Aidan Andrew McEwan Wansbrough - Aidan's Gallery

Aidan is two and three quarters! One of his favourite books at the moment is Humphrey's Birthday, so he's learning what to expect at his third birthday party - not far off now. (According to the book, having lots of fun and then getting soaked when your big sister gets a bit too excited and jumps into the paddling pool, if you really want to know...!)

Aidan's enjoying playgroup, and sometimes makes things to bring home - a paper flower and a card for Mothers' Day, a chick for Easter, and so on. He was slowly getting back into swimming, although he's still very clingy and out of practice, but then he got an ear infection and his eardrum perforated :-( which put paid to that for a while. He's totally charmed the staff at Klondyke's, the local garden centre where we've been to lunch a few times recently. We've also found another soft play area, at the ceramic experience in Linlithgow.

We've had a few visits this month - two visits from Auntie Elaine and one from Uncle Chris, a surprise flying visit from Cousin Jill who is in Australia for a year but flew back for a (successful!) interview - and we visited a few Glasgow friends too (Arbory, James, Aoife, and Lorien; and Wendy and Tony).

He loves his books. He has the concentration span to sit through two or three readings of The Gruffalo, and he's almost word-perfect on some of his books, as Carolyn discovered when she was at Fellowship Group one Thursday morning. Normally an older couple from the church run a crèche, but they weren't able to be there this week so the kids were running in and out of the playroom. Aidan brought The Very Hungry Caterpillar through and, as she wasn't able to read it to him, he sat on the sofa beside her and read it word-for-word, until he got to Saturday when he got a bit confused (not surprisingly!). He's also joined the local library.

More speech milestones: he's started to use "I"/"my"/"me" correctly (rather than saying "you" for himself), and also "it". Some notable sentences were "Aidan's got my [X]" (correct, but a bit braintwisting), "Mummy please will you..." (he's now very polite when he wants you to do something, which is lovely), "Daddy normally sits in that seat!" (used "normally" correctly! also uses "actually"), and at the end of reading Mr Topsy-Turvy when it asks "can you think of something topsy-turvy to say?" Aidan said "plug music" (a reversal of "music plug", one of the things he loves to play with). Could have been a coincidence, but could also be clever understanding.

Aidan is a bit jealous of Megan and the attention she gets, so he is experimenting with how many different ways he can make her cry (standing on her, shouting at her, biting her, etc). To address this, we've instituted a star chart, with two stars available each day (morning and afternoon) for not hitting Megan. When he gets ten stars, he gets a book. It seems to have been reasonably successful so far.

Potty training is going well - Aidan spontaneously goes to the toilet during the day without being prompted, and he goes down for his nap wearning pants rather than a pull-up nappy. We've been teaching him to wait for us after doing a number-two, though, after some very messy toilet seats(!).

Click on any image to see a larger version; use your browser's ‘Back’ button to return.

Image 0051-0490
Canon PowerShot S45
1/60 sec., f/2.8
2006:04:19 12:04:26 UTC
(c) Keith & Carolyn

Lunchtime with Aidan and Megan. Aidan and Megan have really started to interact well together - it was lovely watching them smiling and laughing together.

Having fun at the garden centre. Aidan loved being wheeled along by Daddy in this trolley.