2 year Photos

Today was the day of Aiden's 2 year photo shoot. Mommy scheduled the appointment for 1:30 this afternoon. Aiden, of course, fell asleep on the way to the studio, and was a massive grump when we arrived. It took all we could do to get him to be interested in golfing (his favorite thing and thus the theme for the first round of pictures. Once we changed his shirt for the second outfit, he LOST IT. There was no way he was going to get photos taken. Fortunately, the studio was having a slowish day, so we were able to leave for a little bit and come knack and try again. After getting some Chick-Fil-A into him he seemed to cheer up, and the second round of photos went much smoother.

Thankfully Dan, our Photographer was very patient with us. I am sure they get bad kids all the time, but it just sucks when it is your kid who is bawling. All of the Staff at Portrait Innovations were really nice about it, and at least outwardly smiling, though they may have been inwardly gritting their teeth. The second time out when it was time to pick out the pictures we wanted, he thought that was high time to be running all over the place, which was probably almost as bad for the staff, as they watch a 2 year old zooming around everything, but again, all smiles.

Once again we purchased enough pictures to give one to the entire world. And we got the CD with all of the "proofs", so I can share some of those with you now. They are in reverse order as to when they were taken. Fortunately, even though he was upset in the beginning, the photos in the orange outfit came out just fine!

ENJOY!

The New Swingset

Gallons of water, liters of sweat, eight hours and two exhausted guys later a swing set emerges in Aiden's back yard for him to play on. Saturday was rough as the temperature topped 95 degrees. Humidity was stupid. I started inventorying parts at about 7am, and just taking the parts out of the boxes and checking them off on the parts list I was sweating. At 3pm when the swing set was finally finished, Aiden was ready to have a blast, daddy and papaw Danny were ready for some Air Conditioning and a nap.

But the smile on Aiden's face when he tested out his new slide and swing were well worth all the effort. Word to the wise, if you are going to build your kids a swing set, do it in March or September when the temperature isn't quite so bad. Sheesh.

Ultimately we are well pleased with the swing set, it looks great, and Aiden seems to love it. Thank you to all of the family who have contributed to Aiden's birthday money so we could purchase this for him, it will provide years of entertainment for all of us!

Couple of pictures and a video tonight. The first picture is from Father's Day, with all the kiddos. Aiden was having a really hard time sitting still for pictures, but this big giggle was worth sharing. Then of course on to the exploration of the swing set! And of course proud daddy when the little man grabs his Ohio State ball cap and puts it on his head! Woohoo!

Crusher of Eggs

So A couple of funny (in hindsight anyway) things Aiden did today.

This morning when mommy was getting ready to make her breakfast, she got the eggs out and set them on the counter. Aiden wanted the egg carton, so he reached up on tip toes and was able to just get a finger on the carton. This was enough encouragement for him to start pulling. I saw this from across the room and took off running to stop him. But too late.... I ALMOST caught the carton on it's tumble down, but almost doesn't count when the eggs hit the ground. 3 eggs smashed outright, 4 cracked but were intact enough for us to get into a bowl to scramble, and 2 made it out unscathed. Clean up, on aisle 3.

Later in the day somehow Aiden decided it would be a good idea to start a yelling contest with daddy. He yelled at me and waited expectantly, I made a noise back at him and he cracked up, then yelled again. So we yelled back and forth for probably ten solid minutes to Aiden's infinite delight. Hope none of our neighbors were around hearing all the screaming and wondering what was going on.

Tomorrow mimi and papaw are coming for a weekend visit, should be lots of fun, and lots of work, as Papaw and Daddy are going to spend Saturday assembling a new swing set for the back yard! Good times, and pictures to come!

Pictures

Yes, I know they are a long time in coming, but we finally have some new pictures for you.

And A video of Aiden on the drum. He's getting really good at drumming.

Mommy and Daddy did a lot of housework today, so we're pretty tired, and I am going to just let the pictures and video speak for themselves. The "Parents" musical set we got for Aiden's 1st Birthday really has been a huge hit, along with many of the other gifts from his first birthday. That was 11 months ago already. Our little man is almost 2, it's crazy!

keeping up

Trying to keep up with Aiden becomes more challenging as each day progresses. He's mastered terms like "Come" "Go" "outside" etc. So he is becoming more adept at letting us know what he wants, and less willing to take No for an answer.

One of his new tricks is to come up and literally try to force us off the couch if we do not immediately get up to follow him when he asks us to "come". Typically this either means he wants us to go outside, or run in circles around the kitchen in a "race".

The golf clubs are still the greatest thing ever. He has gotten pretty adept at taking a full golf swing, he still slams the balls from time to time, but most of the time he uses a half way decent golf swing. Leftie. I dunno how I am going to teach him to golf as a leftie, since daddy is rightie, but we'll figure that out later.

Another new game is the desire to climb into mommy & daddy's bed to watch tv. He will ask us to pick him up and put him in bed, where he begins to play with the bed covers and get his legs tucked in and then ask for either Dora or Elmo.

Trying to work on him not always getting his way, the wails that come out of this child when he doesn't get what he wants are awful, but we need to get him learning that he doesn't always get what he wants, so we have to deal with the decibel level.

We've been bad and haven't taken any pictures this week, so I don't have any to share, but will work on making sure I have some for next time.

Till then!

Baby Growth Tracking on the iPhone

Every once in awhile I will get an email from someone representing a company, charity, or what have you wanting me to post a blurb in the blog about their product or service. For the most part these are things I have never heard of or used, and I pass on giving a mention of something I really can't vouch for. But I do want to take a moment to mention one product that I can vouch for, because my brother created it.

Aiden's Uncle works with Apps for the iphone/Ipod Touch. Mostly he is scripting something the company he works for is creating for the market, but he is also allowed to work on some of his own stuff and release it. He has released a product that I think will be wonderful for parents who own Ipod Touch or Iphones, Unfortunately, I don't have either, so I really can't test it out for you, but you can see a pretty good demo on the website http://apps.yellowpop.com/BabyGrow.html

Since I can't test it and tell you what it does, I am just going to copy the description from the website. And maybe Aiden's Uncle will stop in and make some additional comments. There is a banner link for the site at the top of the blog, so you can find it anytime.

"Track your baby's weight, length, and head circumference as he (or she!) grows. Charts for the measurements help you visualize your child's progress. Keep an eye on your baby's percentile rankings using data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or the World Heath Organization (WHO).

• Monitor the progress of an unlimited number of children, from birth to 36 months.
• Produce growth charts for Weight for Age, Length for Age, Head Circumference for Age and Weight for Length.
• Understand your child's growth patterns with accurate percentile information from the CDC and WHO.
• Instantly obtain percentiles for measurements for babies of any age from birth to 36 months.

If you would like any additional information, there is a really good little demo on the website, and I am sure if you post questions in the comments section on this posting that the author himself may be able to come by and help out!

Here's the Website link again: http://apps.yellowpop.com/BabyGrow.html

The Great Computer Crash

So things have been quiet here at the Newbie Daddy sight. I've been fighting a non-stop drag out fight with my computer for the past week. I've had a Compaq desktop for a couple of years now, and last week it started to get some Stop Errors (the Blue Screen of Death). For a couple of days it was an annoyance but once the computer restarted I was okay. But over the course of the week things got progressively worse, and the errors were always different. I used to Supervise a computer Upgrade Center, so I kinda know my way around a computer. But when the BSOD is different every time it is a tough glitch ti figure out. Everything was pointing to hardware problems, so I progressively replaced every component of the computer to eliminate each in turn. nothing solved the error, I finally came to the conclusion that the errors were coming from the mother board. So it was time to either find a motherboard that was compatible with all of my other components and hope it all worked, or upgrade to a new computer.

I found a little eMachines box that will do everything I need the desktop to do at a reasonable price at Best Buy, so we went ahead and did the upgrade. This means I will have my picture storing computer back and can get my posts in. LOL

in the meantime, on Wednesday, Aiden's new cousin came into the world. His new Cousin Desmond was born Wednesday night. Aiden got to meet him yesterday and the results were about what you would expect. He was a little hesitant and anxious about daddy holding this little tiny baby in his lap. A lap that belongs to Aiden. hehe.

Here are the pictures from that encounter to tide you over until I have the new computer all set up and ready to go.

Down with the Sickness

So it has been a rough week around the household. First Aiden, then Daddy and finally Mommy all came down with a bit of a spring cold. We're actually going on two weeks since the symptoms started for Aiden and myself. Mommy has been sick for about a week. It hasn't been much fun, although none of us has been well and truly put out of commission.

Aiden being an active 22 month old shook it off during the day for the most part, playing and running around like his normal self, occasionally stopping to sneeze up huge gobs of yuckiness. At night though it was a different matter, with Aiden not being able to breathe very well he often woke up with coughing fits in the middle of the night. Fortunately he is pretty cleared up now and is sleeping peacefully once more (knock on wood).

All this illness was unable to put a damper on a little trip we had planned for Aiden and Daddy to go up and visit mimi and papaw Danny. It was looking like Aiden was not going to be well enough to head up on Monday night, with a planned departure for Tuesday morning. But after a full night sleep on Monday night, Aiden was up and acting much better Tuesday morning, so we made the decision to hit the road and go for our visit.

Aiden had a very nice visit with his grand parents, got to visit lots of places in the small town, and spent a load of time playing in the back yard and helping papaw put up his new shed.

The biggest drawback of the illness, aside from everyone just feeling crummy, is that Aiden had to miss the last two weeks of his ZooBabies class. While I think that Aiden was really too young to fully enjoy and appreciate these classes anyway, I think the animal interactions were a great experience for him, and it is unfortunate we were unable to attend, but we didn't want to expose a sick Aiden (or daddy for that matter) to a dozen other little boys and girls.

Haven't gotten many pictures through the illness, now that Aiden is on the mend, we will break out the camera and make sure we have some pictures for you for next time!