  Aidan continues to amaze us with his puzzle abilities. He's sucking them in as fast as we can throw them at him. Two weeks ago I went to TJMaxx (like I needed an excuse, right? ), which is a good source of occasional amazing clothes like my Tommy Hilfiger jeans and Born Mary Janes, as well as amazing toy finds, lately a lot of Melissa & Doug brand stuff, one of our favs. I got him one four small puzzles in a box set, and one big floor puzzle to replace the large zoo floor puzzle he'd mastered. The four puzzles in the box are already mastered and he needs a little help with the floor puzzle, but he's done it quite a few times now.
It's just a matter of time before he does it on his own. When John went to Boon this past week, he went to this great little toy store he likes to frequent there because all the toys are wooden and developmental. He got Aidan a 60-piece animal themed floor puzzle, and this morning they've done it together twice! He's so hungry for them, I actually hesitate to ask for them for Christmas because surely he'll burn out, right?
I shouldn't think so necessarily, because it seems to me that Aidan's desire for this kind of activity is closely related to the veracious nature with which John always went after (wait, did I just use the past tense? goes after) building legos designs. You see, a girl looks at legos and sees a creative palate from which a house or a monster can be constructed. But guys tend to see a challenge to replicate (like putting a puzzle together) the design on the box.
After that's accomplished, maybe the creative palate bit comes into play, like morphing two airplanes together to make a Death Star, or adapting the airplane to become a boat or a spaceship, but the key is to create the design for which that set of legos was packaged. I know, this boy stuff is so foreign, but I'm learning. It's hard to get Ellie toys just for her, because even in front of a perfectly age-appropriate developmental toy, she'll just reach for Aidan's toy instead.
That's one reason I really want the bolsters, if I or anyone else can figure out how to do it. The best thing for her interest is physical obstacle courses. Already, she crawls up the big slide in our park over and over while out there. She crawls up to the top and then crawls around the top platform if I let her, most of the time I just stand by the side of the slide and pick her up when she gets to the top and put her back at the bottom and she does it again. Kind of Sisyphus style, right? I say crawl, it's more like scurry. She does it on her hands and feet bottoms. This week it's been colder so she's been wearing pants more. She's used it to her advantage. She's figured out to climb up a bit, then lean forward on her knees and pick her feet up and she slides back down backwards.
She has the best look in her eye when she does this. We had to remove the slide on Aidan's bed b/c Ellie was crawling up it without us knowing and I caught her just as she got to the top and would have presumably fallen down the ladder side! Maybe I don't give her enough credit, she might have just played on the bed a little, but it was still scary enough that we took the slide down that night. 
