Tears

This morning Aidyn woke up very early, so I got up early too so that everyone else could stay asleep another few hours. Her tear ducts have been blocked since birth and still occasionally get blocked in the morning although there has been enough improvement in them that we are not too eager to have surgery to fix them. So, she will sometimes have tears running down her cheeks even if she isn't sad--people are always asking her, "Why are you crying?" I wonder if she gets as annoyed as I do about it?

Anyway, as I wiped the tears from her face this morning she said, "That's just water. It protects my eyes so I can see better." (No kidding, her exact words. Why am I even surprised by this stuff anymore?)

Just So You Know

Sometimes it is so hard to discipline Aidyn without laughing out loud at her antics or at the things she says. Yesterday gave a perfect example:

Aidyn had already been told not to squish the leftover birthday cake through the plastic wrap. I know it's tempting because it feels really cool to squish it like that with your hand, but we had already had this discussion a couple of times. In a moment of trying to get a project done with my mom while she's here neither of us were paying attention. I hear from right next to me near the cake, "Mom. Just so you know, I'm doing it." I look over to find a little hand squished down into the cake and a little girl with a guilty look on her face. I immediately sent her to the steps for a time out...so I could have a laugh!

Horseded Around

A couple days ago Aidyn was roughhousing with her daddy on the living room floor. Usually he is very careful with her and she really loves this time wrestling with him. This time there was an accident. Aidyn lost her balance and fell backward, slamming her head into the tv stand making a sickening sound as it hit. She immediately began crying and went to her daddy for comfort. He checked her head and saw just a small cut and went immediately for some Motrin and an ice pack. She ended up getting a big bump on the back of her head, but was really fine as far as head injuries go.
The next morning I asked her, "How's your head today?"
She replied, "Daddy horseded around too much with me and I hit my head and got an owie."--in other words, she was just fine :-)

My Toes Are Sick

Aidyn loves to be massaged. A couple of months ago she started a new game called "The Rub My Skin Game" that is only properly played if we massage on her skin and sometimes for as long as thirty minutes! On Tuesday she took the game to a whole new level.
While playing with my mom on the couch she lay down and asked for a back rub, on the skin of course. Then she switched gears to playing doctor and asked for Mamie to check her heart by placing her ear on Aidyn's belly. Aidyn would even say that Mamie was the doctor, Aidyn was the patient, and Mommy was the lollipop. I was just glad to be part of the game, I guess. Finally she put her feet in Mamie's lap and signalled for them to be rubbed (usually she pushes her foot not-so-gently into your hand as a signal), saying, "My toes are sick Mamie." I think Mamie medicated them well with her toe massage!

Birthday

Aidyn turned three today! Hard to believe, right? Well, it's an exciting thing for the birthday girl and this morning when she came downstairs with her sleepy eyes and bed head Daddy was already gone to work so he could take a short day and be home for birthday celebrations. My mom and I began singing "Happy Birthday" to her and her little eyes welled up with tears. She got a true sad little poochie lip and began to cry. We asked what was wrong and she said, "But we can't have my birthday without my daddy." Needless to say, she was very happy to see him home early from work!

Beautiful Day

I think we are finally getting somewhere on the potty training. Aidyn has been dry and clean the whole day in her princess undies and is pretty excited about it. She exclaimed, "Today is a beautiful day to go potty!"

I Got This

Overheard while Aidyn was brushing her teeth...
Daddy: "Want some help?"
Aidyn: "No. I got this."

Good Fixer-Guy

My mom and dad are here for a week to celebrate Aidyn's birthday. My dad is our personal handyman and always does a bunch of little repair jobs around our house when he visits. This time he successfully installed bookshelves in Aidyn's room that I had been unable to put up (despite a dozen holes in the wall!). Aidyn saw them and was very impressed. She said, "Pappy is a good fixer-guy!"

Valentine's Day

Today I bought Aidyn and Tracy a Valentine's Day rose. When I got home I explained to Aidyn every year there is a special day where everyone tells everyone they love that they love them. Then I told Aidyn I loved her and gave a longstemed (de-thorned) white rose. She looked at it with a great smile and then looked at me and said "Oh daddy that's good."

Melted my heart right out of my chest. That $4 was soooo worth it.

There's something in my leg

So we had a big breakthrough a few nights back concerning potty training. It was about 9pm and I heard Aidyn banging around upstairs. I went up to put her back to bed when I found her on her potty chair. She had, all by herself, removed her pajamas and her pull-up and was sitting on the potty. After we both shared a mini victory Aidyn started absent-mindedly feeling her leg when all of the sudden,
"Daddy! Dhere's somefing in my leg!"
"What?"
"Look I got somefing in my leg. Look!"

Then I noticed she was touching her ankle bone on the inside of her left foot. Well.....yes. Technically that is something that is in your leg.

President Obama

Aidyn and I watched the Inaguration together a couple of weeks ago and talked a little bit about President Obama and what his job is as President of our country. I was sure at the time that she had absolutely no clue what I was talking about, but it has been my practice ever since she was born to just keep talking to her even if I felt the topic was way above her head. I have been surprised before, but this time was blog-worthy.
This afternoon while we were eating lunch, Donnie and I were discussing a newspaper article about Cuba and how it related to Obama. Aidyn, eager to join the conversation as always, piped up: "Oh, yeah, President Obama, he's the new one. What does the President do?"
Donnie said, "He is in charge of our whole country and he's our leader. He has a big job."
"Yeah," she replied. "I know. President Obama plays music for all the people."

Eyebrows

Aidyn is getting better at facial expressions and it's very cute to see her express herself that way. Today she showed that she also has a pretty good understanding of the expressions she's learning to make. I overheard:
"Look, Dad. See my eyebrows are down so I must be sad."

Flashback: thank you's

Tonight at dinner, after Aidyn asked if she could be excused from the table, I remembered how Aidyn used to think that you had to add that to any polite phrase asking for something. It wasn't long after she turned two but it kinda went like this:

"Please milk and bescused from the table."

Pray-stalling

Aidyn has turned her bed-time stall tactics spiritual. Usually its "I'm still hungry" or "I'm thirsty" One night after our bed time routine (bedtime story, feed the fish, pray, and then hugs and kisses) Aidyn grabbed my hand.
"Do like this with your hands daddy." she said, instructing me to hold my hands prayerfully.
"I just want to pray with you for a little while."

I smiled, lovingly I kissed her on her forehead, and told her goodnite.

I can handle it

Last week I took the ladies out to lunch/ early dinner at Olive Garden. When it came time for dessert I decided that I would share mine with Aidyn. So I showed Aidyn the dessert menu and asked what she wanted for dessert. She said "chocolate." (A girl after my own heart.) I showed her all the chocolate stuff they had and she picked the chocolate mousse cake (or something like that.)
So Aidyn and I started diggin in. After about half of the cake Tracy cautioned me about letting Aidyn have too much of a very rich cake. Aidyn asserted "I can handle it" and then took another big bite.

Potty training? Phhhtt!

I'm sitting here checking my facebook and Aidyn comes over to me and says "Daddy I pooped. And I have pee pee in my diaper."
"Okay", I said, "do you need a diaper change?"
"I still have some poop to do dad" she says.

So if that is any indication as to how potty training is going....yeah.

Mad-lion and the Bass

Lately I have decided to stop feeling guilty about how much tv Aidyn watches. She really doesn't just sit around watching it all day or anything, but I definitely don't always keep to the one hour or less per day guideline that I've seen for preschoolers. The fact is that she has learned more from Dora, Little Einsteins, Jack's Big Music Show, and lots of other shows than I ever expected. The other day I was flipping through channels and we saw a jazz band playing on PBS. Aidyn points at one of the band members and said, "Look! He's playing the bass!" She will often ask to be played like a guitar (strumming on her belly), or like a drum (patting her back), or a piano (tickling the ivories on her ribs), or a tambourine (shaking her all over). I think it's great that she's learning a lot of things that we don't necessarily have a lot of interaction with. She's learning to make connections between related concepts, too. She loves the book Madeline and recently the characters on the show Toot and Puddle visited Paris. She said, "Look! It's Paris, just like in Mad-lion!"

Did You Fart?

Sometimes Aidyn just cracks me up. Today she was playing with her guys and accidentally let out a little gas. So, she made one of her guys say to another one: "Did you fart?!"

Looks Like I Need a Treat

This morning Aidyn saw me unpacking some candy left over from Sno Camp this past weekend and a brilliant idea occurred to her to attempt to score some:
"Well, Mommy, " she said. "I obeyed you. Looks like I need a treat."

Chinese New Ear

Aidyn has been watching Ni Hao Kai-Lan, a show on Nick Jr., kind of like Dora, but teaching Mandarin Chinese instead of Spanish. She really loves it and it is a really cute show. Recently they did a special about the Chinese New Year and it must have really impacted Aidyn because today she said, "It's Chinese New Ear!" We tried to correct her and tell her it's Chinese New YEAR, but she would have none of it. "No! Chinese New EAR!"