Quick Trip

Caiden and I made a quick trip to Vermont last weekend. Dan had a college buddies trip to Lehigh, so I thought a mother-son weekend was in order. We left at naptime on Friday. He did great in the car- played happily for an hour or so and then fell asleep for almost the rest of the drive. During the portions of the trip he was awake, he did a lot of narrating about what he saw. At one point he noted that trucks passing by were too loud, and he asked me to turn them off.

We spent Friday afternoon/evening wandering around Burlington and grabbing dinner. He always loves exploring new places.

We had a rocky night on Friday- our room was directly above the lobby bar area in the hotel, where they had a live band. We were both awake until the wee hours of the morning.

Despite limited sleep we had a fun morning in Burlington. We went to the Skinny Pancake for crepes, then over to the aquarium for some fun.

I must remember to always bring a spare pair of pants with us to this place. He most of the time there playing with the boats in the waterway and ends up pretty wet. He did also enjoy seeing the turtles and big fish, though.

We ended up driving home Saturday, as we were both pretty tired and the weather was pretty raw up there. He conked out as soon as we hit the highway. It was a short trip, but great quality time. I'm looking forward to going back when it's warmer.

Mini update

Caiden is so much fun these days. The more he can communicate, the happier he is. A happy Caiden is a fun Caiden. Over the last week he started with the "why" questions. So funny.

Lately Caiden has been testing us a little more than usual. It seems like his days of epic meltdowns are fading (we still get them occasionally, but they are much easier to manage), but he tests our resolve with defiant behavior more often. It's a trade off I can handle.

who me?

We had our first parent "teacher" conference last week. It went pretty well, although his teachers expressed concern over his fine motor skills and communication. We don't agree, he can do things like draw, assemble legos, operate utensils, remove stickers from their paper, etc. And they said they'd like to hear more 5-7 word sentences from him more often. We hear tons of 10+ sentence words from him at home. They aren't grammatically perfect, but he is on target for his age. Caiden loves his teachers and friends at school, but this just added to our list of frustrations with this place. But all is good- Caiden will be starting a new school in September, maybe a little earlier. I can't wait.

Sleep has been really, really good lately. He is still in his crib. There have been several occasions where I caught him with one foot up on the railing, but I tell him he would get a big boo boo if he tried that- and he gives up. He is definitely physically capable of climbing out,  so we're sure to keep the gate at the top of the stairs closed anytime he is in there.

Aunt Elizabeth recently brought Caiden a new book of all the Pixar characters. He hasn't seen all the Pixar movies, but the ones he has seen are his favorites- toy story, cars, bugs life, finding nemo, monsters inc. To say he enjoys this book would be an understatement.

Caiden and his guys

Caiden loves toting his guys all over the house. It's not always the same guys, just whoever is around or whoever his current favorites are. But moving them around the house can keep him entertained for quite a while. Here he is having breakfast with the guys of the hour.

Bedtime can get crowded as his collection grows. I often go in after he falls asleep and remove some of his friends.

He has taken to helping himself to tupperware to store his smaller guys in. I keep finding random tubs and lids all over the place.

Caiden and the grapefruit

I was surprised to find out a few weeks ago that Caiden likes grapefruit!

Sometimes it is tricky digging out the sections!

I broke the mustang!

Dan got Caiden a little model airplane a few weeks ago. A P-51 Mustang. Right away Caiden (accidentally) broke of 2/3 of the propellor blades. Yesterday he broke off part of the tail. He asked me to fix it, and I gave him the usual "we need Dad for that" speech. As Dan was due home any minute, Caiden went to wait for him by the window. He stood there waiting for Dad, yelling out the window about the broken Mustang and needing glue and whatnot. I got the camera out and caught a minute of it:

And also caught him showing Dan the issue through the window... when Dan was pulling in the driveway.

Nemo found us

Well the weatherman was right- we got a lot of snow! Blizzard Nemo started Friday- Dan and I worked from home and daycare closed at noon. Which is good, since driving was banned starting at 4!

When we woke up Saturday, we had a lot of snow on the ground. I'm not sure exactly how much, but over 18 inches. We waited until Dan cleared a little snow from the driveway before we headed out. Caiden kept an eye on the snow blowing.

We spent a while outside, both before and after nap. We played in the snow, took Caiden out in the sled down the street (driving ban was in effect until late afternoon), went sledding in the yard, went for a snow shoe adventure in the back woods, and of course ran one of Dan's RC cars. A fun day! Ready for another one tomorrow. Hopefully it will be a little warmer- today was pretty windy and cold.

Winter update

Here are the happenings around here.

Caiden's vocabulary has gotten significantly better over the past month. Well, it's been steadily improving over the last few months, but it recently struck us how much better he is. He's gone from 2-3 word sentences to more complete ones. But despite his increased ability to express his needs/wants, he seems to forget all verbal skills when he hits meltdown mode.

Speaking of meltdowns, this made Dan and I laugh pretty hard: http://jasongood.net/365/2012/12/46-reasons-why-my-three-year-old-might-be-freaking-out/

Caiden is super curious and is always asking questions. Who's that? What's that? What's in it? Where is xyz?  What's that for? He hasn't gotten too big into asking "why" just yet, but I'm sure we'll get there soon.

A slightly questionable thing Caiden is into are bad guys. He always seems to enjoy the villain characters in the movies he sees/books he reads. His favorite Toy Story scenes? The ones with evil emperor Zurg in them. His favorite monster from Monsters Inc? Sneaky Randall. The most discussed character from Finding Nemo? Bruce the Shark. His favorite song? One where an alligator eats a monkey.

In January we went to a party at Caiden's old daycare. I don't think he remembered a thing from his time there, but he had fun exploring the whole building. He had no interest whatsoever in the organized activities though. It was nice at least for me to see his old teachers and friends.

Caiden and I had a serious cold this month. This is how you know Caiden isn't feeling well:

Finally, we had a sleepover visit from Ian and family last weekend. It was great fun! Caiden and Ian played SO well together. I was very impressed. It was funny to hear them talking together in the other room. Lots of "Right Caiden?" from Ian and "YEAH!" from Caiden. It was the easiest parenting experience I've had at home in a long time. Caiden was completely entertained. The adults could spend some quality time catching up.

Dave Mak came too and brought some great books for the kiddos. They are counting books with lots of animals. Big hit with both of them. They wanted to read them over and over. Caiden can recite numbers up to twenty, but he's not so good with actually counting things. He would count 9 boats and Ian would gently correct him: "it's 5".

Caiden also loved spending time with Jane the puppy!

Next up... blizzard Nemo!