photo update!

Some New Photos for you. Here in Middle Tennessee we didn't get hit with the snow and Ice as hard as some of our northern neighbors did. Our "ice storm" ended up being a consistant rain at above freezing temperatures. We did get a smattering of snow though, and we got a chance to get Aiden out to enjoy it.

So we have a few pictures for you today, of Aiden enjoying the snow (what little there was of it), His application photo for "Future DJ's of America" and some just showing off how cool he is.

Enjoy!!

Sick Little Guy

Yes I know...

I promised to do better on the blog, and here it is another 2 weeks since my last posting. No excuses other than life getting in the way. Every time I try to type while Aiden is awake he wants to help and we type a bunch of gibberish.

Sleep has been getting back to normal. That's the good news. Going to bed between 9-10 at night and up no earlier than 4:30-5, the other night he stayed in bed till 6. We were impressed. Flannel PJs seem to have helped some, or it may just be coincidence that the day I bought flannel pjs for him he stayed in bed till 5am. Who knows with toddlers.

He's chatting up a storm, but we still don't know what he is saying. His newest "word" is Uh Oh. It is the funniest little sound, and sometimes daddy says "uh oh" even when nothing bad has happened just to get Aiden to repeat it. We know this little guy is trying to communicate, he is sooooo emphatic with his gibberish. It just hasn't become full fledged words yet.

We had a minor heat wave here toward the end of the week, and Aiden and I took full advantage of it. On Thursday we paid a visit to the local park and he played with a bunch of other kids for quite some time. He's really good at checking out what the little girls are doing. Not sure if that is good at this early age, but what can you do. On Friday it was 60 degrees, so we made the treck down to the Zoo since we had not been in a couple of months. We only saw the Elephants, Meercats, and Lorakeets, because we discovered the Jungle Gym at the zoo and their "toddler bounce" area. They what is probably a 40x40 "room" under a gazebo that is basically wall to wall gym pads. so the little ones can go careening all over the place and not have any concern about getting hurt because everything is padded. Aiden LOVED this, and went tearing around that room for close to 45 minutes.

Unfortunately, with all of this going out and about the little guy picked up a bug from one of the kids he played with, and last night he came down with a bit of a fever. He's been a bit of a grumpus over the past 24 hours. But hopefully it is something short lived and he will be back to his normal rambunctious self in no time.

I'll work on getting some pictures as soon as he gets to feeling better. :-)

Christmas Pictures

Updating

Well the holidays are over and time is working on freeing up some. I still have some touches to put on the annual Aiden DVD which is taking much longer than expected. The Blog is getting a little bit of a facelift, some things will change over the course of... well however long it takes me to get it the way I want it. Gone are all of the various links to blog networks. I am not going to worry about trying to drive traffic to the blog other than from friends and family. So there goes a lot of the clutter. Hope it also helps some of the pictures and videos load quicker for those of you who are not on broadband.

Christmas was quiet around the house. We had done our gift giving with most of our family prior to Christmas day, so on Christmas morning we got up, opened the few gifts that remained, had breakfast, and just enjoyed a quiet day for the most part. Aiden is starting to understand the concept of openning gifts, we put a little hole in the wrapping paper and he took care of the rest.

Sleeping is an issue again, we are on our third week of Aiden getting up in the middle of the night. We can't really figure out what is causing his wake ups. He could be cutting more teeth, or just the adjustment to the colder season, or. or. or. or. hehehe. It's hard to figure out. A lot of the other parents we know report that their children are having a hard time sleeping right now as well, which essencially means we aren't the only ones who are really tired.

No new pictures today, mommy has a new system of labeling the photos and I need to make sure I load them onto the computer the way she wants them loaded before I upload to the site. They'll come soon!

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... :-)