Blue Angel

Aiden was on cloud nine during a recent trip to the Hiller Aviation Museum. You have to wonder why it took us so long to take him there since we live near SFO and have the luxury hearing each and every airplane land and take off. Aiden is particularly appreciative of our prime location and "airplane" was his first word (well technically, it was a sign).

One of his favorite parts of the visit was getting to sit in the cockpit of a Blue Angel fighter jet....



AND a 747!



Here is a priceless video of Aiden as a Blue Angel fighter pilot. It's a shame the sound quality is so bad. Listen closely and you'll hear Mama and Dada spar over what the Blue Angles actually do.

The video ends before Mama and Dada are done so you'll just have to imagine the ending....Dada changes his story so the fire button drops chocolates instead of bombs. Mama and Dada have had endless laughs over this video. In 1:03 minutes it pretty much captures our relationship.

What's the minimum age again ?

Before anyone calls child services on us, I'd just like to clarify that there is no alcohol involved here. It's just that when we go to our local sushi place, the first thing that he asks for is a shot glass. He liked drinking miso soup out of it. Go figure!

Easter Sunday at Quita's

Easter Sunday was spent at Quita's place with the family. We dyed a bunch of Easter eggs using all sorts of natural dyes prepared by different folks. Aiden of course wanted to lend his artistic talents to the occasion but we had to convince him that it would have to wait a couple of years or else he could have some semi permanent tattoos from the dyes. 

As usual there was a beautiful spread put together by Quita with contributions from everyone else to keep our tummies from grumbling. Before we could feast on the food we had the star attraction of the day, an Easter egg hunt exclusively for Aiden. This was far different from the other hunts that he had participated in during the week. Quita wanted to make sure that this was one time no one was going to steal eggs from her beloved grandson. If anything there were half a dozen people folks prodding him along. He had a great time with eggs big and small and he couldn't believe his luck when one of them accidentally cracked open and cheddar bunnies popped out of it. That of course meant that the surviving eggs would meet a violent death.

Uncle Jonathan came over a little late after finishing his shift at work and was treated to a wonderful cocktail prepared by Mom. She told him that we had prepared a special Easter cocktail to celebrate the rebirth and that he had to guess the ingredients. He took us for our word, had a few sips and started guessing the ingredients one by one as if he were tasting a fine wine. We had to stop him after a few sips because our guilt conscience got the better of us. The drink was a mix of all the natural dyes we had made and had everything from spinach, beets, grapes, blueberries, red onions, yellow onions, coffee & turmeric. After he found out what it was Jonathan took a few more sips.  Only Jonathan could have pulled that off!

Easter festivities

Last time around Aiden was too little to partake in any of the Easter festivities and hence the celebrations were limited to doing things around the house. This year though things are a bit different. He gets overly excited by any animal costumes and so we were sure he'd be pretty psyched to see Easter bunnies running around the place. We went to a couple of different places where he had a chance to indulge in Easter related activities. First up was a picnic at a Mom's club in our neighborhood. They had a few activities lined up to keep the kids interested including an entertainer but as you can see Aiden was more interested in checking out the various wheels in the house. He eventually warmed up the celebrations when the entertainer started singing his favorite songs.




Things started getting more interesting for him when we moved outdoors to start the Easter egg hunt. It took him a little while to get used to the concept of collecting eggs in his basket and at first had to be coached by Mommy. Eventually he got the hang of things and collected a few eggs. All the kids were around the same age as him so there was very little competition. It was nothing like the next hunt that we went to, more on that a little later.

The next event was a big party was over the weekend in downtown San Mateo. Having never been to it before we had no idea about the scale of the event. They had lots of different types of activities planned to keep the kids busy. Things like puppet show, sack races, wagon parade, egg hunt etc. Thanks to Aunty Helena who too the initiative to start decorating Aiden's wagon while baby sitting him on Friday night, we managed to put something together very quickly to take part in the parade the next day. Again Aiden was more interested in checking out all the other wheels at the parade instead of getting in his own wagon. It was only when his dear friend and super cute kid 'Hope' got into the wagon did he show any interest. The Easter egg hunt at this place was a complete riot and a bit overwhelming. They didn't separate the kids into different age groups, so we had over 100 kids from the ages 2-10 all competing for the same eggs. There was no chance Aiden was going to get a single egg at this event so Daddy had to get a little creative and grab a few for him. We even had some kids steal these when we tried to enact our own little egg hunt for Aiden. That's how bad it was and the Parents weren't very helpful either. It was just a quick preview of how competitive it's going to get when we start little league :)

We also had another celebration at Quita's house where Aiden has no one competing for his eggs which he enjoyed a lot. More on that in a latter post when I am able to load the pictures on my laptop.

Sour!

Aiden is showing he's a direct descendant of Quita. He loves munching on lemons! Really. I guess we should be happy that he's willing to try almost anything. It's not a perfect world though, if Aiden doesn't like the food presented, it takes less than a second for him to spit it out so it ends up dribbling down his chin onto the floor. Yummm!

That's exactly what I thought would happen the first time I gave him a lemon. He made a lemon face, proclaimed it "sour" but then after a thoughtful pause, went back for more. The face he made after each bite looked like torture but he was clearly enjoying the taste.

In this next picture he's doing the sour face so Mommy can catch it on camera.

Quirky Talking

OK...I admit it.  I'm a huge, huge fan of my baby and think almost everything he does is cute.  What mama in her right mind doesn't?  This post is dedicated to honoring Aiden's quirky habit of talking out of the corner of his mouth.  He does it mostly when learning new words so I'm trying to enjoy it while it lasts.  I was looking through pictures from last month and realized that this phenomenon has been captured.  I can't believe I almost missed it!

PS:  While we're talking about this picture, the dump truck shirt is a big favorite right now as is anything and everything remotely resembling a truck. 

From Sunscreen to Sandscreen

He may be only 20 months young, but he's already way too cunning for us and has a lot of tricks up his sleeves. Check out this sequence on a recent bike trip on a bay trail near our place. We stopped at a beach to let him play for a little bit. But it was a hot & sunny day so we had to bring out the sunscreen which he absolutely hates.

Act all cute when Mama pulls out the sunscreen so she has no clue about what you are scheming.


Somehow convince Mama to lend you the tube so that you can apply it yourself.


Wait for Mama to turn around for a nanosecond, then dunk the tube in the sand.


Apply some sand on your face and get a little taste as well.