Aiden doesn’t sing many songs from start to finish unassisted, but will sing bits on his own. The first two lines are most common before he gets distracted.

Aiden enjoys singing Twinkle Twinkle, Hurry Hurry Drive the Firetruck, Hello Everybody, Zoom Zoom and the Bananas Song. Sometimes a song he’s been thinking about will crop up, like the ABCs or Wheels on The Bus.

Just today, Aiden was in his crib when I hear: “Aiden want to sing The Wheels on the Bus. The wheels on the bus goes round and round. The wheels on the bus go round and round. Awwwww wheels not working. Not working anymore. Probably not working.”

As you can see, easily distracted. He always ends up on a tangent in his pretend world making up stories.

Aiden will also make up songs. “Aiden shoes on. Aiden shoes off. Aiden shoes on. Aiden shoes off.” When he then said: “Mommy, sing Aiden’s shoe song!”, I clued in that he was doing more than just babbling. Super cute.

It’s clear Aiden wants to sing more. He will often move his lips when someone sings, trying to learn the words perhaps. Or lip sync? Cute though. He’s also participating more now that he’s started preschool once a week (my guess).

Gender disappointment. It’s a bit of a taboo topic, despite a great deal more media attention in the past few years. And I’m going to admit that I fell victim to it.

When we were pregnant with Aiden, I was most definitely hoping for a girl. When we learned we were having a boy, I had a brief disappointment that I quickly dispelled with an “Oh well, maybe next time.”

I was actually a bit hopeful that we were having a girl this time – we tried to increase our chances and I convinced myself that my crazy pregnancy symptoms increased our “girl odds.” Well, “next time” has come and gone now, and we’re having another boy.

When faced with the news, I had to face what I was feeling: gender disappointment.

Let me make this clear: gender disappointment is not baby disappointment. I am going to love this new little boy ferociously. I will not wish that he is a girl – he will be simply perfect just the way he is.

For me, gender disappointment is about giving up a dream that I’ve admittedly always had. I have assumed, since I was a little girl, that I would have a little girl of my own “one day.” I didn’t even question it. I saved my most precious baby mementos to pass on to her. I saved favourite dolls and books and pink blankets. I dreamed of dressing up my little girl in purples and blues and leggings and sweater dresses. I dreamed of braiding her hair. I always knew that her middle name would be Elizabeth – for my Oma, a middle name I also share.

When faced with the ultrasound, I had to face my own assumptions. I’d prepared myself as best I could, but I was still hit by the reality: I would never have a little girl. That dream was gone; time to put it away. It took me a few days of being sad and doing a bit of self-examination about why a girl was important to me. I learned some things about myself, most definitely. I put away some issues that had bothered me my whole life. I tried to take it as a learning experience.

Whether we like it or not, there are differences between boys and girls. Most of them are superficial (why should I care if I buy leggings for a girl vs jeans for a boy?), but raising a girl is different from raising a boy. It’s an experience I won’t have, but I’m going to be ok with it.

I’m moving on with reality. I’m going to go through the two small memory bins and bring out the dolls (boys can play with dolls too!) and better store the rest that I want to keep. They are still my memories, after all! I’m sharing what was our girl name – Aurelia – in the hopes that someone else will use it. It’s a lovely and unique name and I’m spreading it around to say goodbye to it (if that makes sense).

I’m glad I learned the gender early. I don’t think I would have done well facing my own complicated emotions in the postpartum chaos. Now, I’m able to go into the rest of my pregnancy and delivery with a lot more self-assurance.

Seeing baby boy #2 in the ultrasound was extremely helpful for me. It helped me identify with him as his own little man. We’re coming closer to a name, are picking things for his room, and I’ve bought him some new clothes. I’m looking forward to meeting him and to seeing how our two boys will grow up together – hopefully as great friends.

Please don’t leave negative comments on this post. I’m hoping that writing it will be cathartic for me and will help other moms deal with their own unexpected disappointments.

It’s been a big month for Aiden. After all the joys of Christmas, we settled back into our routine. Aiden is definitely a boy for routine: he was excited to return to playgroups and all his friends. Two weeks ago, he began attending his first pre-pre-school program, a 2-hour drop-off program at Karen Magnussen; quite to my surprise, he took to it instantly. The first class, I had to return for the circle time, but he successfully transitioned into this last week on his own. I’m very proud of him and we’ve been re-enforcing his enjoyment of the class at every opportunity.

In other milestones, we learned that Aiden is to have a little brother and he had his first successful sit on the potty just tonight! He still has no idea when he’s going pee, but we’ll try to re-enforce his success today and see where it leads.

Here’s a snapshot of Aiden at 27 months:

• Weight: 27.8 lbs (no change in a few months)
• Favourite foods include: yogurt drinks, cheddar bunnies, toast with peanut butter, grapes, pizza, broccoli, corn
• Enjoys snow. We finally had a snowfall and spent a lovely morning building snowmen, making snow angels, throwing or shovelling snow or just making footprints. Great fun. Cold hands.
• Loves to count anything. If he drops a number, it’s often the 5. Not as consistent between 10 and 20.
• Can recognize most of the alphabet, though gets easily confused. Better at recognizing a given letter in a small set than being prompted for what a letter is.
• Aiden loves to describe the world around him – everything he sees, hears or tastes. His variety of expressions is expanding to include such descriptions as weird, crazy, silly, and funny
• Aiden loves to pretent to hide something like magic… “Where’s the X? I no know, where is it? Here it is!”
• Has an amazing sense of humour. He will see things and label them as funny (like a car stuck in the snow), emphasizing his point with a fake laugh. Yes, a fake laugh. It’s a big like a hiccup with a forced smile.
• Likes to describe something as “not” something else: “This is Aiden’s milk. Not Mommy’s milk.” or “Not going to Moja. Going to JJ Bean!”
• Wants details on everything. Wants to know the name of every flower, every kind of truck, every piece on any kind of train, and details of the route we’re driving to get somewhere.
• Tries to dictate driving: “Go left!” Thankfully he’s mostly ok with just narrating what I’m doing. I spend a lot of time talking about driver safety and routes. He’s learning quite a lot.
• Is trying to sing songs, though mostly at home when he feels most comfortable or in the car. Current favourites include The Banana Song, Twinke Twinkle, Hurry Hurry Drive the Firetruck, Zoom Zoom, a Hello Everyone song from Gymboree and tidbits of many others.
• Aiden loves to say: There it is, Find it, Want it, Get it, There it goes, There you go, Want somefing to eat, Mommy drive, No go home, Oh Mommy, look!, That’s better Mommy, I see it, Where are we going?, Oh no! What happened?, That’s fun, Nope,
• Phrases of Aiden’s I love: heckacarpet, walkaroni, Aiden yikes it, I no know [I don't know], mananas (bananas), want Mommy cuddles, Thank you Mommy, Daddy works in the Mancouver, i-see-um [museum]

The best part of the ultrasound was getting to know our new little man. Our previous ultrasound didn’t show us face or profile, so we felt a little disconnected from him. Seeing his face and his personality during the 30-minute session really helped us connect with the baby as an individual. In just 30 minutes, we found out a lot about our little man:

• He lies transverse in my tummy, an unusual position. My uterus must be more like a football than a soccer ball at this point.
• He enjoys having his legs folded, feet at his head. Since there’s so much room (relatively) at this point, it’s obviously a preference
• He will suck on anything. Foot, arm, leg, umbilical cord.
• He spends most of his time trying to get something in his mouth. He would reach for, grab or otherwise manoeuvre himself to get the umbilical cord back in his mouth.

The pregnancy has been very different from that with Aiden, filling out our picture of the baby so far. All this information is definitely helping us get closer to choosing a name!

See all photos from the ultrasound here. For comparison, here are the photos from Aiden’s 3D ultrasound – his features were a little more clear – not continuously sucking on the umbilical cord probably helped. ;)

Such common times for this are when we are cooking, when Mommy is working or even during the day if I’m tired and ask for him to play. The more we ‘ask’ for independent play, the less it seems to happen.

As the pregnancy progresses, I find myself in need of more ‘me’ time, being both tired and a little wary of my two-child future. I’m finding I would like a little more ‘freedom’, even if it’s just 5 minutes where I’m not explaining something or reading a book. I spend even less time at home just so that Aiden is encouraged, by being out, to play on his own.

When independent play happens at home, it’s awesome and it can last a long time. But I have learned that it cannot be asked for.

*sigh*

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!

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.

Did you have favourite baby words?

“Mommy say that: spout!” or “Mommy say that: woman on a red motorcycle.”

I’m not sure where this comes from. Perhaps it comes from us trying to teach Aiden new and complex words (“Can you say that?”) or perhaps it comes from Dora the Explorer when Dora or Boots yell “Say map! Say map!”.

Whatever it is, it’s quite funny. Weird. But funny.

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.

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?