seven months, one week, two days

That is how old Aidan is today.

I've had a hard time keeping up with the blogging and the photo posting on his website. So, I'll attempt to rundown his milestones in this post. He does something new every day and while I want to document these happenings, I'm leaning towards enjoying the moment and taking it in instead of grabbing the camera to catch it in pixels.

So, here goes:

• Solids. Aidan continues to like solid food. So far, he likes rice cereal, apple sauce, carrots and sweet potatoes. He recently added oatmeal and apple juice (albeit diluted with water) to his repertoire. He didn't like peas much; but I didn't think to warm them up a little the first time he tried it. (The scrunched up look on his face was priceless, however.) So, we will introduce peas again this week. The weeks to come will bring bananas, peaches and white grape juice.
  
  
• Sitting. Aidan has been sitting up on his own for a while now and can play on his own, but he prefers to have company. He doesn't realize the strength of his grasp, as evidenced by the little round bruises on my upper arm that measure the exact circumference of his fingertips.
  
  
• Scooter. Aidan hasn't crawled yet (he doesn't like being on his belly and doesn't get the whole get on your knees thing), but he likes to scoot backwards on his rear.
  
  
• Pull ups. Aidan can pull himself up in his crib. Ah, the end of life as we know it is near.
  I keep hearing stories of babies that skip crawling and just start walking one day. I think Aidan might follow in those footsteps. We better get on the baby proofing project pretty quick. Eek.
  
  
• Mommy, come get me! Aidan continues to be very good natured and mild mannered with other people-- be they friends, family or strangers. However, he is starting to display a little separation anxiety. It starts out with his smile slowing turning into a deep frown, a quivering lower lip, a flush of red on his face and a large tear rolling down his cheek before turning into a loud cry. It doesn't happen a lot-- just when he is in the arms of someone he hasn't seen in a while or hasn't seen before. With a little warm-up ( and a cuddle with mommy) he's good as new.
  
  
• Laundry?! The other day, Paul was putting away the laundry and put Aidan on the bed amongst the clothes and the plastic hangers. Aidan LOVES hangers. He thinks they are the greatest toys/teething rings ever. We've decided that he doesn't need toys-- just boxes, hangers and wrapping paper amuse him to no end.
  
  
• Social butterfly. Aidan continues to visit with his fellow birth class babies every month (Us and three other couples struck up a friendship and have met up regularly since our first "reunion" in April). Next month, we will have the babies in their costumes and hope to visit a pumpkin patch. Aidan also attended the baptism of my godson and welcomed his 3-week old cousin, Nicholas, today. It's nice to see that Aidan likes to socialize and be in the thick of things, however, this often leads to not so good...
  
  
• Napping. We are thankful that Aidan sleeps through the night (with an occasional yelp that a quick binky in the mouth always fixes). However, the kid doesn't want to nap during the day. If he does nap, it's in spurts of 30, 45 or 60 minutes. If you're lucky. The longest nap he's ever taken recent was just shy of three hours. He used to sleep for hours upon hours as an infant. Now, he squirms and rubs his eyes to keep himself from falling asleep during the day, sucumbing only when he is cuddled and bounced by someone on the exercise ball.

So, that's month 7 of Aidan's life so far. Who knows what I'll be writing about next month? (Hopefully, I'll be blogging a little before then.)