It wasn't so very long ago that it took a lot of word repetition to get Aidan to say a word. Even then it was really hit or miss. As he embraces parrot mode now he's picking up words with a frightening speed.

Yesterday he came home with a onesy shirt on and no pants. I picked him up for a hug and noticed his butt was all wet. Since he enjoys dumping the contents of his sippy cups into his own lap while he's in the car I could guess the cause. I asked him anyway "Why is your bum all wet?" He looked at me, smiled and said "Bum. Bum, bum, bum!"

Perfect.

The hazard of this of course is him driving with daddy. Its seems unavoidable that at some point he'll come home from a trip with me saying "Pick a lane A-hole!"

I managed to get off my butt tonight and upload some new Aidan pics. That's no smal feat considering the size of my butt and the smothering heat we're dealing with right now.

Aidan is whipping out the new words at a pretty alarming pace. His newest is "shrimp", which actually comes out sounding like "Gump" but that's close enough. Recent new entries are "Butterfly", "Ready, Set, Go", "Oh, Geez" (accompanied by a frustrated foot stomp), and "Telephone". The last word being the most shocking since up until a few days ago he referred to the telephone as "Daddy".

If the mood strikes him he'll also tell you the sounds that dogs, cows, ducks, and cats make. Shortly after that he's likely to eat a handful of potting soil and stuff a large stone in his mouth dashing to bits our hopes for a Mensa membership.

Hi. Remember me? I used to run this website.

There's something to be said for having a job you hate but gives you access to the internet. It gives you incredible opportunities to screw around and do things like setting up websites and running blogs. Now I have a job that I love and even a laptop so that I can hop on the PC at any time and write a quick entry. The only problem is, because I love the job, I have no time to write!

Aidan turns 18 months old in a few days. Its amazing how tiring that is. He's a little dynamo and he's learning far more things than we realize. You have to be careful what you say and do around him as he has become quite a mimic. He even gets the body language down. Thankfully, daddy has curbed his potty mouth so Aidan hasn't dropped any F-bombs yet. I can guarantee you right now, however, that when that bomb drops I will unconsciously reinforce it by firing a cold beverage out of my nose.

We have some new picks but Jaime shut down the computer and I'm far too lazy and impatient to turn it back on and wait for it to start up so I can get the photos off of it. Sad.

Its been a while since I wrote but since I'm out of town I don't have access to my steamer trunk full of excuses. I'll just let you come up with a good one.

As I sit here bored in the Charlotte, NC airport I had the brilliant and sudden thought that this would be a great time to post a blog entry. I'm not technically  at work so there's no guilt there and I just happened to have had the forethought to save the latest Aidan pictures to a thumb drive before I left.

What can be said about Aidan? He's now a card carrying member of the Little Mobile Hellions Association. The kid doesn't stop moving or trying to play with things that are not only not his and not toys but are so far from toys as to be horrifically dangerous.

"No Aidan put the fire poker down."

"No Aidan don't chew the road flare."

"No Aidan stop chasing Julie with the chef's knife."

He knows exactly what "no" means and he is actively testing our resolve whenever we break it out. He stamps, he cries, and he runs to whoever else in the room didn't say no. His mother learned that doesn't work, so will he.

The big news is that we finally chopped off his Peter Boyle mullet. His hair grew remarkably fast around the sides and back of his head but barely filled in on the top. We brought him to Snip-its and they cut it for just one week's salary. It was worth it. There was so much crap going on in that place that Aidan switched into sensory overload a second after walking in. I'm convinced that he had no idea anyone was actually cutting his hair.

Lastly we had Aidan's photo taken. It was over due and we finally found that round to-it we had misplaced. Teya from teyaphoto.com came to the house and shot Aidan for almost 2 hours. There are tons of pictures from the shoot and now we have to choose some tomorrow. If you want to see, email me and I'll send you the link and password to see the proofs.

If you look at the timing of this post it was sent at about 11:00pm. However, I'm sitting in a hotel room in San Jose right now so it's actually only 8:00 to me. Of course, I've been up since 4:00am which is really 1:00am so I'm pretty sure exhaustion could cause me to start typing in tongues at any minute. Should I stray from course, blame the lag.

I've not written in a while and I've had pretty good reason. Everyone in our house has been sick for the last two weeks. Colds, ear infections, more colds, coughs, and the latest and most fun flavor: explosive diarrhea. Woohoo!

Aidan started it a couple of Fridays ago. As any parent knows, its tought to take care of a sick child for a weekend and not get sick yourself. I was spared the double-barreled, full force of the cold by taking Zicam. I was still sick but I was mostly done in about four days. Jaime faired considerably worse having just shaken her cold a couple days ago. Poor Aidan was the worst. After a week of being sick with little improvement we decided to bring him to the doctor. Predictably, he contracted an ear infection. Note: Sick kids are not fond of antibiotics, even when bubble gum flavored, when they're very sick.

I left town this morning thinking everyone was feeling better. Wrong. While Aidan feels better, the copious amounts of juice he drank while sick have resulted in a predictable yet ugly condition. Apparently, he's taken to painting the inside of his outfits with poo.

I picked a nice time for a trip.