"We Just Love Aiden"

This is how most parent-teacher conferences begin for me.

"We just love Aiden."

"Aiden is the sweetest boy."

"He gives the biggest hugs."

I have come to dread parent-teacher conferences. With Aiden's early developmental set backs with speech, followed by concerns about his space perception and attention span - leading to the discovery of his Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) being linked to his inner-ears, affecting balance, hearing and attention span. This is just always a tough thing. Sitting with his teachers, who see him often and know him well, and hearing that he's not quite where he needs to be, or something new is wrong. It's exhausting being that parent.

This year, things went a little differently.

After explaining to me how much they love Aiden, they began telling me about how much Aiden loves his Mommy. I find it difficult to be sharing this without tearing up a little, because that day, I really needed nothing more than to hear that, and it warms my heart to be able to share it with everyone else. Aiden talks about his Mommy, all day, every day at school. About painting and cooking and bowling and reading the Wizard of Oz and about what a terrible singer his Mommy is.

As per the usual, we went through his evaluation task by task. He can pick out all numbers 1-25 from random order and organize them. He has a mastery of writing his upper case letters and can pick them all out at random from memory. He writes his name, beautifully if you ask me. Aiden understands past tense, present tense, all of his verbs and adjectives agree with his nouns and subjects and proper nouns.

While his teachers are very aware of his *slight* obsession with the littler girl in the next class, they are in total agreement that he is a happy kid, with a positive outlook and a bright social demeanor. He especially loves to sing the peaches song to his teachers...

Peaches - Presidents of the United States

We sing this song while we cook at home and often while we eat - as it turns out, I do this terribly, he has only been sparing my feelings. 

After he drew and then cut out all of his shapes for his evaluation, he asked his teachers for more because they were too easy. One of my personal favorite tid-bits - after naming the colors for his teachers, they asked which is his favorite...the rainbow.

As far as his attention span goes - the diet is helping drastically. He has trouble following multiple directions at once but he is paying attention and he wants to learn, like a regular four year old boy.

Helping the banker count the money.

Helping Mommy organize promo stuff.

Waiting patiently while his ball rolls all the way to the end.

Happy kiddo.

The very next week in class, Aiden received an award for following all of the teachers' directions, right away. It was a noisy award and it gave Mommy a couple head aches, but for a good cause. 

The next day after that, he received another award. This one was a certificate which now hangs on our refrigerator. Aiden had his teachers in tears when he calmed and comforted a classmate who was upset.

My heart beams. For those of you who have read The Help, Aibileen nurtures the love and self esteem in Mae Mobley who is somewhat neglected by her own mother. Every night, and when on occasion Aiden claims that something is "all my fault," we tell each other, "Aiden is kind. Aiden is smart. Aiden is important."

When I heard what Aiden had done for one of his friends at school, I could almost imagine him telling his friend, "You are smart, you are kind, you are important."

It's easy for me to get so busy trying to take care of Aiden that I forget how much he does to take care of me - he feeds my soul with his silliness and he heals my heart with his love. So, I have started doing all sorts of things to help fill in the tiny places in his day where he might not know I am thinking about him with reminders of that.

I started off pretty rough.

But I have definitely gotten the hang of it!

No matter how crazy things get for the holidays, it's most important that Aiden knows I am thankful to have him and that there is no greater joy in my life than to see him turning into a boy that I respect and admire and love. From his waxed poetic vocabulary about boogers to the tiny little fuzzies between his toes that his stinky socks leave behind.

Learning New Things

Aiden is back to school! And in Pre-K - is this really  happening?!?

The little dude is getting so smart that I can hardly stand it! We tried to do a United States of America puzzle a couple nights ago, and it turned out that he didn't need me hardly at all. I think I showed him where 5 states  go.

While I was totally astonished, I was also relieved. At Back-To-School-Night, his new teacher was talking about geography and what they'd study so I thought, "Great! He's ahead of the curve!" Then she clarified that geography would include one new country a week. Holy smokes, this kid is growing up way too fast!

And socially, he is remarkably in tune with his feelings and peers. He saw his little girlfriend in the hallway before school started and I told her how much Aiden missed her this summer. Her mom replied that she talked about him non-stop all summer too! Unfortunately they are in different classes this year, but when she went into her own room Aiden was very attentive to what was happening.

He put his hands right on his hips and said, "Mommy, where is Christina going?" So I told him about how they would be in different classes this year and that they would still play together plenty. Immediately he asked, "Are there other boys in that class room?!" I giggled a bit and said, "Yes, there's lots of boys and girls in every class Aiden."

So we went in to his classroom and he started rough housing with one of his buddies. I started to leave and he came running to the door, I thought to give me one more hug, and dashed past me to the other class room. He poked his head in and back out then told me, "I was just checking on Christina."

We're going to learn lots this year, both of us.

Last night on a family walk to the park, Aiden was asking about "the heart." He kept saying, "tell me about the heart." So I covered the basics. It's a muscle, it pumps your blood all over your body to keep everything working and because of the different chambers that hold and push out blood, it makes that, "Lub-Dub" sound that you hear at the doctor's office with the stethoscope.

He seemed fairly satisfied by this response and let it go at that. But I kept thinking about it. I should have said more, there's important pieces I forgot. All evening I was bothered by this. Even after I put him to bed. Luckily for me, he didn't go to sleep right away (shocker!) -  he sat up for a while saying, "I'm not tired, I don't want to sleep."

So I climbed into the tent with him and asked if I could snuggle. While we snuggled, I whispered, "Mommy has to tell you something."

"What?!? What is it? What's wrong?"

So I proceeded cautiously.

"When you asked Mommy about the heart tonight, I didn't tell you everything. I forgot the most important parts!"

He was worried of course and started inquiring about "the blood" and "the muscles" and I told him that all that is very important, but there's an even more important thing that your heart does for you.

I told him, "Your heart is where you keep your love. All the people that you know, some that you haven't met yet and even some of the ones you might not see again - they're all safe and sound in your heart. And your heart does something even better than keeping them all safe, it tells you the truth no matter what."

I remember being told when I was little, that if your heart has wings you will never be lost.

So I told Aiden, "No matter what happens, this year, this week, your entire life, always follow your heart."

New Year - New Rules

Some may have noticed that OutNumbered sort of fell off the grid there for a bit...sorry.

This was due to a few factors - technical difficulties, general busy-ness, and mostly because I wanted to spend most of my holiday free time enjoying my kiddo, rather than writing about him.

I do have a few holiday goodies to share though!

This was the first year that Aiden was really super interested in Santa Claus. He wanted to talk to him, see him and he was very concerned about what Santa was doing to get ready for the big day. Of course, he was reminding everyone in the weeks leading up to Christmas that he really needed the "Thomas the Train Shake Shake Bridge" and that Santa was working on it.

Santa delivered :)

This kid was pretty spoiled. Christmas Day I was completely overcome with the amount of presents he got just from me - there were so many toys, how could I have spent so much?!? Looking back over the year though, which was exceptionally tight for us financially, I felt a great sense of pride in knowing I was able to do that for him. If that's what all the skimping and scrounging was for then it was totally worth it.

And if things get tight this year...we'll start our own toy store.

A big hit for Aiden this year was the mechanical T-Rex that moves, roars and shoots darts. This works well in conjunction with his pirate ship which also shoots darts/cannons.

After Christmas, when I started shopping for Aiden's birthday - I had a really hard time finding anything that he didn't already have.

What a problem right?

Anyway, a big, happy, belated birthday to my 4 year old!

He has become quite the little person! Full of sassy sayings and personality quirks.

He has grown taller but the size of his hugs remains the same - bigger than any person I know.

He celebrated his 4th birthday with close family friends and a couple kids from the lake.

Uncle Erik was even in town and trained the boys on how to use the tri-pod nerf gun.

I haven't seen my cat in days....

Since his birthday, Aiden has been very busy - shopping and such

He also attended a birthday party for someone else. Little kids bowling makes me extremely nervous - I always expect a little arm to go rolling down the lane with the ball.

Aiden was enamored with the big kids and how they only used one hand to bowl - so with a little help from Daddy, and a couple gutter balls, he was able to do it just like them.

I was also lucky enough to enjoy some birthday fun, thanks to a weekend off.

The girls (and Dylan) had a lovely time doing karaoke and being silly.

Anyway, this all got me thinking about New Year's Resolutions and such (which I don't believe in) so this year:

- Not worry so much about not working out so much

- Spend more time enjoying Aiden than writing about him

- More girl dates

- Maintain the "Sweet Surrender" mantra

- Uphold the work ethic and sense of self which made 2012 so awesome

Even though you all will be hearing less from OutNumbered this year - rest assured, 2013 holds many funny stories and fantastic adventures that I can't wait to share.

Another Great One

As always, Halloween did not disappoint. 

Since I was working on Saturday night, I didn't get to go all out in costume and celebrate my favorite holiday but I did get to spice up the LBD a little bit.

Aiden began celebrating on Friday by going Trick-or-Treating at Grandma Deiker's office so his candy stash was well on its way by the end of the weekend. Aunt Dana even brought home a pair of Vampire fangs from her Halloween party for him to play with.

He is so spooky!

On Halloween night we went Trick-or-Treating in Randalicious' neighborhood (where I used to go) for the first time. Aiden was so independent and all "big boy" about the whole thing.

He rang all the door bells by himself, said "Trick or treat!" and "Happy Halloween" and lots of "Thank you's"

There was one house though that was just a little too spooky for him, so he took Daddy to the door with him.

All night he was great about holding hands and staying on the sidewalk. I was personally impressed by how many parents were out and volunteer safety patrols.

Aiden was so funny, when he passed a group of parents who said, "Spiderman, COOL!" He silently, coolly looked up at them and shots some imaginary spidey-webs at them. I don't know who thought it was funnier.

As we walked away I whispered to Steve, "Our kid is such an effing B-A"

On an even more amusing note, I decided to participate in Jimmy Kimmel's You Tube Challenge this year --

"Hey Jimmy Kimmel, I told my kid I ate all their Halloween candy"

Enjoy the results knowing, I promptly gave him a piece afterward because I felt so bad.

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 :)

We're From the Country and We Like It That Way

That's what we tell everyone who comes to visit us anyway. Especially on weekends like this last one.

We were in Eagle all weekend. Partly because I booked a 3 day job in Vail but mostly because my Aunt and Cousins from California were in town. Lucky them and lucky Aiden, this weekend was the Eagle County Fair and Rodeo. Other than Flight Daze, this is one of my favorite weekends home all year.

I can remember the very first year we went with Chris, it was late late at night, they were all but shutting down, everyone left, it was just the four of us and we went around and around and around on the same damn roller coaster as much as we wanted.

Every year growing up the fair was one of our favorite things - I've even volunteered to work at the Rodeo on occasion. 

This was Aiden's first year, so we did everything.

Petting the bunnies in the breeding competition 

And the baby cows.

He wasn't too sure about the goats, thinking they would definitely bite him.

Everyone thought the big ol pigs were awesome.

I didn't pet any animals because really - they aren't that cute and they kind of smell, and really if we are being totally honest -- the best part of the food is the fair and no way am I putting fair food in my mouth after touching those pigs.

Aiden also went on his very first roller coaster -- and he loved it!!

So he went on as many as he could:

And of course we had to do the bouncy castle

We were having a blast! After some silly pictures, a misunderstanding about the lucky duck game and painting a t - shirt, we went on more rides!

My cousin Garret - who Aiden followed around all weekend, was exceptionally great and took Aiden to play in the fun house.

It was such a busy weekend, I am STILL tired! But on top of all the playing around I had to work too.

Natalie and I had a lot of fun hanging out with the kiddos at the Kick It Soccer Tournament.

And we even made some new friends --

Mickey the GoGo Mouse!! Yes we continued to feed it all weekend so that it would keep coming back....But at least we didn't try to scoop it up like my cousin did to a mouse, who there after bit him, while we were fishing!!

These boys have a little something to learn about country living -- only bunny foo foo picks up field mice.

Speaking of fishing...

I caught my first fish!!!

Of course I proceeded to freak out once it was in the canoe with me! I screamed louder when I caught the damn fish that I did when I stepped on a snake!!

Poor guy was bleeding and he couldn't breathe. When I thought I caught another one, my initial response was, "oh no I did it again!"