Holidays

So it is the Holidays and the spirit is upon us... which is the excuse for saying, sorry I haven't posted recently. Between all the Christmas Shopping, work, and chasing around a little one, it seems there is hardly time to sit down and type out an entry.

I am putting most of my time into putting together the annual Aiden DVD to get sent off to everyone. No, you won't have it by Christmas this year, but it will be out soon... I promise. Just as soon as I kick Microsoft to the curb and find some decent video edit software.

The problem goes like this. It is hard to go more than about 30 seconds with a baby and not catch something you don't want on the DVD, so rather than a lot of 5-10 minute segments, we have a TON of 5-60 second segments. Well Microsoft's DVD Creator program is cool with that, so long as I don't have more than 99 segments on one DVD. 99 segments got me to about May. OOPS

So how do we solve this dilemma? Well Microsoft Movie Maker will let me combine segments into a scene that only takes up one slot on the DVD maker. That sounds great. Problem is, Movie Maker Freezes if you touch it in the wrong way, which is to say I have about 20 freezes for each viable clip I put together. So it is taking some time to get this thing done.

Otherwise, Aiden is doing well. Going to have some new pictures to load as soon as I get the camera upstairs. Aiden saw Santa, it did not go as well as last year.. He is kind of in one of those little stranger anxiety phases. He has them everyone once in awhile, and he pulled it with Santa, so we have a picture of him looking kinda freaked out in Santa's lap. He also got to go through ICE! which he wasn't really sure about, but it was fun, we think he enjoyed the ice slide (which he had to go down by himself!!)

Anyway. more when I am able. If I don't make it back in the next week, Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays!!!

Boy meets Mouse, and Chipmunks

Well, most of you may already know that Aiden went on his first big trip this past weekend. We were invited to go to a friend of mommy's wedding down in Florida. With the state of our pocketbook it was not economically feasible for all of us to go down, but mommy really wanted to go to the wedding, so mommy and Aiden went on a trip to Orlando while daddy stayed home and worked. (A pretty raw deal for daddy if you ask me)

Aiden did as well as can be expected for a 16 month old to do on a plane, and had a lot of fun while he was down there. Mommy came back with a load of pictures and videos that I had to sort through to come up with some highlights for you. Without further ado, 16 pictures and 4 videos that illustrate Aiden's first visit to Florida.

Pictures

Well I am finally posting some pictures for you. It has been a pretty busy week. I've been trying to get my Christmas Shopping done early this year. I have always been Mr. Procrastination, but this year we're going for finished by Thanksgiving. I might actually accomplish it too!

In the meantime, Aiden and I both have some bug, not sure if it is a cold, but it had better not be the Flu since we all got Flu shots. (Daddy has always gotten sick every time he has had a flu shot which is why he has avoided having them, and now he has a flu shot at the pediatricians recommendation and he's sick... go figure).

I'm going to keep this short tonight, and get you right to a couple of new pictures. I am not sure what kind of Face Aiden is making in the first one, I promise he isn't "on anything", Raquel got a free sample size box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch in the mail, and it seemed the perfect size for Aiden, so there are a couple of pictures of him digging in to those. He's also found a new use for one of his Drums, as a hat. And it is COLD in Tennessee, so we have a picture of Aiden all bundled up for the cold weather. Hat and gloves provided by Aunt Nellie.

Ditching the Binkie

From what I have seen and read, it might be one of the toughest transitions that you have to make with a toddler. The trial of getting rid of the pacifier. We have begun the process, and believe it or not, it has been relatively painless. Over the weekend we started by only giving Aiden his pacifier when we were trying to get him down for a nap, over the past three days the only time he has had a pacifier was at night in his crib. It seems to be going well. He is sticking more other things in his mouth, hand, ball, drumstick, dog toys, etc. But he does not seem to be missing the pacifier too much at all.

So we will continue operation ditch the bink and see how it goes. The goal is, I think, completely pacifier free at 18 months. Not sure if we will make that goal, but surely we will be down to only at night and even then only as needed.

We won't be one of those families where a 3 year old child is running around sucking on a pacifier. That may work for some people, but it is not an option for us.

It is getting cold again, and Aiden gets all bundled up for going outside. He's not sure what to think about mittens, but I am sure he will get used to them. We've taken a few pictures and I will try to get those uploaded tomorrow.

More to come... :-)

Molars

We've been thinking for awhile now that Aiden was just getting cold after cold after cold. Not terribly uncommon in children his age, but pretty uncommon for our little boy who was only sic twice in his first year since he was not exposed to the daycare bugs. But for the most part other than one very significant period of cold symptoms including fever, he really didn't act sick except for the huge amounts of stuffiness and snot coming out of him.

Well we ran into some folks the other day who gave us a new clue. Molars. Apparently, when a baby's molars begin to come in this also can be a trigger for congestion and snottiness. So not just the tons and tons of slobber, you also can blame the snot on the new teeth trying to break free.

Aiden had four molars coming in all at once, and sure enough, now that all four have broken through pretty well, his congestion has lessened. He does still have the seasonal allergies, so the snot will never be completely gone, but we're "back to normal". So maybe there is something to the molars thing.

I know I hae been bad about pictures... I need to take some, and it is about time to start working on a Christmas photo/video collection. I'll need to put together more material before I can make that.

Haloween and Check up

So we have a few pictures of our little lion to share with you from Haloween. Overall I think Aiden had a pretty good time, although he was a little overwhelmed by the experience. Our neighbors do a lot of decorating, so there were lots of things for him to look at, as well as the tons and tons of people to check out. We think a few of the decorations that had motion detectors kind of freaked him out a little bit, so that isn't so good. But otherwise a good night. We've experimented a little bit with candy, and he likes anything chocolate, but anything with a colorful coating just ends up with colored slobber all over the place.

Couple of pictures from the night on the bottom... the latter two are him with his grandma and his cousin Dale.

Then today was check up time. Aiden weighed in at 23 pounds 8 ounces, 31 1/2 inches long. This puts him in the 51st percentile on height but only the 30th on weight. They aren't worried about his weight at this point, but if he shows a drop off next time we might have to take a look into that. He's been a finicky eater lately, so that explains a bit. The fact that he isn't speaking any real words yet is a bit of a concern, but the doctor did say that children in bilingual families were usually late language developers, but once they start going they are fluent in both languages, so that works out for the better in the long run.

He got 4 shots today, 3 regular scheduled immunizations and a flue vaccine. Mommy and Daddy have to get flu shots too. Neither of us is very happy about that, as we both have a tendency to get sick after getting the shot and not getting sick when we don't get a shot. But the doctor insists we get it as added protection for Aiden, and we'll do anything for him, so there you have it.

As you would expect we had a bit of a grumpy gus from the shots this evening. We'll have to wait and see if he is up in the middle of the night tonight. Usually he does not sleep through on the night after shots, so we'll have to wait and see. Note to self for future reference, not a real good idea to take the baby to get his shots and then take him to league bowling night 4 hours later. :-)

Still here

Yes, we're still here. It's been a busy couple of weeks so I have had a tough time getting to the blog and posting. Aiden has a never-ending cold. He got over the part where he was running a fever, but he is constantly stuffed up and having a rough time breathing, so we don't have lots of good pictures, or stories to share with you at the moment. I will finally share pictures of him in his Halloween costume since we are just a few days away. He seems to really enjoy being a little lion.

Got a cute video tagged on the end here. Aiden played Karaoke Revolution on our PS2.... must see video.

Hopefully we will have some good pictures from Halloween over the weekend for you, although it is awfully cold here already so we'll have to see if we make it outside or not. As Aiden gets better we should have more pictures and stories to share with everyone. Next week is Aiden's 15 month check up, so I will make sure to post after that and update all of his vitals.

Till then enjoy these couple of pictures and the singing video.

Dancing Machine

We just happened to catch a children's song on Nick jr. as we were finishing one program on the DVR and heading for the next. Aiden took to it immediately, so much so that we had to get the camera, rewind the tv, and capture this video. Thank God for pause and rewind live television. LOL

I think the video speaks for itself.