the girl with the pearl earring

...And the lesser-known Vermeer masterpiece:
"The boy with the t-shirt on his head".

shower power

Bath time has morphed into shower time as he seems to like it more, plus it's easier for us too. He had been trying (unsucessfully, and more frequently) to hurdle over his tub, so graduating to a shower seemed timely.

We noticed that he likes sticking out his tongue to catch the falling droplets from the shower, which has us in stitches, and subsequently Aiden himself, too.

finger food joy

Trying to teach Aiden how to feed himself is a messy affair!

He's been feeding himself tiny bits of food for a few months, but we haven't made it a concerted, regular affair yet, or properly introduced using spoons & forks.

So we've introduced more regularly over the pass few days:
1. peas
2. corn
3. tiny carrot cubes
4. raisins
5. brioche and bread

Yesterday was quite a coup, when Aiden tried scooping and putting a fork into his mouth! The food fell off the fork on the way to his mouth at first, but with a little bit of guidance, the occasional pea started landing in his mouth.

This morning he fed himself some fresh corn, which is such a great finger food for him - it's firm enough for Aiden to hold the corn between his index finder & thumb without it being annihilated, plus corn is soft enough for him to munch on. But just as importantly - if it spills out of his hand or mouth, there isn't a nightmare cleanup (they should consider putting this on food packaging. it's a big selling point).

aiden's first sentence

I meant to blog this last week, but it slipped my mind:

Aiden: Da-dee!
Mae: Daddy's sleeping, Aiden...
Aiden: Da-dee.....du-du.....*gutteral snore*

(Du-du is Malay for "sleep")

how parents become delusional

We sometimes slip into the Parent-Delusion trap and think that Aiden's a genius at the grand old age of 14 months. He's picking up words faster than we anticipate, and we love hearing the occasional mispronounced baby versions from him. Here's a list of his baby vocabulary:

1. Bubba - Aiden's friend in the mirror
2. Baby - When he sees pictures of babies, and photos of himself as an infant
3. No, no, no - Thanks to the book "Monkey Puzzle", Aiden sometimes says no thrice.
4. Bow wow - His favourite stuffed toy (a puppy)
5. Tun - Button
6. Pocket - shirt pockets
7. Ka - Kees - It started out as Car Keys, but now all keys are Ka-Kees
8. Door! - He doesn't say "door", he declares it, hence the exclamation mark
9. Gate - the gate to our flat
10. Na na - Banana
11. Su su - Malay word for milk (we thought it was easier for him to say than "milk")
12. Du du - Malay word for sleep
13. Pay-psss - Newspapers
14. Zzzzip - Zip
15. Fok - this one's quite dangerous if said out of context. So we're trying to teach him "spoon"
16. Mum-mum - Food
17. Mooooo - Cow
18. Bah - Zebra
19. Co-co - short for "cold, cold" which could be yoghurt, the aircon, or the fridge
20. Bib - yup, his bib
21. Mummy - c'est moi
22. Da-deee - Andy
23. Ma-ma - Grandma
24. Pa-pa - Grandpa
25. Duh-kk - Duck
26. Mao - Cat
27. Wffff - Dog
28. *snort* - thanks to a present from the team at work that has the sound of a pig snorting to match a pig shot, Aiden's picked that up
29. gutteral snore - this Aiden picked up fom Grandpa's regular snoring
30. Star! - Like the word "door", Aiden likes to declare it
31. Puss - Octopus
32. Sa - Aiden's way of saying "Yes"

And that's just for now - we can't wait until he's saying Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

cheeky smile

When you're this cute, nobody minds about a little drool on the sofa.

gameboy

Aiden loves listening to the theme music for Pokemon on my old gameboy. What's strange is that at 14 months he knows just how to hold it. Aside from being attracted to anything with buttons/switches/dials he was never taught the "correct" way to hold the gameboy. I think it's just a case of brilliant interface design that it naturally fits his hands in the best position to play.