Walkah-blog

Declan went in a month late for his 2 month checkup on Tuesday. Better late than never. He got a clean bill of health and a few shots. He is now just a touch over 3 months old (he's 14 months old today) and weighed in at 13 lbs 12.5 oz. He's a little tank. He's also grown to 24.25" long! Believe it or not, that sets him only in the 50th percentile. I was expecting 70 or 80 but apparently people are having bigger babies than I thought.

We're looking forward to folks getting to see him on Saturday. It should be fun since he's pretty easy to smile these days and loves attention!

Its been a while  in the making but we finally got Aidan's new playset last week. We'd talked for nearly a year about which set to get him and talked with a bunch of parents about what they had. We read reviews and we visited showrooms. In the end we bought a Creative Playthings swingset. Part of my reasoning was they they deliver and install! Sounds like a weekend and a potential emergency room saved for me!

 

Here's what my yard looked like when I still had one.

 

This is after Cirque de Aidan was installed. It took four guys from Creative Playthings 90 minutes to do this. The had the first pieces erected in the time it would have taken me to locate the instructions in one of the dozen boxes they brought in. Shortly after they left, Aidan arrived to test the construction.

 

Clearly, he approves.

 

If it were only this simple. Since I like to cut down on emergency room visit and don't like the idea of the area around the swings becoming a mud bog, I brought in a little mulch. In order to get enough to fill the 24'x40' area around the swing set I had to order 12 yards of mulch. I used to have a hard time imagining how much mulch that was. Not any more. Now I know its 54 wheelbarrows full which is about 972 shovels full which is about 6 hours of work which is about 1600 mg of ibuprofen. The end result is a complete surrender of our backyard to all things play. The good news is that it cuts my "lawn care" time in half.

 

 

The final straw is Aidan's favorite part of the swingset. With all the time and money spent on this monstrosity, what do you think his favorite part is?

 

That's right. His favorite part is the $19 plastice telescope which, presumably, he's using to hunt wabbits.

 Well, we're a bit past it now but Aidan had his first Easter Egg hunt this Easter. Jaime, Aidan, Declan and I headed down to Stony Creek in Connecticut for Easter Sunday to show off our newest Walker and to have Aidan run around looking for colored eggs in the grass.

To be honest, it was a pretty rough ride down. Apparently, as cute as our kids are, they're lousy at car rides. Aidan hated the car past 3 months old and his brother is starting earlier! In the end it was a fun few hours and pleasant weather. Not too much in the way of photos though. Its amazing how little I actually get to raise the camera to my face now with two kids.

 

Declan, our chunky little Easter egg, is tipping the scales in the neighborhood of 14lbs. He's solid but at this rate he's going to be a nose tackle. We'll get the scientific weight in Early May at his next appointment. For now we have to settle for Jaime getting on the scale with and without him and doing math. I'm sure his grandparents can attest that 14lbs is not far off the mark.

The next post will be all about the new swingset!

First Day of School
Aidan has officially started school. This past Tuesday was his first day in preschool for 3 year olds. Those of you in the know may ask yourself “Isn’t Aidan 2?” That would make you very astute and, frankly, a bit nosy. Aidan is what the preschool set call “2.8″. Unfortunately, our preschool is only licensed for 2.9 and up so, for a month or so, one of us has to sit in class with Aidan while he has circle time.

In the end, its still worth it and sitting with him beats the alternative of keeping him out of school for a month. So far, he loves it. Although, he tells us nothing voluntarily. Even though hes quote vocal and masters a good sized vocabulary, getting information out of him is like trying to get secrets out of a nazi prisoner. Fortunately, the school posts a cheat sheet outside the classroom with the syllabus. So, not only can we converse a little bit about his day but we seem downright prescient to him. “How did they know I read “The Kissing Hand” today? Is this room bugged?”

 Does it count as a blog when you post annually? Hmmm.

Its been quite some time since posting. Aidan is now two and a half and an incredible handful. Apparently we haven't learned our lesson now though. Jaime is pregnant with our second child. She's due on February 3rd and, yes, we are going to find out whether its a boy or a girl. We're still looking for names but we're leaning in a different direction than last time. Part of our choice for "Aidan" was based our fondness for it's meaning. Depending on the book you read, Aidan means Little Fire or Born of Fire. As luck would have it, that's a good description for our son. He's a firecracker that does not seem to burn out. So, this time we're looking for an Irish name that means "Lazy Little Bugger" or "Mostly Lies Around" or even "Really knows How to Kick Back and Chill"

Again, I hope to post a little more. Although, it seems like a big part of the hold up there is in photos. Aidan truly hates being photographed so it gets harder and harder to get shots of him. So, more of my post will probably be without photos. I'll add them when I can but I won't wait for them to make a post.

Speaking of photos, I've deleted a bunch from the Photo Album. Mostly it was our friends and family shots but I also dumped Aidan's photos from his first year. It was just demanding too much bandwidth. I will be trying to get more current photos up in their place!