Early October 2013

I took notes over the past two weeks of Aldo events that I wanted to remember, so this post will be a bit heavy with language.

First, Aldo continues to challenge himself, and improve, at walking.  Pictured below you see him walking the forest litter in Skylandia.  Later, he walked us to the trail at the condos used to take you through the meadow and up to the bike path...and then he walked the trail, and the bridge, over and over again practicing going up and down steep and loose terrain.  He did great.

We have a new pack for me to carry Aldo when we hike (thank you Grampa John and Gramma Kristine).  It has all of the bells and whistles, including stirrups for his feet.  We've taken it out twice so far, once near home and the second time up at the nordic center.  I feel his weight more because he sits higher up and off my back, as compared to the Ergo back baby carrier.  At the nordic center, he required that I talk the whole time, telling him what I was seeing.  So I decided to kick a pine cone and tell him over and over again, 'I'm kicking a pine cone.  Kick kick.'  Well, yesterday he decided to kick his own pine cone and he did a great job of it, kicking it (on the paved bike path) an ultimate distance of about 30 yards.  Soccer here we come.

Food continues to be tricky for us, for many reasons, but in particular Aldo's teething and the difficulty I have with pre-preparing food.  So he eats a lot from jars still, and yogurt.  On one occasion, I managed to cook a meal for him but he wrinkled his nose at it, shook his head, and (not kidding here) handed me a jar of food with a face that said, 'ok mom, thanks but lets just stick to the jars, shall we?'  He's decided that he absolutely wants to practice feeding himself with the spoon, to practice drinking milk or water from a glass, and he's starting to take to his more steady-flow sippy cup for drinking cold milk.  He did feed himself strawberries (pictured below) and I often place finger food in front of him for dinner (cheese, apple slices, cooked carrot, avacodo, fish, etc.) and a bite or two usually makes it in his mouth.  Oh, and he likes refried beans, sometimes.  And he can eat an entire nutrigrain bar in one sitting, so I keep those handy in the car and diaper bag.

I'm trying to teach Aldo that his jackets and pants have pockets.  I put something in his pocket and encourage him to pull it out.  He loves his toothbrush and even lets me (quickly) brush his 4 upper and 3 bottom teeth before taking it from me to massage his aching gums.  He has been actively climbing down from our family bed on his own for a couple of weeks now (I've been teaching him proper form for some time now, starting with the couch).  He has an extremely charming smile that will likely not last - he wrinkles up his entire face for this smile, so much so that you'd swear he can't see out of his eyes.  And he and I are now exchanging the ninja phrase, "Hiiii-Yahhh".  Grampa was doing this during his visit, and I'm not sure if it was inspired by our earlier Hi-Yas (where I take Aldo's feet while he is on his back and imitate a karate kick while saying Hi-Yah.  It gets lots of laughs from Aldo and others) or if Grampa discovered this game on his own - Dad?.  In any case, it is now one of Aldo's 'words'.

But the big news is that Aldo is working toward being potty trained.  He doesn't know he's doing that but he is doing a great job.  The past few nights, following his bath (when Aldo commonly pees on the floor before I can get a diaper on him), I have repeated to Aldo, "go get on your potty" and he does it!  He almost sits still, but he enjoys getting on and off of it.  He has not peed in the potty.  He has peed, twice, right beside the potty.  And one little poop.  But I view this as very positive progress.  I hear that boys are really hard to potty train young, so I'm keeping my optimism low - even still, I'm hoping we can crack this nut at 18 months.

 Aldo walked from our condo all the way to the lake, about 1/4 mile.  I picked him up only at the intersection.

This scoot has seen a lot of use at the Mitchell house and with the other grandkids.  We have it in Tahoe on loan until the Grandparents return.  Aldo's legs are not long enough to get a good scoot action yet, but he loves to pull it around the house and backyard.

 Strawberries, Aldo's new favorite food.

We were supposed to can the apples we sauced during this girls night, but instead only Aldo made it to the canning pot.  The apples came from a tree here in the Glen.