Early Childhood Development

You know how kids don't understand the concept of larger numbers for some time then once they learn words like million and bazillion and their meanings they use them for anything over ten right? Aiden does something a little different and it makes me laugh every time. When he wants to say a high number he says a whole bunch of numbers like, "Omg! That's eighty, sixty, seventy, sixteen!" (80,60,70,16)

All of a sudden he's been interested in Math and he's taking to it pretty well. He is constantly asking me out of the blue "Mom. What's 4 and 4 plus?" and then after I answer "Four plus four equals eight." he asks "what's 8 and 8 plus?", "...16 and 16 plus?" ... Dare we have another accountant in the family?

Oh and now instead of 20 questions from the 4+yo, it's 1 question 20 ways. The question: "What if?". For example I could say "Aiden, please pick up your coat off the floor." And then it starts "What if it wasn't on the floor? What if it was my shoes? What if I wanted to wear it? What if I was going to give it to Brady?..." all while he's still slowly reaching over in the I-keep-tripping-over-my-feet way 4yos do things. "Aiden. Pick up your coat!"

The other day we were out and he wanted to run ahead into a field where some kids his age were playing. I gave him some freedom to but of course he took it too far and kept going and going...showing "how fast" he could run. He was really far away from me (& Colin) almost further than my voice could reach but he heard me "AI-DEN!" and came back. (Breathe out). Afterwards I took the second occasion to tell or remind him that Mom wants him close to her for safety reasons. I admit I wanted to scare him a bit so that he would listen to me out of fear. Fear that "some mean people in the world would want to take him" or "a car could have come up and hit and hurt him really badly". He let me do all the talking and by the looks on his face I grew more confident in thinking I was really getting through to him. Then of course he proved otherwise and said "Superman will save me." In enough-of-Superheros-disgust I looked at him with my mouth open attempting to come up with a powerful comeback as he looked away saying "I think I see Clark Kent...Yea!" Maybe he got it, I don't know.

This morning Brady bit Aiden for the second time this week and ever. I do remember Aiden biting at this age, when he had a new little baby brother too. Aiden was biting his friends though; Brady's biting his brother.

This morn, Aiden showed me his 5th dry Pull Up from overnight. Off to a candy store.

All of this is part of their development, and it is fun to watch. Painful at times, but fun. Patience.