Snow Days & Aedan Rolling Around

Samantha: 43 Months, Week 4
Aedan: Week 37

After our busy weekend, and our last Christmas celebration with my family, we were looking forward to a week of getting back to normal.  Ben was itching to get back to work on his dissertation and his conference paper.  Samantha couldn't wait to get back to preschool and see her friends and teachers.  I was excited about getting back into a regular schedule and routine again, with our normal day-to-day.

However, the weather had different plans for us.  Over night Monday into Tuesday, it snowed and snowed, blanketing the ground in white and forcing local schools to close for the day.  As a result, Samantha's preschool was closed as well.  She was a little upset about not being able to see her friends and teachers, but she was excited about being able to go out and play in the snow again (and have hot chocolate), so that made up for it.  While Aedan took his morning nap, we got ourselves bundled up and went to play outside.  I shoveled the driveway while Samantha played in the snow, made snow angels, and slid down the slide into the soft, fluffy snow.  We had a good time outside for over an hour, and Aedan had a nice, long nap, sleeping almost till lunch time.

 

Since Aedan slept so late, the rest of our day got pushed back as well.  We ate lunch later than usual, so that way Samantha and Aedan's afternoon nap time could still align.  For some reason, Aedan started crying at lunch time, which then made Samantha cry.  (She hates seeing him cry hard, it always makes her cry, too.)  I tried to get a video of the two of them crying at the same time, but as soon as I got the camera out Aedan stopped crying and started smiling and laughing, but Samantha continued to cry.  Funny, sometimes we say that Samantha cries more than Aedan.  She's definitely very emotional and dramatic.  It will be interesting to see what she's like as a teenager.

Aedan was in a weird mood that Tuesday, as we wasn't really interested in nursing all day.  I kept trying at various times, and he would just arch his back, push me away, and cry.  I felt bad because I had no idea what was going on, if something was making him not feel well or if he just really wasn't hungry.  It's hard with a baby Aedan's age because they are constantly putting things in their mouth and sucking on things, so it's hard for me to read the signs of hunger.  However, he finally ate well when I was putting him down for his afternoon nap, so that was good.  Aedan has been much trickier with nursing than Samantha ever was.  I don't know if it's a difference between boy and girl, or the fact that I am at home rather than working full time, or just a difference between their personalities.  Aedan is so much more active, sometimes when I nurse him it feels more like I am wrestling with him, than holding and nursing my baby.  Samantha did this to some extent, but once I introduced her blankie, she would just hold and cuddle with that, which saved me from being pinched and scratched.  Aedan, however, is not interested in his blankie.  He is more interested in pulling my hair, every chance that he can get.  I have now started wearing it in a pony tail every time I nurse him.  He is more interested in hitting his hand, palm side down against various areas of my body to see what fascinating sounds he can make.  He is more interested in sticking his fingers in my mouth, hooking them around my bottom teeth, and pulling down my jaw.  He is more interested to trying to pull my nose off my face.  Man, he is a boy, through and through.

Samantha had ballet on Tuesday evening, the first day back since Christmas break.  Daddy took her, and I stayed home with Aedan.  Then, we just had a good night at home together, relaxing, playing, and trying to keep ourselves warm because with the snow came bitter, arctic cold.  Samantha wanted to cuddle under her new Frozen blanket with Aedan.  (Sorry about his face in this first picture.  I tried to get a picture of both of them smiling, but there was always one or the other not looking at me or not smiling.)

At Miami they have a January term before the Spring semester starts back up again.  Every year they have one week in January where you can get into the Recreation Center for free.  This past week, January 5-11 was their free week.  As a result, we could go swimming in the leisure pool for free!  (Maybe at some point, if we end up staying at Miami long term, we will get a membership to the Rec center so that we can swim, work out, and go whenever we want to, but right now we can't afford it.)  Some moms were meeting up at the pool on Wednesday morning, and I was excited to go.  I originally planned on taking both Samantha and Aedan, but Ben planned to work from home that day because I had an eye appointment that afternoon that he would have to be back home for so I could go while the kids were napping.  Anyways, because he was at home anyways, he offered to keep Aedan home so that he could nap rather than be out with us during his nap time.

The pool was really nice, and Samantha was SO excited to get in the water with her Puddle Jumper floatie.  It was sub-zero temperatures outside that day.  We could see the snow swirling around through the glass windows, as we were enjoying the 85 degree water.  They have a zero-depth area, a basketball hoop and ball, as well as a small part with a current, mostly for people that are looking for leisurely water exercise.  There were quite a few moms and kids there, and Samantha had a good time playing with them, jumping off into the water, and swimming pretty much constantly for almost an hour and a half.  Samantha definitely takes after Ben and I in her love for water.  She is not afraid at all, nor has she ever been. She will dunk her head under, jump in so that her head goes below the surface, and even try to hold her breath under water while she swims, although that is definitely a work in progress.

Aedan got a whole bunch of new 12 month outfits for Christmas, so we are having fun dressing him up in new clothes.  Here is a little monkey outfit that Aunt Christy and Uncle Matthew got for him.  You can't see it in the picture, but there is a monkey on the tushie of the pants as well.

We were all ready for Samantha to go back to preschool on Thursday; however, the local schools ended up cancelling school again due to sub-zero temperatures on Thursday morning.  As a result, Samantha's preschool was closed as well.  She was really disappointed, especially now with missing both days that week.  We ended up just staying home and playing there.  I had plans to have a family swim night that evening, if Samantha took a nap and was in a good enough mood.  She was pretty tired and cranky throughout the morning because she woke up really early that day.  Despite that, she resisted her nap for awhile.  I ended up going into her room and telling her to go to bed, that when she wakes up early, she has to nap.  It's interesting because she took naps most days over Christmas break, probably because we were busy and she wasn't getting as much sleep at night.  Well now that she's kind of caught up on her sleep and is getting more sleep at night, she is getting back into not napping, like she was doing before.  Ben and I are fine with that, we can't force her to nap, but it's not okay when she wakes up before 7:00 a.m., acts tired and cranky all morning, and then still refuses to nap.  Anyways, after I went into her room, she did end up falling asleep and taking a pretty decent nap, allowing us the chance to go swimming as a family that night.

We ate dinner fairly early so that we could get to the pool.  I borrowed a swimsuit and swim diaper from a friend so that we could take Aedan swimming as well.  He has never really been totally in a pool before.  Back at the end of the summer, when we first moved to Oxford, we went to the TRI pool a couple times, but the most we did is stick his legs in the water since we didn't have a swim diaper for him.  The zero-depth area at the Rec Center is perfect for Aedan.  We brought a rubber ducky toy for him to play with, and he just sat next to Daddy in the water, splashing and laughing and having a wonderful time.  I swam around with Samantha, and this time she brought Ariel with her in the water so she would also have a toy to play with.  Once we got closer to the time we were going to leave, we brought Aedan down into the water, and he loved it.  Just like his sister, he was not afraid at all.  I wish I would have gotten some pictures of him in the water, but we didn't have our phones with us.  We took him around the area with the currents, showed him the little waterfall, threw him up into the air, and let him splash his arms up and down to his heart's delight.  It was a great evening in the water together.  (Samantha even saw her friend, Matteo, from preschool and got to play with him for awhile, too.  That kind of made up for the fact that she didn't see any of her preschool friends this week.)  Once it was getting closer to 7:00 and close to bed time, it was time for us to head out, even though everyone was still having fun.

The Thursday night women's Bible study was starting up that night, and I had plans to go to it.  Ben lovingly agreed to put the kids down to bed so that I could go each week.  I think it will be much better to do the Thursday night study and get a chance to fellowship with other women and discuss God's Word (plus get out of the house by myself), rather than drag both kids out to the Wednesday morning study that generally focuses on watching video studies with a brief time of discussion.  I'm looking forward to the study on Philippians and then whatever is chosen next, once the semester is in full swing.

We had kind of a weird week with getting Christmas decorations put away on Monday, and then Ben working from home on Wednesday as well.  I know he was anxious to get back to work, as he had a paper to work on for the SPSA conference in New Orleans and wanted to get a working draft of the last couple chapters of his dissertation sent out before our Disney trip.  Friday, however, was a normal work day for Ben and a normal day for me at home with the kids.  Our plan was to let Aedan take a nap and then go to the library to play for a little while, but Aedan was fighting his morning nap, so I figured we'd just skip it and head out.  They didn't have story time because it hadn't started up for the semester yet, but Samantha had fun playing with the dollhouse, looking at books, and seeing Felix from preschool as well as Jacob and Miss Pam from church.

After lunch that afternoon, Samantha wanted to build a tent, so we draped her blanket over the couch and coffee table, and she climbed underneath.  She got some animal friends to join them, and of course, she wanted Aedan to come under the tent with her as well.  (You notice this theme of bundling up and laying under blankets?  It was so cold outside, our heat was working extra hard, but it was still cold, perfect for cuddling under a blanket.)

That evening Ben called me to let me know that he was getting ready to leave campus when he noticed he had a flat tire.  He was able to put on the spare tire, even though that wasn't very good either, and drive it to a tire place.  Once Aedan woke up from his nap, we all piled into the car to go pick up Daddy.  They would have the car for the weekend, and we could pick it up on Monday with new tires.  We got pretty much the cheapest ones they have because the Saturn only drives around town, and we really just need one to two more years out of it, until we're in more of a comfortable place financially and feel like we can make car payments again, this time probably on a minivan.

I can already tell the difference between girl preferences and boy preferences in Aedan.  Aedan LOVES balls.  He loves to play with them, hold them, squeeze them, eat them, roll them around, and he particularly likes watching Daddy throw the ball up in the air.  We will bounce the ball on the floor in front of him.  Or, Daddy will lay Aedan on the floor and then lay right next to him.  Daddy will then throw the ball in the air right above his head, and Aedan will happily watch the ball go up and down.  When Samantha was his age, she never really liked balls as much as he does.

After dinner that night, Samantha wanted to recreate her tent, except bigger, and in an area where it wouldn't keep falling down.  So we draped our quilt over the table, and Samantha had her tent.  :)  Again, she wanted Aedan (and Mommy and Daddy) to join her in her tent.  She thought it was so exciting that we were sitting under the table together.

On Saturday, after letting Aedan take a morning nap, we made another trip to the Rec Center for swimming as a family.  We knew this would be our last chance to go, and I wanted to take advantage of our ability to go for free.  Again, we had a great time in the water.  Samantha swam all around in her floatie and Aedan enjoyed splashing and being carried around.  We got back a little late from swimming, had a quick lunch, and then hung out for awhile before nap time.  While we were playing, I captured this great video of Aedan.  He has been much more active lately, rolling around, and even rocking up onto his knees for a few seconds.  Maybe there's crawling in our future?

We didn't think Samantha would take a nap because being in the water revs her up too much, but after a little while of talking and singing, she stopped making any noise, ending up sleeping about an hour.  After nap time was over, we decided to go to Five Guys for dinner.  Ben and I were craving delicious cheeseburgers.  We also stopped by JCPenney to look for some clothes, but Aedan was starting to lose it, so we cut our trip short.  However, Samantha really enjoyed walking around the department store.  She thought the mannequins were very interesting and even wanted me to take her picture standing by one.  It was so funny.  She just walked up to a mannequin, held his hand, and posed.  Did she find a replacement Daddy?  You can tell that we don't go to department stores very often.

After finishing up at JCPenney, we made one more stop at Meijer to get food for our small group lunch the next day.  I figured it wouldn't be the best to drag both kids out of the car, into the store, and then back into their car seats again, so I stayed in the car while Ben went in to get the food.  Aedan was not happy about being in his car seat in a vehicle that was not moving, so I crawled into the back seat between Samantha and Aedan to talk to them, play with them, and keep them happy until Ben returned.  Aedan entered a slap happy phase, and I made this recording of his happy laugh.  The poor guy was so tired that he ended up falling asleep in the car on the way home.

On Sunday we had small group after church, making for a busy afternoon.  Aedan took a good nap in an upstairs bedroom, and I think Samantha was slightly overwhelmed by all the kids in the basement because she chose to play with a Tinkerbell fairy house quietly upstairs in the living room where the adults were meeting.  It was cute watching her play while we discussed last week's sermon.

Over the weekend our MagicBands came in the mail.  We are now about a week away from our trip and are really getting excited.  Even Ben admitted that he's getting excited about it.  This will be our first trip together as a family of four. :)

Ben's car was still in the shop on Monday, and Miami was on a delayed schedule due to some ice we got overnight, so Ben decided to work from home again.  The rest of us had some good play time, and I got some good pictures and videos of Aedan's new favorite thing: rolling around and getting into everything he can get his hands on.  I think we're going to have to do some baby proofing sometime soon, putting away small toys that would be choking hazards for Aedan.  It's fun to see him discovering his world, figuring out how to roll to get where he wants to be, and learning how to grab things that are just out of his reach.  How a baby develops is so fascinating to me!