Future grand prix driver in the making ?

Saying that Aiden's obsessed with anything on wheels would be the understatement of his brief life. He's got more wheels than any man his size (or any size for that matter) would possibly need. Every time we go to any store, he's quick to find the section that sells kids toys and picks the wheels that he fancy's on that particular day. He can name most car brands by their logos even when they are zipping past on the freeway and knows more automobile types than most adults would care to bother themselves with. He likes arranging all his wheels end to end forming long trains going from one room to the other. If you ask him what he wants to be when he grows up, 'Car doctor' is at the top of the list besides of course garbage man, postman, policeman, fireman... you get the gist of it.

He's also taken to Dada's hobby of following Formula one. Here he is on a recent trip to an arcade in a Philly shopping mall, practicing his skills on both two as well as four wheels. This arcade by the way was his first time ever to such a venue and it totally saved his and our sanity. It was too cold in Philly and the poor kid was going stir crazy being inside the house all day long. He was like 'I am bored to death people, do something about it before I destroy all the expensive things in my cousins house'. When he saw all the cool things at the arcade, he couldn't believe his luck and was running from one game to another.

Dada - Under the bottom, where the poop comes out

So I don't even know where to start with this post or if it's even a good idea to disclose this information, but here goes. I am in charge of Aiden's bedtime routine. You'd think that would be pretty straight forward, right ? After all, he's just a kid, how hard can it be ? Give him a bath, put the jammies on, read him a story, say night night, close the door, done. Wrong! It's a long intricate routine which he tries to prolong as much as he can. Every day he comes up with a new trick to extend his bedtime. After Mama gives him a snack feeding and leaves the room, I need to read him a story or two, make sure he's got enough water and food, sing a song or two and then on his terms he agrees to turn the light off. But that's not the end of the night, it's the beginning of the end. I have to lay with the prince until he falls asleep. And while I am laying there, he'll ask me all sorts of stuff. He usually starts by asking me 'Where is her'. And when I tell him that she's right outside getting some work done, he'll come up with all sorts of reasons why she's leaving the house. As if his Mama is gone out to party. Then he'll ask me to tell him more stories, give him water a couple of times, hold him (even though I am already holding him), pull the covers up, pull the covers down.... You get the point. Eventually he'll just exhaust himself to sleep.

Well yesterday he came up with a new trick which looks like is going to be added to the daily routine because he repeated it tonight as well. So he likes to pretend that he is different people, animals or things. We like to think that he has a very fertile imagination because he never pretends to be a boy. I mean that would not take much imagination, right? Usually it's just one personality at any given time, but the personalities switch every 2 minutes or so. But yesterday he decided that he wanted to adopt multiple personalities at the same time. So I said to him, well, you'll have to assign different body parts to each person. Little did I realize that this was going to come back to bite me in the butt (literally). So he started with Julietta (his crush), Angelina, Emma & Orio (Uncle Rick & Aunty Elena's dogs), Gianna etc who all got various body parts depending on how much he liked them. So Julietta of course got the face, Gianna got the chest and the rest got his limbs. Then he added Mama to the list and said she was his bottom. Now normally you wouldn't like to be somebody's bum, but his Mama always tells him how cute his bum is, so it's actually a good thing, right up there with the face if not better. Then he added me to the list and I was beginning to wonder which remnant of his body would be assigned to me. Without any hesitation he goes 'Dada, under the bottom, where the poop comes out'. I just could not believe what I was hearing and burst out laughing. He's probably the only person in the world who could call me an A-Hole and make me laugh :)

How to take a great family picture!

We hope you had a great holiday season with your loved ones. We had a blast as well. We are currently in Philly bonding with Aiden's newest nephew Ethan, who is just an adorable little boy. We'll post more of our holiday pictures in a later post but just wanted to share our holiday family picture with you. You should have received it in your mailbox by now and if you have not, it's because we don't have your street address. Please send it across so we can include you in next year's mailing list.

This picture came about after many unsuccessful tries at different locations. With the holidays fast approaching and no family picture in sight, we were beginning to get a bit stressed about the whole thing. So we finally called in the FPSF (family picture special forces). The FPSF team included, Aunty Helena - the resident artist photographer extraordinaire, 'Uncle Jonathan' - Aiden's hero and all around cool dude in charge of mood setting, Aunty Ashley - excellent mood setting assistant and Grandpa - resident expert in charge of documenting Aiden's entire life for future generations. Here's a picture from Grandpa illustrating the elite FPSF team hard at work.

Gradpa's PG-13 Family Calendar

Grandpa comes out with a new calendar every year featuring major family events. Aiden loves looking at the pictures of his extended family and talking about what their doing, almost every day. Lately he's started asking more pointed questions about these pictures he's been looking at for years.

The most curious calendar is the first one which is dedicated to Mama and Dada's wedding and Uncle Rick and Auntie Elena's engagement. Aiden wants to know where he is....Where's Baba? There's a beautiful wedding picture, a close-up of Mama and Dada hugging during the wedding, and one of us (me? Dada?) told him that he was the twinkle in Dada's eye. Aiden loves being included and if you ask him, he'll point out which twinkle in Dada's eye he is.

Now for the scandalous part! In the calendar, Grandpa included pictures from Mama and Dada's super fun Bachelorette and Bachelor parties. At my party, I was led on a treasure hunt through Mission street bars with a list of tasks to accomplish. I was allowed to enlist the help of my fellow partiers and thank God. Did I mention I'm shy? Auntie Elena, my soon to be sister-in-law at the time, was happy to help. She's an East Coaster and doesn't have my shyness issues. There's a picture of Auntie Elena licking salt off the neck of a guy we found at one of the bars. As you can see, it's a great photo.

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Who's that? Aiden wants to know. Luckily these questions have gone to Lac.....I think he said....Ummmm....that's a man. What's Auntie Elena doing? She's licking the salt on that man's neck.

Least you think Auntie Elena was frolicking by herself, I guess I should mention the other party picture that Aiden is curious about. The one where I'm torturing some guy. OK so I guess I'm not *that*shy.

Aiden asked Dada, What's Mama doing? And Dada told him very matter-of-factly, She's pulling out that man's chest hair. Aiden took this without any question, of course that's what she's doing.

So maybe this is the moment to admit that it's only now, in writing this, that I'm wondering if was a good decision to leave this calendar in places where Aiden could find it *and* to look through it with him with the same nonchalantness as Goodnight Moon. Maybe we should "lose" the calendar before the questions get even more probing or he understands what he's seeing. Or, maybe not. What do you think?

Beer: The good and the bad

Let's start with the bad, so we can get it out of the way and because the good of beer and toddlers seems improbable.

Dada has a beer iPhone game that allows you to pick your brew (Guiness, Lager, Hefeweizen etc). It then fills the screen up with a slow pour of your sparkling ale, bubbles included. The user tips the iPhone like a cup to pretend to drink. The liquid tilts and drains and at the end there's a large BURP. Geeze. Who thought of this game? A better question might be why does Dada like it so much?

You might be wondering what all this has to do with Aiden. I've been wondering that myself. Dada decided to play this game with Baba and he's now a toddling beer expert who has no problem talking about burping and calling out "Hefeweizen" at the playground at the top of his lungs when he's out with Mama. Way to make me look like a really responsible parent. Thanks Dada!

Here's the good, sort of.....This weekend we're nursing a sick little boy who can't keep much down. You'd think throwing up would be upsetting. But, Baba just thinks he's "burping" and that's cool, right? This morning when he couldn't handle breakfast he said "I burped it".

Get better soon little guy!

All of them and a big soapbox which you might want to skip

Aiden still nurses and this is a post about nursing. If you don't want to read about a toddler nursing, this is a good place to stop.

So Baba still says "switch" when he wants to nurse. Tonight as I was getting ready, I asked him, "Baba, which side do you want" and he said, "all of them!". There was so much abundance in the way he said it, like I had 10 breasts.

*****My Soapbox Statement*****

If you have concerns about the fact that some toddlers nurse, you're not alone. I'm starting to get raised eyebrow comments from members of my own family. Here are some facts....

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends

Exclusive breastfeeding for approximately the first six months and support for breastfeeding for the first year and beyond as long as mutually desired by mother and child....There is no upper limit to the duration of breastfeeding and no evidence of psychologic or developmental harm from breastfeeding into the third year of life or longer."

Here's more from the American Academy of Family Physicians

"Breastfeeding beyond the first year offers considerable benefits to both mother and child, and should continue as long as mutually desired." They also note that "If the child is younger than two years of age, the child is at increased risk of illness if weaned."

If you're wondering why the AAP and AAFP are officially OK with extended nursing its because it's so gosh darn good for kids, regardless of their age. We all know there are immune properties in breastmilk. Some of these properties actually *increase* during the second year and during weaning. Considering that toddlers (and even children) don't have mature immune systems this is a very good thing. It's as if the mother's body is giving her child as many immuno-boosters as she can as her child enters toddlerhood and gets ready for increased independence.

Here's more research I found on-line.

Nursing toddlers between the ages of 16 and 30 months have been found to have fewer illnesses and illnesses of shorter duration than their non-nursing peers (Gulick 1986).

"Antibodies are abundant in human milk throughout lactation" (Nutrition During Lactation1991; p. 134). In fact, some of the immune factors in breastmilk increase in concentration during the second year and also during the weaning process. (Goldman 1983, Goldman & Goldblum 1983, Institute of Medicine 1991).

In this soapbox statement, I'm focusing on health benefits. There's more...all of the benefits of nursing for the mother and the baby (I won't list them all here) are *cumulative* so the longer you do it, the greater the benefit. That means extended nursing is good for me too. It protects me from several different types of cancer. It gives Baba great protection from allergies. The list goes on and on and it's amazing.

I haven't even touched on the emotional and social benefit of giving the child the freedom to decide when he or she is "old enough to stop". We all mature at different speeds and Baba is the only one who will know when he's done. However, nursing has to work for both mother and child. It's shouldn't be forced on a mother who's not game or is feeling resentful of that aspect of the relationship. Personally, I don't and can't know what my upper limit is. If Aiden is still going when I reach it, then we'll have to talk. Until then, I'll keep asking him "which side?".

Hair Up

Aiden is turning out to be....opinnionated....I could have said bossy, but I'm trying to be nice about all this. He has really strong feelings about how I wear my hair, glasses and more. You may have noticed a trend here, maybe we should just call him a fashionista. For the record, I wear my hair up 99.9 percent of the time. I usually sleep with it up. If Aiden happens to see my hair down say after a shower or God forbid if I take it down for a *second* to re-adjust my barrette he says "Hair up". Glasses are much worse because I wear them all the time. We have lots of talks about how Mama gets to decide what she wears on her body and how she wears her hair. I don't think I'm getting through to him. In fact I'm sure I'm not.

Today while skyping with his Auntie Gunush in Bangalore Aiden noticed a problem. "Hair up" he said. Auntie Gunush was surprised but complied (she's way more accommodating than Mama). After she put her hair up, Aiden said "That's nice". Geeze!

For the record here is a list of Aiden's fashion pet peeves:

Long hair down

Eye glasses

Jackets and big sweaters on Mama

Hats (on Mama, Aiden and sometimes Dada)

All is right in the world. Mama's hair is up and Aiden is pretending to be Rosie the hen.