Aiden has an astounding memory. He wants to know the details of everything - every kind of tree, kind of car, kind of dinosaur and part on a train. He never stops asking questions and is great at showing off his skills by retaining an endless stream of facts.
Not only does Aiden have a great memory for facts (which he gets from Ianiv), he also has a fantastic situational memory (which he gets from me). He loves to tell stories of where we’ve been and what we’ve done. We have always encouraged Aiden to talk about his day, but it goes far beyond that. Aiden will talk about things he’s done a LONG time ago.
Aiden continually talked about how Babby had “forgotten” money for the tractor at his last visit to Maplewood Farms. This time, there was no getting around renting that tractor.
Some examples of Aiden’s memory in action:
- He talks about Hawaii all the time. In detail. He recounted, unprompted, how we took a green bus to a cruise ship where we saw girls wearing flowers dancing. All of this was correct. His most common things to bring up are the airplane, the penguins, trolley busses and swimming.
- We recently went to a butcher we hadn’t been to since last summer. Aiden immediately remembered that we bought crackers last time we were there and asked for them again. This was nearly a YEAR later.
- He brings up and compares different situations. He will tell you how the sloth in his Animals Encyclopedia (he loves this book) is the same as the blue sloth in the Dora video.
- He told me about a birthday party 6 months after we went there, out of the blue. He told me how much fun the bouncy castle was and that he liked the goldfish snacks.
- He recently told me the entire plot of a book we’d only read 2 times. He was really looking forward to reading said book before his nap.
There are endless examples of Aiden’s memory in action. I am daily astounded by the things he talks about with me and how he shares not only his current day but events in the past that really made an impression on him.
It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that Aiden has begun calling out the names of logos he recognizes of stores, restaurants, cafes and delivery trucks (as examples). In the same way he insists on knowing the title of every book we read, to ask for it by name, he also wants to know the names of every place we pass or go to. ;)
I’m already finding myself having to research things to fulfill Aiden’s desire for facts. Crazy!
Aiden, who is currently obsessed with seeing his own name in print, is tickled by the new Mabel’s Labels on some of his belongings. We bought a Basic Kit with a variety of tags and stickers to put on items that may go with Aiden to preschool. The labels are fantastic!
We have run the Skinny Mini labels through the dishwasher without any fading or peeling. Can’t wait to get more of these – particularly around Christmas!
For Christmas, Santa gave Aiden his very first board game: the I Can Do That Games Curious George – Discovery Beach. The premise of the game is to find hidden treasures. You select cards, look under the panels, and find the matching objects. You shake up the box so that the items always move about to different places on the board or become buried / unburied in the sand.
We don’t follow the rules of the game yet: we let Aiden look under all the panels, not using the spinning wheel, and we don’t collect cards we’ve ‘won’. So far, we lay out several cards for Aiden and he chooses one to look for – he will pull up panels until he finds what’s on his card, though sometimes we have to shake up the box again.
Aiden has a lot of fun playing this game. He loves looking for the cards that are more open ended, “any brown” or “any shell”, and cheers whenever he finds a matching item. He’ll happily sit and play this game with us for a solid half hour.
Aiden loves to read. Without being diverted, I’m pretty sure he’d spend his entire day reading (or rather, being read to). Even at Strong Start, he’ll ask to sit down and read with me several times during the morning and will read until I shoo him away to play. I have many personal conflicts in stopping his reading, which feels like discouraging his interest, but there really is only so much time you can spend reading.
With that in mind, you can imagine that we have a LOT of favourite books. I buy a lot of books for Aiden, particularly at big library book sales. If we go to the library, we would spend a week sitting on the couch reading those books after, so I tend not to take out as many books as you’d expect. Still, our library is quite impressive.
These are some of Aiden’s favourite books at age 2:
- Curious George - Original set or the newer Treasury – Aiden reads one or more of these stories every night, and sometimes also during the day. “Daddy read the Curious George book” is common with most bedtimes. The original series is very old-fashioned in its morals, almost criticizing curiosity, so we have steered Aiden to the newer collection. He loves that the index page has pictures so he can choose which story to read.
- Hide and Seek First Words - this one book could keep Aiden occupied for an hour. He loves to choose things to find, to be challenged to find things in a new way, to count items, to talk about the pictures, etc. There’s no end to how creative you can be with a series of photos and no story.
- Busy Trains - this is a very old book and very cluttered, but with so many things to look at, the story varies often. Aiden likes that.
- The Little Engine That Could – this book was popular, though it may now be waning. He likes the pages that describe the contents of the train the best.
- Chugga Chugga Choo Choo - this was a favourite long before Aiden was 2. It’s very musical if read cover-to-cover, but also plays to Aiden’s desire to have a ‘changing’ story. I know I spent several months pausing to do the Humpty Dumpty rhyme on the page with that toy. Very whimsical.
- Poky Little Puppy (not exact link) - we have the story about Poky wanting to join in the Golden Book Land Games race. Silly story, but he likes it.
- The Polar Express - we just put this away, but it was a staple of our nightly reading all month. He was crazy for it.
- Cars and Trucks and Things That Go - the pages are so cluttered and creative that it always changes.
- Train Song – I actually made up a tune for this one, so probably that’s why Aiden likes it.
- Whatever Wanda Wanted – a funny story about a little girl who was spoiled, whisked away, and learned a lesson in humility
Aiden doesn’t read any of his board books anymore, nor does he enjoy the ‘first word’ type books, in general. They were big for a long time. He prefers books with stories or with lots of pictures that can be extensively examined. He has little patience for books by Dr. Seuss, though he will happily sit through Winnie-the-Pooh. From time-to-time he will go back to Mother Goose rhymes (we have many compilations).
I try to rotate books around every 3 months or so, moving books from Aiden’s room to his shelf downstairs and reorganizing his shelf in his room. I try to bring other books to his attention, but he often has favourites that he’ll return to. He’s most likely to explore a new book if it’s in his play area, though if he doesn’t like a book, he’ll stop asking for it very quickly.
What books do your kids like at age 2?
Aiden is a huge fan of the Thomas and Friends franchise. He actually received his first set of Thomas trains when we were still in the hospital with him!
Since then, his collection of trains has grown to include 3 different sets as well as a few extra train pieces. If we had more room, we would for sure have a train table. Until then, Aiden makes do with various smaller configurations of trains on the floor – always featuring at least one hill. He loves hills and bridges.
Aiden’s favourite train is Percy, so we got him a motorized Percy for Christmas. It caused a little bit of initial frustration for Aiden, when he couldn’t push it on his own, so now he has a classic wooden one too.
Aiden’s love of Thomas and Friends includes many toys and books, including:
Aiden may love Thomas, but it’s not yet an obsession. He’ll read about any train; his current favourite train books include Busy Trains and The Little Engine That Could. Additionally, while you’d expect Aiden to watch a lot of Thomas videos, he actually prefers Dora the Explorer.
