drivers' seat of a huge dump truck (I also beeped the horn on this one), a yellow loader (much like Bob the Builder's truck, Scoop), a fire engine, a camoflauge-colored army hummer, a police car (only the back seat of that one), and a little red European coupe that opens by flipping the whole front end up so you can climb in! (This last car, the BMW Isetta, was so cool that I'm inserting a link about it here.) All of these vehicles were visited multiple times by Mommy and me. I also got to push a button to make the siren go on a police bicycle! I ran into my friend, Chloe, and her family at Wheel Day too, and we enjoyed the Hummer and the fire engine together. Photos will be forthcoming.

Speaking of trucks, I had a great time on Wednesday watching a yellow backhoe loader and a dump truck work to get the ground ready for the new playground at the Lafayette Community Center. I watched the loader (also like Scoop) pick up dirt and pebbles across the parking lot, haul it to the playground site, dump it and then level it off. Several of my friends watched this too as we had all come out of Kindergym, but I was lucky because I convinced Mommy to stay the longest. We got to see a dump truck arrive and raise its dumper all the way up to dump out a huge new load of dirt and rocks! Wow! Oh boy! Then the Scoop truck went to work carting the dirt to the playground. I can't wait for the new playground to be finished, but the trucks make waiting easier!

A Good Walk Spoiled

As you already know, golf is a big part of my life. I really like the "dot machine"---a machine that spins the golf ball really fast while Daddy puts dots on it. Here's the model Daddy has. Anyway, lately I"ve expanded my golf horizons. Dadddy recently bought a book called A Good Walk Spoiled by John Feinstein. This book features a nice green cover and is all about golf. For a while, Daddy read to me from this book during my breakfast. I liked this idea so much that over the last few days, I've been requesting that Mommy read me stories from the golf book. Last night at bedtime, I eschewed my usual favorites at story time---A Lot of Otters, Ten in the Bed, and Guess How Much I Love You---in favor of more stories from the golf book. Last night's story was about a golfer named Tom Watson who made something called a bogey at the 18th hole of the British Open in 1994. He was sad about this bogey.

Wiggle Time

On Saturday, Mommy and I went to see The Wiggles (our favorite singing group) at the Oakland Arena. It was really exciting! Mommy started talking about going to see The Wiggles the day before, and I talked about nothing but that until bedtime. I was all ready to go as soon as I woke up the next day. I exclaimed, "Wigls!" (Wiggles) as soon as I woke up and that periodically exclaimed, "Wigls! Songs! Dance! Oh Boy!" in various combinations to remind Mommy that we had somewhere to go.

Mommy and I got to the arena an hour early, and we were really glad that we did. She got a great parking spot, and I got to walk up and down ramps and pick out the white Wiggles shirt that I expressed a special preference for with smaller crowds than showed up later. We also got to our seats on time, which was great since there was such a crush of people arriving closer to the official start time, that they had to delay the start time a bit to let them get into the parking lot and to their seats.

Anyway, the show was really exciting! (I was a little intimidated by all of the lights, so I stayed on Mommy's lap like many other kids, but I had lots of fun!) Some kids brought signs to hold up with their parents, and The Wiggles read all those that they could see. (Mommy thought that was very nice of them.) One family in seats pretty high up held a sign that said, "We have food for Anthony!" He's always hungry, so he went up into the audience and received an open bag of baked Doritos (guess the kids were hungry too!).

We had great seats, and Mommy and I loved watching Greg, Anthony, Murray, and Jeff singing, dancing, and joking around. They came into the audience a couple times, and I was only a few feet away from Jeff! (Mommy wished it were Anthony, who is the heartthrob Wiggle of many in her mommy group. Click here for a SF Chronicle column by another mom fan of Anthony.)

My special favorite, Dorothy the Dinosaur, sang and danced to many songs with the others and even sang her solo butterfly song (a special favorite since Mommy and I sing it at home!) Wags the Dog and Henry the Octopus were also there dancing around. Mommy especially enjoyed Captain Feathersword, who sang his "Quack Quack Quack, Cock a Doodle Doo" song as Barney, a Teletubby, Mick Jagger, Ozzy Osbourne, Celine Dion, and an operatic tenor. He was really funny, and Mommy says he has an incredible vocal range despite all his clowning around!

As we walked to the car after the concert, Mommy asked me whether I had fun, and I said "Aidan Wigles fun!" We listened to Wiggles songs the whole way home in the car. I want to go back and visit the Wiggles again!

Easter

Easter is yet another great holiday, or wingding as I like to call it. (An aside: When we went to the P-Nuts playgroup joint 2-year-old birthday celebration, Daddy taught me that we were attending a wingding over and over in the car. I internalized it and now all events where there is both fun to be had and people to have it with are wingdings.) Yesterday morning I got up and found that the Easter Rabbit (the "buddy bat" as I call him) had come to visit me. I got all sorts of good stuff including a bit of chocolate. While I dislike all other forms of candy, I really like chocolate. Next, we all got dressed up for church. Mommy tried to put me in a shirt with evil buttons on it, but I protested vigorously and ended up button-free. Mommy explained to me that church is where people think about Jesus. Jesus is, apparently, a nice man who helps people. I'm all for that. In church, the highlight was all the songs. Every time we would stop signing songs and people would start to talk, I would pipe up from the back of the church my request: "more songs, more songs." Daddy seemed to agree with me on this sentiment. When church was over and we went outside, I kind of missed the church and the songs. I suggested that we go back by saying "more Jesus, more Jesus."

When we got home, we went on an Easter egg hunt in the backyard. While some people like to gather all the eggs on the hunt before determining what's inside, I prefer more immediate feedback. I would give an egg to my assistant, Daddy, and order him to open it. I would then inspect the contents and make an immediate judgment: If it was chocolate, then it should be eaten immediately---"eat" I'd say. If it was a toy, then it required immediate playing with. If it was a non-chocolate piece of food such as cereal or teddy grahams, then it could be safely ignored and I would proceed to the next egg.

I like Easter.

Big Slide

In addition t my newfound jumping ability, I'm also become quite an excellent climber. Daddy took me to the park yesterday and I went zipping up to the top of the big slide. The first part consists of steps leading up to a level where there is a little slide. I used to only go to this part and come down the little slide, but recently I discovered there is a ladder leading from the landing of the little slide up to the top of the big slide. I can zip up the ladder and go zooming down the big slide. The other thing that's great about slides is sliding lots of things other than Aidan down them. I'm particularly fond of sliding golf balls down the slide. Daddy or Mommy thoughtfully put the golf balls to wait for me at the top of the slide (that way my hands can be free for climbing rather than carrying golf balls). Then, when I get to the top of the slide, I'll roll the golf balls down. Sometimes I roll them singly (whee!), other times I roll them in bunches (lots!). Finally, I slide myself down to greet the golf balls at the bottom.

NO Buttons!

Sometime in February or early March, I decided that buttons were especially unpleasant things and started declaring "No buttons!" each time it was time to get dressed. I decided to be very firm about this point, since my mild expressions of distaste for buttons in 2003 were obviously not getting me anywhere. I am happy to say my early 2004 arguments against buttons were so vehement that only one shirt with buttons has disgraced my chest since I started the 2004 Anti-Button Crusade. (The one that slipped by had buttons shaped like baseballs so, after much debate, I yielded since baseballs are cool.) I feel very powerful.

Photos from Uncle Ted & Aunt Holly's Visit

Click here to see photos from Uncle Ted and Aunt Holly's visit in March!

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.