Aiden realized recentley that the low window in his bedroom is the perfect height for little boys to look out of. It has become a new favorite ritual for him to crawl over to it whenever possible, throw aside the curtains, and gaze out upon the outside world. He looks like a tiny prince watching over his tiny kingdom.
These pictures are from a recent party to jointly celebrate Aiden and Pop-Pop's birthday. Thanks to Adrienne and Scott for letting us all get together at their place. As you'll see in these pictures Aiden had lots of fun playing with his cute cousins Olivia and Anna.
A few days ago we had the first big snowfall since celebrating Aiden's birthday, which meant that it was our first chance to put his cool, new sled into action. And, as promised, here are some pictures documenting Aiden's snowy adventure.
Keep in mind, there is not much of a slope to our yard so high-speed, luge-style sledding this was not. It was more like a backyard Iditarod except that instead of dogs pulling the sled it was us, and the only dog present kept trying to jump in to the sled.
As you'll see in the pictures (and in the action packed video) Aiden was pretty stoic throughout the whole experience. At the end we did manage to squeeze a little smile out of him, but for the most part he just sat there looking like a tiny Vietnam War veteran.
Now that Aiden has turned one it's fun to wind back the clock, and try to remember what life was like at this time last year. On the 12th (Aiden's actual birthday) we spent most of the day just repeating, "I can't believe at this time last year Aiden had just been born..." and other phrases to that affect.
So, because there as not much noteworthy going on here at the moment I dug up a picture of Aiden from February 28th 2008, exactly one year ago today. As I recall, at that point in his life this is what he looked like for most of day... tiny, wrinkly, and very, very sleepy.
Aiden may not be old enough to have a piping hot cup'a joe with mom and dad every morning, but that doesn't mean that we can't take lots of pictures of him with an empty Wawa cup as he tries to slurp out every last delicious drop.
Lately it's seemed that Aiden's mobility has been increasing by leaps and bounds. It wasn't too long ago that he was just flopping and rolling on the floor. Shortly after that he was crawling around like a little speed demon. And now he is poised on the brink of the final frontier: walking.
Just in the last few days Aiden has taken his first 'steps' toward this new endeavor. It's too soon for him to balance on his own, but luckily he has a little lawn-mower toy that is perfect for the task. As you'll see he's still a little shaky, but he has certainly mastered the art of smashing into things. So thats good.
This video is a little bit overdue, but nontheless pretty entertaining. For Aiden's birthday party we thought that instead of giving him a full-size birthday cake to dig into, he might do better with a serving size more appropriate to his age. A cupcake perhaps!
Now we've noted this before about Aiden, but as you'll see here he's not great at being the center of attention. When we put the cupcake in front of him- instead of turning into the ravenous cupcake devouring machine that we were expecting, he just got a little sad.
The original video of this was about 10 minutes of us staring at Aiden expectantly and him staring back at us with equal parts befuddlement and terror. In the interest of time and boredom I've whittled it down pretty substantially to just give some highlights. And, don't worry, it turns out alright for our little guy in the end...
Between Christmas and his birthday it seems like Aiden has been opening presents for about 3 months straight . I like this picture because it perfectly portrays what recieving gifts is like for Aiden at this age.
As you can see there is a very cool looking sock-monkey sitting, ignored, to Aiden's right. What is not being ignored however is the ribbon that he is gleefully playing with as if it is the best gift ever recieved by a human child.
I am going to echo the wise words of parents through the ages here by saying that next year all he's getting is boxes filled with bows and tissue paper.
