Totally not what I expected

Parenting Stories

When Aiden and I get in the car in the mornings to go to daycare/work, I let him bring a cup of water and a snack cup of dry cereal.  He usually has cereal leftover that he eats during the ride home.  That way he's not miserably cranky when we get home and I have a minute to make dinner before a meltdown.  The water, however, is generally too hot to drink in the evening after a day baking in the car.  But the other day, he had Goldfish crackers for some reason and he was asking for a drink of water.  I felt bed for him with his dry, cracker mouth so I tested out his water.  It was cloudy that day, so the water was only warm.  I decided to go ahead and let him have a drink.  I handed him the cup and told him he could have a drink of it, but it was hot.

He took a drink of the water, took the cup out of his mouth and stared quizzically at it for a minute.  Then he looks at me and says, "Coffee?" 

The kid thinks any hot beverage is coffee.  Cracks me up every time.

Continuing with Aiden's tendency to generalize everything, he thinks all skulls are pirates.  He has a book about pirates and we've watched Pirates of the Caribbean a few times.  He's noticed the skull and crossbones on the black pirate flag, so now he associates it with pirates.  With Halloween being right around the corner, there is an abundance of skulls around.  He is constantly screaming, "Pirates!"  I look around for a pirate only to find a skull of some sort.  At least I know what he's talking about now.

He also wants to go to the store every day after daycare.  Sometimes when I need just a few items, I'll run by Target on my way out of town.  Aiden loves it.  I'm not sure why.  I guess we frequently stop in the toy section for a birthday present and he gets to play with everything.  Maybe that has something to do with it. 

To go to the store we have to pass a statue.  So when he gets in the car, he starts screaming, "'Tore! 'Tatoo!"  Most of the time, I have to say, "No, we're going to go past the trains and then go home."  Statue and store, or trains and home.  Funny what my life has reduced to.  ;)

My Little Guy

Sunday morning we took Aiden to get his second professional haircut.  I have trimmed his hair tons of times and he generally does okay for me.  But when a stranger touches his head?  WATCH OUT.  We went to the same place we went last time.  He wouldn't even sit in the car chair.  So the hair dresser had the brilliant idea to have Aiden sit in Travis' lap while he got his hair cut.

Both Travis and Aiden wore a cover-up to prevent hair from getting all over their clothes.  I gave Aiden a suckers and the hairdresser put Spiderman on the mini-TV.  Aiden chose Spiderman.  Next time, I'm choosing Toy Story.  Aiden tends to get uninterested during the parts of Spiderman when the main character is not in costume.  That was less than helpful during the hair cut.   But it did help little bit.  When he was distracted, Aiden didn't mind the hair dresser at all.  She cut the majority of his hair with scissors, then cleaned up the edges with clippers.  I had to hold Aiden's arms down during the clippers.

Anyhoo, here's the finished product!

He looks so much older to me with his hair cut this short.  I think I'm going to grow it out again.  At least a little.  This was a lot shorter than I was hoping.  At least he's all cleaned up for the wedding this weekend!

ABC's

I have some photos I really want to share.  Since I didn't have time to load them last night, I'm going to show you a fun video instead.  Hopefully I'll find the time and energy to get them up tonight.  Bahhhh...

The ABC's are a big part of my life right now.  Aiden sings the alphabet all the time (several sections of letters are mushed together, but he does pretty good).  He has toys that sing the alphabet.  And there are lots of toys and books around the house that teach him the alphabet.  I'm just going to bring you into my world a bit.

The Alphabet 2 from n9ve on Vimeo.

My Worst Enemy

Another great weekend under the belt!  Travis worked Saturday morning, so Aiden and I tried to take it easy.  Aiden wanted to play outside, so I figured I would attempt to work in the garden again.  I still had those dead tomato plants that need to be pulled up.  I put on socks, tennis shoes and wore Travis' Home Depot gloves.  I am going to a wedding this weekend and it will just be Aiden and I, so the last thing I need is some fire ant bites slowing me down.

I was in the middle of pulling up the second plant when Aiden starts screaming, "Ouch!  Ouch!" And it was fairly frantic.  He was looking at his foot so I immediately assumed fire ants.  Sure enough.  I am KICKING myself, for putting socks and full shoes on myself, but not on my son.  SO STUPID.  The fire ants were in ever crevice of his sandals.  I was trying to simultaneously smash the ants as I pulled that sandal off his foot.  After they were all mashed, I ran inside with him to wash his foot.  I don't know if that actually gets rid of anything, but I do know the cool water helps soothe the burning. 

Aiden never cried through the whole thing.  I was freaking out more than I think I ever have with anything related to Aiden, but I was mostly silent.  I just kept saying, "Ohnoohnoohno..."  After a thorough rinse, I saturated his right foot in Benadryl spray.  I blew it dry and counted the welts.  TWELVE BITES.  UGH.  I put socks and tennis shoes on Aiden before we went back outside.  While Aiden played in the garage, I went out to murder the culprits.  He had full on stepped in a giant fire ant hill.  I did a walk through of our yard and found dozens of hills.  I killed the hill by the garden and then called Travis to ask him to get something we can sprinkle on the entire yard.

I really wanted to keep Aiden off his feet, to prevent swelling if that was going to happen, so we took a walk to the park with him in the wagon.  When we got to the playground, I realized the majority of the playground was covered in fire ant hills.  The two playgrounds that we frequent near our house belong to schools that have been vacant since Hurricane Ike.  It is very obvious that they are not keeping up with the playgrounds.  Aiden was mad we had to leave, but I explained that there were lots of bugs that might bite him there. 

Travis was home soon after Aiden went down for a nap.  That afternoon we met the Ramby's at Palm Beach.  It was the last weekend we could use our season passes, so we wanted to take our last chance.  We got lucky and got front row seats at the wave pool.  That meant we got to sit under an umbrella with our feet in the sand while Aiden and Blair ran in and out of the wave pool.  PERFECT.  

It was dinner time when we left the park, so we stopped for dinner.  There is a new Chinese buffet that opened on the island that I've been wanting to try out, so we went there.  I wasn't impressed.  I know most people are not impressed by Chinese buffets in general, but I love them.  We used to eat Chinese food ALL THE TIME in Illinois. But we quickly turned to Mexican food as we moved closer to the border.  

Aiden got to bed 30 minutes late that night.  As we were laying him down, he started scratching at his ant-bite-ridden foot.  He has a habit of scratching mosquito bites as he falls asleep, causing them to eventually bleed.  I know how painful it is to scratch fire ant bites, so I went ahead and gave him a dose of Benadryl.  

He slept in until 7:15 the next morning!  That is a HUGE deal seeing as he has been waking up at 5:45 for a month now.  That's what time our alarms start going off on weekdays, so I'm sure that's what has started this horrible habit.  But I DON'T want to wake up at 5:45 am on weekends too.  Too bad we can't take him to the water park every afternoon!

Imbeciles

Yesterday when I was driving home from work with Aiden, I had a moment of road rage.  I was in the middle lane, coming up on a PT Cruiser that was following a big rig in the right lane.  RIGHT as I was about to pass them, the PT pulls in front of me.  No warning.  I slam on my brakes and mutter, "Really??"  I check for cars over my shoulder in the left lane, see no one coming, so I pull over into the left lane.  The PT pulls in front of me AGAIN.  "REALLY?!  UGH!"  I slam on my brakes AGAIN as the PT driver looks at me in his side mirror.  I check over my right shoulder for oncoming cars, I flip on my blinker and as I'm turning back forward the PT SLAMS on his brakes.  Dude.  Are you trying to kill us? 

At this point, I have to swerve into the middle lane to avoid an accident.  As I'm passing the wacko on the right, he throws the car into the left exit lane.  GAH.  So glad we made it out of that alive.

A minute later, I'm in the right lane two miles from our exit.  There's almost no one in that lane, so I decide to pass on the right.  No reason to cross two lanes to pass a guy in the middle lane, just to get back over in that right lane for my exit.  But as I'm getting ready to pass the guy in the middle, he speeds up, so I can't pass him.  At the same time, a truck pulls onto the entrance ramp.  I try to gas it to avoid both vehicles, but there wasn't enough time.  So again, I have to slam on my brakes. 

From the back seat: "Really?"

Aiden decided to put his two cents in about all these dumb drivers.  EXCELLENT.

I swear, I am not usually a brake slammer.  I generally drive about 70 mph.  I know that is above the normal posted speed on the interstate of 65 mph, but in my defense, at least a third of the other vehicles on the road are staying up there with me.  I just had a particularly crazy drive home.

Evolutionary Scientists Have Found...

I find anything related to evolution very interesting.  I'm sure it has something to do with whatever it is that makes me a happy scientist.  I came across this article that speculates that having wrinkly fingers from being in water too long has a purpose: The wrinkles provide increased traction.  So when you're wet and probably slippery from the water, don't fear!  Your wrinkly fingers are here!

The New York Times

See?  Interesting.