Ducks, Cooking, Art Camp

I have no thematic title for this one, sorry. Miscellaneous Aiden Adventures??

Ducks....

We constantly have a surplus of bread in our house - note, I keep it in the fridge so it's good past the expiration date (I assume?? Can anyone assure me of this??) - but eventually it just gets stale because more often than not, my taste buds want something fried and greasy and topped with cheese for lunch.

So when it goes stale, but not moldy, we take it to the duckies!!

Last time we did it, we got rained out! Luckily, we were at Clement Park which is home to the Jeffco Public Library so I decided to take Aiden in there and see if he wanted anything.

He wasn't much interested in the books, mostly I think he was overwhelmed. But he liked the magazine racks in the kid's section.

When it became clear he was never going to pick a book, I suggested a movie. Of course he wanted a Mummy movie!

As we were leaving, I spotted a new book from one of my favorite authors on the staff picks shelf and snapped it up - Aiden scolded me and said, "You don't need a book, you  have lots at home."

But the books at the library are FREE, some day he'll understand my habit.

Speaking of habits, Aiden has taken up cooking this summer!

He started out as a little kitchen helper measuring ingredients and stirring mixtures. He graduated to helping at the oven and stove (with lots of supervision and help of course).

Yesterday morning he made his own scrambled eggs from start to finish!!

Mommy is liking where this is headed!

Besides culinary skills, we have also been feeding Aiden's inner artist this summer. He went to an outer space themed art camp at the Denver Art Museum in July and absolutely loved it!

There were 20 kids total, and only 4 of them were boys, of course Don Juan was in heaven with the ladies...

Showing the girls a thing or two about coloring inside the lines...

He brought home space ships and aliens galore!

And my most favorite art piece...

That's right, my kid spells AND writes his name. Genius. Can not be denied, he's on his way to med school!

I kid, I kid - I'm just so happy to see him flourishing and growing. He loved art camp so much that I decided to send him for one more week before school started. Seeing him with new kids and bringing home all the projects and just really turning into such a well-rounded kid...priceless.

Ready for Halloween

 Some of us more than others....

Aiden in particular is overly excited. I don't know if I mentioned or not but the subject of witches, ghosts and pumpkins came up during conferences last week - not in a bad way, but lets say, this time of year - dinosaurs take a back seat to Halloween.

Being the Halloween nut that I am, this should surprise no one really, but what may shock you, is that we still have not done pumpkins. There was in fact a time when we would go get our pumpkins in September because I was worried about shortages - yes ladies and gentlemen, I have long been fearful of pumpkin shortages.

Anyway, even though they are more expensive at private pumpkin patches, this ritual is decidedly important enough for us to make a whole ordeal out of pumpkin picking. So we spend Sunday morning at the pumpkin patch.

Aiden wore his Spiderman costume, because of course if he only gets to wear it to school and trick-or-treating, we will no doubt, not be using it nearly enough.

He spent a good deal of time inspecting the left over pumpkins, and after seeing Steve "knock" on the side of one to see if it was rotten, Aiden then had to pat down all possible carving contenders.

There were carving stations and farm animals to pet also, as well as other kids to play with, and an amusing learning experience about see-saws.

 It was such a beautiful day, once I was done being the "Mom-aratzi" we just sat and enjoyed the warm sun while Aiden played.

And played....

And played some more...

Since it was such a nice day, we decided on a picnic lunch in the park - mostly so Aiden could get more use out of his Spiderman outfit.

Climb Spidey, climb!

Once he was officially tuckered out, we went home for a nice long snooze, then headed to Grandma and Grandpa's house for dinner. Aiden was super excited, he got to help put up Halloween lights last week, so he spent a great deal of time Sunday night admiring his handy work.

He was so wound up last night that I had to remind him at bed time what a busy week we have - we have to carve our pumpkin...("Oh boy!") and make our ghosts....("Oh my gosh!") and buy candy...("Oh my candy!"). He added trick or treating to the list and I didn't have the heart to tell him no :)

A Gentleman and a Scholar

It's that time of year...Parent-Teacher Conferences. Early this month, Abiding Hope did their annual hearing and vision screening, and I knew as the screening approached that Aiden would be in for some more in-depth analysis.

Sure enough, his teachers approached me about having a more involved evaluation done on him about a week before the screening and I agreed to is so long as it would not affect Aiden negatively, i.e. - I wouldn't want him singled out and I surely wouldn't want him to feel any sort of pressure to do something differently, or "correctly," because he is truly sensitive to those things and it seems to make him feel as though he has done something "wrong."

All these concerns addressed, Aiden had a screening and we discussed it all this morning. I have known, for over a year now that developmentally, Aiden's speech is not where the other kids' are at. However, having since been in speech therapy and more and more time in school, as well as more and more reading at home - he has VASTLY improved. Luckily, one of his teachers this year was one of his teachers last year and she could affirm this also.

For right now, Aiden is going to have another evaluation done, by his speech therapist. We are all in agreement that since he is comfortable with, and probably misses her, she should be the one to determine whether he needs further intervention or not. That being said, he definitely needs Occupational Therapy and there's just no way around it.

The real concern at this point for Aiden's teachers, is his lack of spatial awareness. Literally meaning, he doesn't understand what is "his space" as opposed to someone else's space or just in general - how much of the space around him is comfortably his. Some of the clues to this are, rather hilarious, that he will explore that "unknown space" with his body. By running his hands along all surfaces, spreading him self out as much as possible, and even running his head along the carpet - I told you, rather hilarious.

If only it were a perfect world where Aiden could test and learn his limits via head rubbing whenever and wherever he wanted....sigh. Unfortunately, this leads to other problems within the class room. He has trouble  getting from Point A to Point B simply because he doesn't understand the space between. In attempting to do so, he knocks things over, tramples things, and sometimes tramples other kids.

Obviously, he doesn't do this on purpose and no one is suggesting that he is. Quite to the contrary, his teachers have on occasion told him, "Aiden, you hurt your friend," and he will not have even realized it, furthermore, he then gets terribly upset and cries because he feels so bad for what he has done. Bless my little guy's heart.

This is the only area on his "report card" scholastically where the teachers show concern - emotionally, being tied to his spatial awareness, he gets really down when he thinks he has hurt someone. But everything else is going great.

He interacts extremely well and respectfully with adults, which I find humorous because at this stage, it is obvious that Aiden views my friends as his friends/peers/playmates - so of course he interacts well with them.  Aiden and I are even in the habit these days of telling each other, "You are my best friend."

He is counting beautifully, knows all of his colors (except grey which we just happened to be working on in the car this morning) and is great with geometric shapes. Earlier this week at dinner, he was using his food to show me some of his shapes even.

My biggest joy from this morning though, was hearing about his aptitude for reading and writing. Aiden views himself as a reader. Even though he is not necessarily reading all the words on all of the pages, he believes himself to be. He will sit and take a book from beginning to end without interruption and work through it as though he is reading it. (Not to be extra boastful or anything but he did point out the word "Big" to me last week).

Aiden is the same way with writing. His pencil grip is developing beautifully and when he sees someone writing, he wants to write as well. When asked to write his name he produced a beautiful "A" - really it would bring you to tears, and then he drew a pumpkin and told the teacher to write "pumpkin" because it was very important that this go with his "name." Just like with reading, when he is "writing," he fully believes himself to be writing clearly, legibly, and lengthily.

I am a proud mama bear today. My kid can write an A.

OOOO! Also, Kids Kreations orders are due next week - 

And I will have new school pictures shortly :)

"I Did It!"

Anyone else feel that Pinterest should have an "I Did It!" button...?

Because when you actually pick one of the 70 things you have pinned or re-pinned, or "liked," and get off your lazy, TV watching ass and get it done, you feel awesome don't you??

I do.

Granted, I only choose the really very easy projects that are seldom helpful in the great measure of my dis-organized, dirty apartment. But when I pick one of the "achievable" projects and do it -- I feel like I deserve a gold medal, I mean, I did have to pause Netflix to concentrate for a minute so....that's worth something right?


What I did - 

These are the instructions that I more or less "used" -- I find it hard to believe that all women of all body types can do this same thing and have it fit the same way, so I highly suggest adjusting to your comfort if you attempt this also.

Firstly -- very important to select only your really large t-shirts/shirts your other half may not wear anymore or notice are missing if you borrow.... Because your stylish, smaller, big t shirts will be snug.

Love this shirt, never wear it - too big!

So I begin by very neatly cutting off the collar - this is important because you will reuse it later.

Then I cut off the sleeves - I cut right along the inside edge of the seams but I recommend that if you want a looser fit (haha "looser") you should cut a little longer down the sides like where your armpit is - a la a man who you look at and wonder why he's wearing a shirt at all....

But my sleeve holes we're smaller.

Next, you need to adjust the new neck line.

In the back you want a deep v-shape. The deeper the V (I don't know why this post continues to be so dirty :/ ) the looser it will fit, FYI.

In the front I cut about a 1 inch slit in the middle and tugged at it to give it a worn and torn look - but this is also not in the instructions.

Ok - next, flop the shirt over so it's face down. Pull the back "straps" of your tank top together and grab your collar piece. Loop it through around and through itself once and pull tight as low as you can go on the straps.

Now the collar piece has a little tail left over, so I chose to snip it at the very middle of the "tail piece"

Tie the loose ends up in a cutesy fashion and try on for size!

Once you get one under your belt it goes quick and you make some easy space in your drawers.

By the by, the Hurley shirt was a long sleeve - so be creative.

And really, can we all write to Pinterest and ask for an "I Did It!' button?

Winding Down

The last few weeks have been exhausting - emotionally and physically because of work and getting Aiden ready for school and trying to find a healthy work balance between days and nights and extra jobs.

Labor Day couldn't have come sooner, we I needed a nice little break from the everyday to re-group.

Aiden had a fabulous first week at school, so while we were playing around Friday afternoon trying to get out of town I took him to Kohl's for new pjs, more big boy underwear and a toy.

While walking into the store from the parking lot, a car paused and waited for us to cross to the sidewalk. When the car stopped, Aiden put out his hand, raised his voice real big and said, "YOU STOP! Wait your turn! DON'T HIT ME!" Of course the driver's window was open and she replied very meekly to assertive Aiden, "Don't worry I won't hit you!" Funny little guy.

Inside the store, I let Aiden pick two pairs of pjs and two packs of underwear -- he was excited about the Elmo pjs so much that he grabbed the first pair of Elmo underwear he saw -- they were pink. Normally, I would take the stance, eh, if it's what he wants...but really, there's kind of an important difference in boy/girl underpants so he had to put them back and settle for choo-choos and SpongeBobs.

Back in the car Aiden practiced his photography --  

This pose is Aiden's favorite. He requests all models use this for photos.

Since we still had a little time to kill we had to stop for a snack too...

 When we finally got to the lake, I got to help Maria make a HUGE pot of spaghetti sauce for Italian Night - since I begged to have it and then it got re-scheduled just for me. So I helped with the sauce, the beef and the sausage. MMMMMMMM!

Since there is officially no water left in the lake, we spent the day Saturday playing Slip N Slide.

While it may look like Aiden is having the most fun ever, I can assure you that I had even more fun than him.

A swift twist of fate put me back in Denver late Saturday night, but I needed the rest and when I was done working on Sunday I got to catch up on a quick couple things around the house that I have been dying to do.

Like take the cat for a walk...

I took Kane to the pet store wiht me to get food, and while walking around with the horse of a dog that he is (knocking over displays left and right) I was asking for help finding a cat harness and leash. You can't really tell but Dexter's harness is fiercely striped like a zebra and his leash is pink.

He LOVED going outside, sniffed everything, talked a lot and purred in the grass.

I also got to catch up with the girls in the evening.

Of course we had out margaritas before we painted our nails....

This is my "I'm at the top of the bathroom" spot

careful, don't spill that!

Jo, who came ot spend some extra time with Katie before she moves, was a very good sport and made an excellent cabana boy when drinks ran low.

Things got a little silly.

After a good night's sleep, Kelly and I made our Clinique Bonus Days trip on Monday and then an impromptu trip to Taste Of Colorado for lunch.

Once Aiden was back in town, he was right back to taking pictures...

I even managed to finish an IKEA project - but don't get me started on the damn shelf in the living room

Finally settled and ready for Fall.