I’m trying to cherish the very last of the baby words that Aiden has left. Some of them are just too adorable not to enjoy. My favourite baby word is “heckacarpet” for “helicopter”, close behind “walkaroni” for “macaroni”, so I captured it on video before it disappeared completely:
I haven’t made any effort to correct how Aiden says helicopter. For the most part, he self-corrects on his pronunciation. In some cases, he chooses to stick to his baby words for unknown reasons: “baa baa” for sheep or “manana” for banana. I know for sure he can say both words correctly, and yet they remain baby words.
Aiden has been going through a massive learning spurt this month. We’ve spent most of the month reading books, which tends to go hand-in-hand with this type of learning spree. Aside from the explosion in words and language development, particularly sentence syntax, he’s learned to ask more questions. Aside from the “where” questions, we now also have “what” and “who” questions.
As you may expect, we have now heard “What’s that?” hundreds of times. About half the time, Aiden already knows what he’s pointing at, which is a bit annoying. I suppose we’ve taught him that by example, always asking him to name what he sees even if he knows it, or perhaps he’s just enjoying being able to ask anyway.
Another short change to his sentence structure is his inclusion of names within his statements or questions: “What’s that, Mommy?” “Mommy, see nutcracker.” Sometimes he even double-ends it: “Mommy! See nutcracker, Mommy.”
In this video, Aiden is pretending to drive a car… but that car is Daddy. One day, while Ianiv was leaning over, Aiden told him he was a car and proceeded to ‘drive’ him around. He say inside the hollow created by Daddy’s arms and scooted along making car noises. Kids and imagination – so amazing!
As noted in my review of our hotel, we spent most of our trip in Hawaii at the pool. I, for one, read three books during the trip (The Hunger Games trilogy) thanks in part to all the time spent poolside. Although Aiden was at first a little unsure about the water, particularly the ocean, it took mere minutes for him to warm up to the idea.
Our first day, he went down the toddler waterside a dozen times or more at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. Other days he practiced jumping into the water, each day jumping with much less hesitation. He loved wearing his water wings and after a few days was floating on his own and letting his legs float back. He was even able to make some forward momentum with his kicks – the start of swimming!
It was pretty exciting to watch Aiden learn so many new things in the water. He spent most of his time swimming with Oma (“Oma turn, Oma turn”), but we all had a chance to see him in action. Here are a few of the videos we took:
All that time spent swimming in Hawaii was a great way to get Aiden warmed up for swimming lessons, which he resumed the week after we returned. He still doesn’t love getting his head wet or floating on his back, but he enjoys his class.
