A few amusing notes on Aenaon's development:

As of yesterday Aenaon has begun to list his activities over the phone prefacing them with "um" and "then". (Of course this made me realize that I say "um" way too often, namely, before almost every major thought or answer...) So as Aenaon talked to Papi (who's in Baltimore) he spent at least ten minutes recounting his activities of the past few days. It ran something like this: "Um, mango store, um, then Opie car drive, um, then bank, um, fruit, um fly, then Ara toy, then..." etc. I did leave out one important detail which he has been recounting over and over since it happened. It was the last thing he said before going to bed, and the first thing he said upon waking. SO clearly it made quite an impression on him. It goes like this: "Mama pooh pooh kina woods". Can you guess what that means? Essentially, mom took the kids for a walk in the cool woods during the sweltering heat, and the whole way she was talking on the phone with Kina. But as often happens in the woods, mom needed desperately to relieve her bowels, but given that there was no official place to do that, I had to go behind a big boulder. Of course Aenaon had to follow me, and I never hung up the phone, mind you (remember, mamas are masters at multi-tasking)- and quite frankly he was fascinated by the whole thing, so I am sure I will hear of it for some time to come.

(Just a little comic relief for you. That's life, afterall.)

Oh, and one more thing. Aenaon loves to feed Adara, which can be tricky. And at one point when I turned away yesterday Aenaon fed Adara a garlic clove (he is obsessed with them, and tries to eat them all the time, although he never succeeds in eating a whole one). But Adara, on the other hand, being only nine months old, seems to think nothing of chomping on and swallowing a garlic clove, and when I began writing on the computer this morning, I was smelling garlic, and I found that she had discovered a remnant of yesterday's clove and was happily gumming away on it.

Mom's favorite quote from the week in Maine:

"I'm exhausted! This is harder than teaching college. There's always something happening."
-Opie, on sharing primary caretaker responsibilities with Mom for two days

Strange event from earlier this morning:

Mama and Papi silently marveled as Aenaon scored a passing grade on the Global Safari quiz all by himself. He began to press the buttons, and rather consistently answered the questions correctly. For example: "Cedar Rapids is a city in...California, Connecticut, Iowa, Montana"- and he pressed the number three for the correct answer, and pressed "go" to proceed. He did this for close to ten minutes, to our amazement, and got more than half of the answers correct. Hmmmm....

that was drafted on 7/15

Anyway, for those of you who think you can't bargain with a two year old-- there is nothing further from the truth. That is the M.O. of our daily routine. The main point is that the action and consequence need to be immediately apparent. It cannot be spatially or temporally removed. Half of the time that is how I get Aenaon dressed, etc. 'If you want me to read x,' 'if you want to listen to the iPod', you need to put on your clothes first. I take advantage whenever I see there's something he wants, if he is resisting what I need him to do. Or today, "if you want some pineapple, give Adara back the plane you took away", plane is immediately returned. I could elaborate on this, but I'm too tired.

Peace.

I have been begging mom to record some more stuff for my blog, but she seems to be pretty preoccupied lately. Anyway, today's a pretty normal day so I cornered Mom and told her we had to write NOW. (Fortunately, she humored me.)

So these are the things I want to tell you. I'll tell you what my favorite things to do are these days.

Okay, for one, I like to say, "Okay!" with lots of emphasis. It always elicits a great response from the hearing public. I like to talk on the phone a lot now, and I get great pleasure in listing all of the things I'm doing, or looking at, or want to do. Today I got to go to the beach, and play in the cold water with Mama and Adara. The "cold water" is one of my favorite things on earth. I ask for it that way, too, "coke aqua, pees!" I am very good at "asking nicely" as Mom says. I have the perfect inflection, and everything. Too bad we can't record me on here. Everybody thinks I'm pretty cute, if I may say so myself, when I want someone's attention (or I just like them and want to know them) I walk right up to them and get as physically close to them as possible and wait for their response. Today I even disarmed a teenage boy at the beach (which you should know is no easy task). He taught me a hand signal while mom wasn't looking, but she knew he did, because I kept repeating it, and smiling with pride at the new trick I'd learned. I'll show you when I see you.

I got to go to Trader Joe's and eat dried mango (I've returned to saying mango for the most part now, not pumpkin). The only change that's occurred over the past few days and has mom worried is that I've started to stutter a lot. I think it's just hard trying to get my mouth and pronunciation speed caught up to the speed of my mind, but mom is fearing it might be an emotional response to the environment. I told her to look up whether it was normal for a kid my age at this stage in his language acquisition to develop a stutter, but she hasn't done it yet (come on, get on it, Mom!).

I got to go to Maine for a week with Opie, and Theia Eurydice and Theio Josh, and Granny (on and off), and Papi (for a few days). It was endless fun. F R E E D O M. I could run in and out of the cottage as I pleased, through the grass, down to the beach, into the cold water. I could watch the boats and planes and birds and everything. No cars to worry about, no great dangers lurking. I have to say, I was a little too excited most of the time, and I kept trying to avoid taking naps which would make me even more exhaustive for everyone else. But we all survived, and Opie got a good taste of what Mom's life is like everyday (although it's always harder when you're on vacation and you don't have your usual resources to work to your advantage). Theia and Theio were a little worried about my level of discipline, but I'd like to tell them not to worry. Discipline is a tricky thing, and it varies from child to child. But for the most part Mom is all right, and know what she is doing. After all, she knows me more than anyone on the planet, and I've spent every single day of my existence with her (wow- that takes a lot of energy!). Yes. We've never spent even one day or night apart yet.

Oh, I also like to say "yes" a lot. And I say it very politely. Uncle Josh took a little advantage of my inclination to answer in the affirmative, though. He tried to tie my positivity up in a logical knot! (No fair!) He'd ask, "Do you like peaches?" "Yes." "Do you not like peaches?" "Yes." And he found that endlessly amusing... (But he's still my favorite. And quite frankly, I'm happy to say "yes" to anything he asks me.)

(But I did also begin to say "no way!" that week...which clearly came from Opie...)

I also tried to greet lots of people by saying, "hola", but I didn't realize that Maine has a very different population than Lynn, and people totally ignored me for the most part.

Mom got a great book out of the library that had my name written all over it (altough I didn't see it on the cover...). Anyway, it's called, "Hop, Skip, Jump" and I want it read to me at least fifty times a day. It's full of colorful pictures of toddlers doing things I like to do. An active and interactive book! Just what someone of my energy level needs. A book I can literally run to! They think of everything!

Well, that's about it for now. I hope you enjoyed the update on my life. I asked mom to take a picture of me, naked, when I came back from the beach, but she said that might be legally questionable (plus she doesn't want any predators getting the wrong idea), so I covered myself up with a book. But here it is: (Mom says we'll have to post it later.) So that'll be it for now.

Bye!

Adios!