Aiden is making a lot of progress when he’s singing. He’s most likely to sing when not in the spotlight. His most common stage is his crib – he often sings before bedtime or in the morning.
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).
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.
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]
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 developed a comedic personality. Sometimes he’ll fib on something, of example, saying a cow says “meow” just to get a laugh. He even has a fake laugh when he wants to show that something is funny. One thing I find truly funny is his new desire to have us repeat words or phrases…
“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.
Christmas with Aiden this year was one of the most fun Christmases I can ever remember. I was seriously unsure whether we would have much of a Christmas given that Christmas Eve was a horrendous mess with Aiden in bed 2 hours early. Although his croupy cough resolved quickly, I have never seen my good-natured little man so unhappy – not even as a colicky infant. It was hard to deal with and hard to watch. We spent most of our time watching tv, but he didn’t really even want that – he didn’t want anything. Poor Aiden.
Thankfully, after 4 hours of restless sleep, he settled into a long restful sleep and woke up chipper and happy for Christmas. He was a true gem all day, loving all the attention and presents. I think he would have been happy to stop after a present or two and just play, but we pushed on through.
We started our Christmas morning at home, with Oma coming over right away. We started into the presents at a leisurely pace, but then had to rush through more than half the tree in order to make it to my Uncle’s for brunch. I think next year we’ll cart off some presents to continue over there rather than rushing.
Our day was filled with family and joy. There’s nothing quite like watching your toddler explore Christmas in all its various traditions. Presents aside, it made me giddy to see him connecting with others in our family and sharing his immense joy in life with them. Toddlers are just bundles of excitement and it’s hard not to be infected by all the fun.
Aiden sort of understood Santa, in that he would bring presents, but I don’t think he really *mattered* this year. Still, we had many weeks of obsessive reading about Santa, particularly with The Polar Express. We read the book, watched the movie (except the middle – Aiden required that to be fast forwarded) and listened to the audio book in the car. Over and over and over.
How was your Christmas? I hope it was filled with infectious joy!
