aiden + mommy ten months update!

(to give an idea of size, that is the same picture frame shown in my 28 week bumpdate) 

ten MONTHS

I'll be doing monthly updates like this for Aiden's first year. Aiden is currently 47 weeks old! Things have been understandably a little busy the last while, so forgive me that I'm not on any kind of blogging schedule for now. (: 

Here's how our tenth month has been!

MOMMY

Body:
My baby hair that's been growing back since Aiden was a few months old is still bizarre. It's grown past the "being so short it sticks straight up" phase and has nestled right into the "did a five year old try giving you bangs with scissors" phase. At least it's getting long enough in the back that when my hair is up the short hair will almost stay in place with bobby pins. Oh yeah and I have these really weird, pointy, short, and wavy bangs going on. Circa 1997.

Exercise/Weight loss:
Total pregnancy weight gain: 36 pounds
Total weight loss: 36.6 pounds
Weight to lose for pre-baby weight: 0 pounds (goal met)
Weight to lose for wedding weight (last goal): 6.4 pounds 

I haven't lost any weight from last month's update (I actually gained a pound) but oh well. Like I said before, I have lost the baby weight and I am happy with that. (: I know I should set aside time a few days a week to do intentional workouts and it could be beneficial to me in more ways than just weight loss, but I tend to get so busy that I use busyness as an excuse to not make the time for it. Although I'm sure running around the house as much as I do does help burn calories. (: I will try to make exercise more of an effort this month - I know that even just the energy I'd get and endorphin-happy feeling would make it worthwhile.  I'm also looking forward to Spring when I can get back to taking Aiden on walks around the neighborhood!

Emotions:

I'm feeling more like myself again most of the time! Aiden has been sleeping a lot better (more on that below in his update) and I think that has played a big part in it. It seems almost stupid how something as trivial as sleep could affect your ability to be the best mom that you can be for your child, but it really does. I still face stressful situations in my life just like anyone else and just as much as I had before, but now that I get more sleep, I can actually be more present in my decision making and reactions to everyday life. One thing I've learned recently is that I have one of the most sensitive personalities of the 16 Myers-Briggs personality types. This is news to me, although it does make sense when I look back in my life, so I need to remain aware and protective of that sensitivity and view things that deeply affect me under this new light. I had always been the shove-all-emotions-down-into-a-bottle-until-you-explode type because I never knew what to do with my emotions or how to handle my very sensitive personality (or that it was even okay to have a sensitive personality). It has always been far easier to push people away and to be an ice queen than to show or even feel emotion. I'm thankful that my once annoyingly sensitive boyfriend has since become my biggest rally monkey/husband and helps me navigate through this entire segment of my personality that I never let myself dive into until recently. Because now I'm learning I'm even more sensitive than he is - which if you would have told me that five years ago, I would have tipped my head back and laughed and given you a gentle "there, there" pat on the back. Well, let's face it - I'm still the girl that tips her head back and laughs at minor mishaps, but now I feel deeply too. Balance. Soul Cycle. Hommmmmmmmm.

AIDEN

His reaction when asked to "smile for the ladies"

Height/Weight:

At ten months, Aiden is 29 1/4 inches long and weighs 19 pounds! This puts him in the 50th percentile for height and the 24th percentile for weight! And his cranial circumference is in the 93rd percentile! He definitely got the big football head from my side of the family haha

Refresher course:

+ At nine months he was 28 1/2 inches long and 18 pounds 13 ounces

+ At eight months he was 28 inches long and 18 pounds 7 ounces
+ At seven months he was 27 1/2 inches long and 17 pounds 13 ounces

+ At six months he was 27 1/4 inches long and 17 pounds 6 ounces

+ At five months he was 27 1/4 inches long and 16 pounds 13 ounces

+ At four months he was 26 inches long and 16 pounds

+ At three months he was 25 1/2 inches long and 14 pounds 10 ounces

+ At his two month check up he was 24 1/4 inches long and 13 pounds 7 ounces

+ At one month he was 22 inches long and 10 pounds 8 ounces

+ At birth he was 20 1/2 inches long and 6 pounds 14 ounces

2 weeks / 7 weeks / 15 weeks / 20 weeks / 24 weeks / 29 weeks / 34 weeks / 38 weeks / 42 weeks / 47 weeks

Hair/Eye color:

His eye color is definitely blue. I don't think they're changing at this point. (: His hair is still like mine and hard to peg down the exact color. It's sandy blonde/strawberry blonde/red/brown all depending on the lighting you're in. Mine is much darker of course, but mine is technically the darkest shade of blonde but appears brown (or I always thought it did?) but it looks red in sunlight. His hair texture is also like mine: curly/wavy/frizzy. And his hair never looks the same way twice after you wash it which is definitely like my hair too. Sometimes after washing my hair I look like a rabid poodle and other times it looks like #flawless Victoria's Secret hair. 99% of the time it looks like a rabid poodle though. My hair is definitely not my strong suit. The hair on the back of his head gets really frizzy (from sleeping and such) and it's getting more of a coarse texture. Since it's getting longer I'm starting to freak out that he will start getting dreadlock knots just like I do. Curly hair: can't comb it or it all turns to frizz, but if you don't comb it you get dreadlocks, and you can't wash it too often to therefore alleviate the dreadlocks and/or frizz because then it gets so dry and brittle that it falls apart. So these days I either just tie my hair up in a bun and hope for the best or straighten it which feels like rioting against myself.

Routine:

He wakes up a bit earlier now, around 7:15 or 7:30am instead of 8/8:30. We have a morning routine of getting ready for the day, taking the mail out (and having a sled ride to the mail box) and eating breakfast. Then his morning nap happens around 9/9:30 and lasts about an hour and a half if he sleeps well, then he takes his afternoon nap around 2 and sleeps another hour and a half. He nurses and snacks frequently throughout the day, and sometimes he will take a short evening snooze depending how active he's been or if any of his regular naps were shorter than normal. But for him to take an evening nap usually requires a ride around in the truck if we happen to go on errands. He goes to sleep for the night around 9/9:30pm and wakes up once around 3/4am to nurse and again around 5/6am to nurse. One time he went to sleep for the night at 8:20, and aside from waking up once for about 45 minutes, he was out for the night. Keep in mind that before that, he had been going to bed around 11pm. I think 8:20 is the earliest he has ever gone to sleep! We honestly didn't know what to do with ourselves because normally when he goes to bed is when we decide to go to bed since he's always up so late. Haha. What Aiden and I do in the day after his morning nap varies depending on what I need to do around the house, but we always sneak snuggles and play time and a little bit of tv time in between. Speaking of which, I can now proudly say I've seen every episode of Curious George on Netflix. It's one of those things I never thought I would accomplish in life. So we've been watching short animated movies and other such things until we can find another show he likes. Although, I'm sure if we watched Curious George all over again he wouldn't mind it. We watched two short films about the "Gruffalo" which I thought was THE cutest thing ever and I wish it was a recurring tv show instead of just two animated short films. I'm slightly obsessed. And yes, it's a kid's show haha. It's very "Where the Wild Things Are" meets Tim Burton (because Helena Bonham Carter). And it's all woodland themed just like his nursery. Squee!

Sleeping:

He has been doing SO much better with sleeping! Over the last few weeks I have been reading about a gagillion and a half articles about baby sleep, naps, overtiredness, sleep training, co-sleeping, this vs that vs the other thing, and how if you don't do this and that and have your child's college choices picked, career choices made, celebrate their 25th birthday, and have it all figured out by the time they're 6 months old, you've ruined your child's life. That followed by trying a thousand and a half of those different sleeping techniques all at once to get them sleeping well ASAP (to avoid scarring them for life) (which didn't work at all, I don't recommend doing that) and having it not work and then ending up feeling like I had definitely ruined my child's life, we finally found something that worked for us. Aiden had gotten to the point where he was waking up 5-7 times a night, unconsolably crying unless I nursed him back to sleep... Keep in mind he only woke 4 times a night as a newborn. (: Obviously something wasn't right if he was waking up more now at almost a year old than he did when he was just a few days/weeks old. We did a version of night weaning where each time he woke up I would nurse him for a minute less than the time before. The first night I started at 8 minutes, then at his next wake up that night I went down to 7 minutes, 6, 5, you get the idea. The next night I started at 7 minutes, then 6 minutes, 5, 4. I repeated this until I was starting the night at 1 minute. (And of course, I gave him have one regular, full nursing session in the night) After one week of doing that, his night wake ups went from 5-7 times a night to only two! (: And this is perfectly fine, because at his age it is normal for him to need to eat halfway through the night, and then he will nurse around 6am or so and that helps him continue to sleep until 7:30am. By making the nursing sessions shorter and helping him learn to soothe himself back to sleep (without crying it out), he was able to break the food/sleep association. Now he is well fed at 2 times a night (: And everyone is sleeping better. Even him! In turn with sleeping more soundly through the night, he is ready for bed about an entire hour earlier than he used to (: And he used to hardly sleep at all in the night so we are thankful for that extra hour. It's important for growing boys! (:

Eating:

He really enjoys eating just about everything (: He often prefers to feed himself, especially if it's something gravitationally friendly. (Like mashed potatoes on a spoon so when he flings the spoon there's a 85% chance they will stay on the spoon and not go flying at the wall or my face.) I've never tried "helping" his hand preference/dominance but he will always always grab the spoon with his right hand...and then pass the spoon to his left hand to feed himself. (: For those less aware, I am one of those strange left handed types, so yes, I get a little excited at the thought that he could be a leftie like me (: Although I've read in my gagillion baby article readings that he's too young to show hand dominance yet. I'm sure this all just means he'll be going to Harvard.

flight of the yogurts part 1

Clothing sizes:

He still fits in his 9 month clothes! Although I Generally Prefer putting him in 12 month onesies because well, his noggin is a little big. (: (93rd percentile big) But he's too skinny at the waist for 12 month pants, so whenever I put those on him instead of the 9 month size he has them kicked off within five minutes and he couldn't be happier about the accomplishment haha. So right now his dresser is stock-full with both 9 and 12 month sizes! 

Developments:

+ If you say "clap!" he will clap his hands. Even if he's crawling when you say it, he'll take a moment, stop, sit up, and clap his hands. (:

+ He doesn't always wave when you tell him to, but about 50% of the time he will wave. Just not always to the person you're asking him to wave to. Haha

+ He "rocks" and hums along to music. He loves changing the songs on his musical toys until he finds a song he likes and then proceeds to rock his body back and forth to it and hum. (: He also hums along when he hears songs on the tv or music that we play in the house. We watch Parenthood together as a family and he always knows when the theme song is starting so he hums right away when it does! Haha

+ Something I have noticed lately is the development of fear. It came out of no where and for no reason, but it has to develop at some point or we would have adults who have never been afraid of anything in their lives. As a kid, I was afraid of Snuffalupagus from Sesame Street and the Cave of Wonders (the sand tiger in Aladdin). Because what elephant in real life is honestly that hairy and what sand hill in the middle of the desert comes to life and becomes a tiger?! Not okay, people. Not okay. For him it's this little stuffed animal we have. As soon as Jason showed it to him, Aiden just kept pushing it away. If Jason tossed it to him, he leaned away and actually looked really bothered by it and would crawl away! After he was able to look at the toy more thoroughly, he seemed to be okay with it, but he still tosses it out of his way when he sees it. Haha. And the other night we were watching a Cars show on Netflix and when the tires were squealing on one of the cars he snuggled in really close and got a really worried look on his face! And this is the boy who otherwise makes all the truck and car noises for his toy trucks and cars. So, who knows, maybe it was too many car noises at once. But yes, there it is. Fear. Although, him snuggling in to me was definitely the best. He stayed sitting that way with me for about a half an hour. (: (And no he wasn't afraid the entire time! He just didn't like the tire squealing noise for the few seconds that it played. He was just too comfortable with the snuggles to move.)  (:

+ He still has 6 teeth but it really seems like he has a bunch that will be coming in soon. The way he bites and chews on his fingers I'm guessing he has 4-6 more teeth coming in! 

+ He knows how to climb stairs now! He used to be content with climbing the 4 stairs that lead to the two large landings on our staircase, (because that's where the cat food is and nothing is more exciting than floor food, right?! yuck haha) but now he just likes to keep going all the way to the top of the stairs! I don't want to discourage him from he exercise and learning, so whenever we hear him making a break for it I just follow behind him very closely. Our stairs are not carpeted  and the banister is very "open" so I don't want him to have any big tumbles. He does pretty good making it all the way up the stairs though!

+ Sometimes he tries to repeat what you say. The other day he was making his usual yodeling baby babble sounds, and I said to Jason, "he loves to yodel" (which is harder of a tongue twister than one might think), and the next thing he said sounded a whole lot like the baby babble version of "I love to yodel". (approximately something like "La Lo Lu Lo-lull")
+ He says "daddy" TONS throughout the day, especially when Jason is at work (: He says "da!" with great enthusiasm for "dog" when he sees the neighbor's dog. He also says "wuffh" (also, for dog, "woof"), he still says "kitty" and then of course all of his random baby babble (: Sometimes he says "MAM MAM MAM" for "mom" haha. He also likes to recount his days by telling stories: over the weekend Aiden got a ride on the 4-wheeler with Jason in the backyard, so naturally he was making truck noises during and soon after the ride. The next day when I took him sledding in the same part of our yard, he started making truck noises and saying "da!" over and over. ("Da!" is also how he says daddy).

+ He is getting better with furniture/wall walking and he is getting better at walking beside you if you hold one of his hands. He uses his other arm to help himself balance. It's pretty new that he's doing this, so he still tumbles even though you're holding his hand, but it is improvement!

+ He can't quite stand on his own yet but sometimes if you let go while he's standing he will stand for a second or two before dropping slowly onto his bottom. I'm pretty sure once he gets better at standing on his own for longer periods that walking will happen soon after! It's both scary and exciting that any day now he could take his first steps! I hope I don't miss it and I hope I can somehow get it on camera or maybe get his second steps on camera. (:

General Preferences:

+ He likes going for rides in his sled in the morning - sometimes we see the neighbor dog and he comes to say hi. Aiden hasn't been entirely sure of the dog since the dog is so much bigger than him, but he seems to like watching him from outside the window (: And he does like to see the dog go fetch and wag his tail. And Aiden usually gets a kiss or two from the dog (:

+ Snuggles! He loves to cuddle up and snuggle especially if we are watching a movie or show together. (: He loves snuggling when he wakes up from naps too.

+ He's figured out how to push his trucks along while he crawls all around the kitchen and living room and he makes truck noises while doing it. It's so cute. (: And also, a toy doesn't have to be a truck or a car or even have wheels for him to push it around and make truck noises. He can make just about any household object into a toy "truck" haha (: One of his more recent "toy trucks" has been the vacuum cleaner. Haha

+ He is obsessed with walking! Of course - he is not walking on his own yet, but he has a little push cart that he pushes around the family room, or he will push a chair on the hardwood floor, etc and walk with it. He always gets a little frustrated when he comes to the end of a room or gets stuck because he just wants to keep moving! (: 

+ He has started climbing the stairs and he loves climbing all the way to the top.

+ He still enjoys bath time a lot and I have really been looking forward to Summer (but when am I not?) so that we can spend time at the beach again. 
+ He loves peek a boo and suspenseful noises like, "IIIIIIIII'm gunna get you!" He gets so excited over that.
+ For some reason it just cracks him up when I pretend to sneeze. He even copies me and goes "chu!" and throws almost his whole body forward and just starts laughing and laughing!
+ He loves to be held and lots of physical play. He knows how to wear his parents out! Which is how we're always ready for bed when he goes to sleep, haha
+ I've been doing some cleaning and sorting through the house, so Aiden's nursing pillow from when he was a newborn has been out in his room. He always climbs over to it, then sits in it, then just plays with his books or any other toys that are within reach and reclines in it as if it's an inner tube in a pool on a hot summer day. He cracks me up!

+ He loves getting rides in his "Segway". He stands in his little push cart and we push him around the family room. He gets so excited about it!

+ He likes to throw a light-up ball of his down through the baby gate to watch it bounce down the stairs. This started as a game between him and Jason, and now he just does it whenever. He's also done it with the remote now, so I hope he won't start chucking everything downstairs haha

What we've been up to:

+ Taking Aiden's monthly photos (the ones you see at the top of every "monthly update" blog post) has gotten increasingly more ...interesting with each month. (: As he gets more mobile, he doesn't like to sit still for photos so much. (: ....As you can see from the photos at the very top of this blog post. Haha. He likes to stand up against the pillows, knock over the sign, rub his hands all over the chalk...everything except sit still for photos. But he gives me lots of smiles in between. It's lots of fun and I can usually still get a couple non-blurry/facing me/smiling pictures haha (: 

+ Last week it wasn't super cold out so we went to play in the snow. I took him out to the back yard to take him for a sled ride when I realized hello?!, we have all this pushed up snow from having the snow plowed off our driveway for the last few months, what better thing to do than to make a sledding hill out of it?! I looked around the snow pile and found a place that was almost a slide shape already, and I remembered there was a leaf rake out back from when we took pictures in the Fall. So I raked some snow because I'm spiffy and didn't feel like going back to the garage for a shovel and I finished building up the rest of the slide. I put him in his sled and down he went! He laughed and laughed and he must have gone down the little slide a couple dozen times that afternoon. I am looking forward to getting out and having him use it more on warmer-cold days because it won't be too many more weeks now until the snow starts melting. And while nothing could make me happier than the absence of snow and the presence of Hawaii, I know that he, as a child, probably loves the stuff and will almost be sad in a way when the snow activities will be done until the end of this year. 

Calvin ponders life atop the sledding hill.

+ He also likes going sledding at the sledding hill at the park! We've only been able to go once and it was super packed when we went, but he liked seeing the older kids go down the big hill and he got to go for lots of rides down a little hill with Jason. (:

+ Did you think I forgot about the bathroom? I haven't. It's still there. I still haven't done anything to it. I got rid of some old towels, but that's about it. It is starting to drive me a little insane having it such a disaster of a half-completed construction zone, but we have so many projects going on elsewhere in the house that the bathroom will just have to wait. Like I've been saying. Four more months and it will probably be done. Probably.

+ As far as what's been keeping me busy and from redoing the bathroom goes, I've been working at cleaning house. Not cleaning the house, but I mean getting rid of stuff. I read "the life changing magic of tidying up" by Marie Kondo a few months ago and while I was on a similar page before reading the book, it just gave me all the motivation to keep going in the direction that I am going which is getting rid of all of the things. Seems rather insane since we just went on a shopping trip over New Years. But what we got there was mostly clothes and books and toys for Aiden (he didn't even really have any toys before we went) and then a few furniture pieces and some "joy-sparking" decorative pieces. When we moved here, I didn't have time to sort through my things and get rid of stuff. It was just pack everything I had ever owned, and go. We never had a garage sale growing up, so I'm not really kidding about the "pack everything I have ever owned" part. Last Summer we had a pretty successful garage sale and I was able to get rid of a bunch of stuff but it wasn't nearly enough stuff that I needed to get rid of. My closet was still bulging and too full to even put clean clothes away. My house is constantly messy because I don't know where certain things should go and then there's all the things that I don't like for one reason or another but hang on to for guilt purposes.

Well, a couple of weeks ago I "KMed" my closet and got rid of 55% of every piece of clothing I own. (You think I didn't count - I did.) As the book instructs, you're supposed to lay out everything you own of one category (clothes, for example) so you can see how much you really have. It's very eye opening and almost disgusting. All of my clothes, accessories, etc (minus shoes and purses) covered a full sized bed and the pile was 4 feet high. The pile was 4 feet high. Not the pile+the bed. Just the pile! UGH how did I get so many clothes?! So yes. I got rid of most of them and I feel so much lighter. I've been going through other categories (books, kitchen ware, blankets are next) in the house and saving things up for a garage sale in Summer and selling things here and there. It has been an awesome experience so far, and while the house is rather chaotic while I'm doing all this, I am starting to see differences and things are looking and feeling lighter. I've always wanted to live with very few objects (cozy minimalist here) but I guess I never knew where to begin or that it was okay to let things go even if they had life left in them. I never valued myself enough to know that I could let things go and live in my dream home now. The first picture in this paragraph is all of my clothes piled up on the bed, the second is my closet and clothes "before" . Now for the after... (: 

Side note: I used to have everything that was in the "before" picture of the closet plus 4 large bins of clothes plus an entire dresser of clothes. Now everything is hanging. All of my clothes are in the closet now. No dresser, nada. Like I mean, my pj's are hanging in that "after" photo, y'all. (I've decided to just let the "y'all" happen). The only clothes not pictured are underwear/socks/bathing suits and scarves which I pared down to a minimum also. The best part is, I'm hardly throwing anything away - it's all either being sold or donated. Ripped/destroyed clothes will be recycled at a textile recycling location. What a difference! And this is just my clothes...I am doing this to the entire house. (: It's going to be a few months before the house is completely purged of non-joy sparking things, but I am so excited! Every day I'm getting rid of a couple of boxes/bags of garage sale items or recycling. 

+ Learning about static electricity while reading the morning paper

+ We went swimming at the high school pool again - this time Aiden was going all at it trying to swim. (:

+ We celebrated Aiden's first Valentine's Day! The week before, we made some finger paintings on paper. 

It took a lot of convincing, and trying to prevent him from eating paint (and failing), and to be honest it was mostly me who ended up doing the painting. When presented with blobs of paint on paper, he would just poke the tip of his finger in the paint and then look at his finger for a few seconds and then try/succeed at putting his painty finger in his mouth. There wasn't much messy/swooshy/hand slidy painting happening on his part so I helped show him what to do with the paint to get it all over the paper, although he still preferred his finger tip method to painting (and eating). We cut out the paintings into hearts and strung them across the back of the shutter doors we put up behind our living room couch. I'm totally in love with how it looks and even though Valentine's Day is over, I can see having it hung up for quite a while, or definitely at least until we have something else as equally joyful and colorful made to put up there.

mr. big personality himself haha

+ In the days before Valentine's Day, I couldn't help but internally chuckle at all the moms of kids in school who had to make their kids' Valentines last minute on Thursday night before they needed to be brought in to class. Fast forward to Saturday night, the day before Valentine's Day: "Oh crap! Just because he's not in school doesn't mean he doesn't have friends! Aiden we need to make Valentines! Come back! I need your thumb! No, not again! Don't stick the stamp pad in your mouth!" 

Touche Lord, touche. In the end we made cute little Valentines that said "Will you bee mine" and made little bees out of his thumbprints. He helped hand them out at church the next morning and everyone survived, including the stamp pad.

+ Jason and I (and Aiden was our chaperone to make sure there was no funny business) went on a Tim Horton's date. It was a long Winter evening and we had nothing to do and I realized I wanted a frozen mocha thing and that Jason and I hadn't gone there together since the day I found out I was pregnant. So, you know. It's been a while. Aiden had a few bites of a couple different donut holes and nearly made a mess of my frozen mocha thing and overall it was a really nice evening. Focus group testing: The donut holes only affected his bedtime by + 00:30:00.

+ The next day we went and saw a hockey game over in Canada. Aiden liked watching the puck go back and forth all over the ice and he liked watching the Zamboni make its rounds during each break period. The only thing he didn't like was when a team scored, haha. Because when a team scored the entire very Canadian crowd (including Aiden's very Canadian dad) went nuts and he didn't like all the noise. After both a very stereotypical Tim Horton's date and hockey game in Canada, I was starting to get the feeling that whatever American-ness I had was being snuffed out by Canadians and for the first time in my life I felt a very real need to tailgate and watch football and light fireworks to make up for it all. Very bizarre. I began thinking, "Okay, we have sparklers at home. Check. We have a tv at home, I could probably find football somehow...check. How to you tailgate? Just ....drop the tailgate? Ok. Check." America.

+ So technically I haven't started doing this just yet so it's not something I've really been "up to" yet, but starting this week I am getting into the more serious stages of planning Aiden's birthday. :( Ever since I was a kid I loved planning my birthday parties and I LOVE making things so really this is right up my alley and I know I will have a lot of fun planning it and putting everything together...but the fact that my baby will be turning one is what has me all torn up :( So over the next few weeks I'll be making invitations, decorations, shopping for party supplies, and figuring out snacks and food. And then I'll have to set aside one good day to just cry haha

+ Trying yogurt. General impression: not impressed.

--

And now, a delightfully interpretive dance with an imaginary tambourine for my people.

this is the "there's been a downturn in the watermelon industry" face.

As  always, you can check out more of our adventures (with frequent updates)

by following me on instagram - @marlyssa 

Happy ten months, Aiden. I don't know why it is, but it seems like every children's movie has one end game: to forever and permanently emotionally wreck the parents of the children who are watching said movie/s with said child/ren. Take this morning for example: you and I were watching "An Extremely Goofy Movie" and at one point Goofy says, "Gawrsh, one day you're changing their diapers and the next they're going off to college." WRECKED. I know we're currently in the former part of that sentence, smůla, but one day - maybe on a day when you're reading this on your own - you will be going off to college (or starting a business and working hard) and you'll be all grown up. And these days filled with cuddles and naps and play time and discovering each and every new thing about this curious world around you will all be behind us. And all I will have left of this time are the pictures and memories of the baby/toddler/child/teenager you once were. I'm crying writing this - and I'm having to tell myself that it's okay to cry over things like this - I'm sure by the time you're grown up you will be well used to it - and I think you will be understanding of it. I've known since before you were born that you would be very sensitive and intuitive to the emotions of the people around you - and daddy and I already see that in you. I wish I could capture each moment and put it in a box to pull out and save for later, to hang on to on the days when you're grown up and older when I'll miss your snuggles and falling asleep on me or in my arms - but I can't do that so I'll enjoy them as much as I can while I still can. Maybe if you're reading this Aiden, and you happen to be somewhere in the ballpark of 240 months old, give your momma a hug. There's a good chance she would enjoy it more than you know.