  Aidan's gone through an ambiguous, but nevertheless apparent developmental leap. At this age, they have leaps of cognition.
There's a new spark in his eyes, increasingly he laughs at things that are actually funny to us, I can tell he understands more of his world this week than he did last week. It's wonderful, except that suddenly his toys seem unbearably baby-ish! The blocks and duplos are of no interest, although he still likes to build traintracks and color with the new pastels Aunt Amanda got him from France.
His most beloved activity this week is tying knots with strings everywhere. He's great with the bigboy legos already, so I think it's time to start pushing the building/creating complicated toys that his dad still loves. That's right, we're about to be up to our eyeballs in robot assembly parts and tiny lego bricks. I'm also committing to redouble my efforts to stimulate him creatively. No easy task. I talked to his teacher again about the bad behaviors from school and she was still unable to offer a solution with which I could feel comfortable. However, in her words I realized something key: Aidan is the second oldest kid in his class now! Everyone wants their kids to be among the youngest in a class in order to get that developmental peer pressure push. He used to be among the youngest, so the other kids' parents must have moved their kids up a level already.
Aidan was three in January, but he has classmates just turning three now. I think a big part of his change in school behavior these last two months must be that he's bored! This realization, along with the general processes of chasing down a behavior problem with the school personnel, helped me finally make the decision to apply to AWTY. I called and it's still not too late for next year. Up until now he's been safely stimulated and occupied by the Piaget-based curriculum at this school. They focus on sensual experiences, and are very creative with that. This week they emptied can after can of shaving cream into piles and added drops of food coloring.
The kids first mixed in the colors, then mixed colors together to create new colors. Afterwards everyone washed off by running through sprinklers. But he's old enough now to begin a structured approach to learning. I still believe that at this age learning to love learning is far more important than any actual academic acquisition, but I want him to learn to love learning in the structured environment. Plus, the additional language instruction is a huge pull. I'll still put Ellie in this school he's in now (why am I afraid to say its name?
) part-time in the fall. Regarding Ellie, she's foiled our attempts to keep her off Aidan's bed by finding a new way to climb up. Aidan was only two months older than her when he got the bed, so I'm probably not going to squash her newest climbing techniques. I've told John, however, that this is the definite sign to finish the kids climbing wall. They're great climbers and they need a constructive place to climb! She still walks with her hands at least partly outstretched, but now she's beginning to run a little, too! Usually, she's running after Aidan. She's mastered pointing to bodyparts on demand: ears, nose, eye, belly, toes, etc.
Usually in the context of pointing where Aidan hurt her by playing too rough. Since she loves to sit on her potty when we go to the toilette, I did bare bottoms the other day. She hated it. She kept bringing me diapers! She peed a few times and even pooped once (of course, when I was on the phone!
), all of which were praised and put into the potty, and waved bye-bye to. She was pretty disturbed by the whole notion of needing to go without the comfort of a diaper. How different she and Aidan are! Bare bottoms were hard with Aidan b/c he was so obsessed with what he made, that he made it every two minutes. Literally. She's begun yelling for effect. We tried at first responding with whispers, but with her audience (brother) always present, that had limited effect.
And so, at long last, I've broken out the nose tweaks in earnest (they came much earlier with Aidan). Don't laugh, it works. Pinch the holes of their noses closed (gently, and you can even just pinch the ball of fat above the nose holes if they're snotty) every time they yell and they'll stop. I only have to pinch about every three times, the other times I just put my finger on the tip of her nose and she gets the picture. 
