BitterSweetLife

You wouldn’t believe the things this kid says.

Apparently he hasn’t yet learned to appreciate the deep spiritual heritage behind his name. I don’t know for sure, but my impression from reading about ‘Saint Aidan’ was that he was a thoughtful, soft-spoken man. Our Aidan qualifies on the first count, sort of, but definitely not the second.

Just the other day Lindsay and I were sitting down to our first post-delivery Boggle game, Boggle being something of a tradition in our family. The game was in process, the timer running, when the little fellow piped up: “Hey Mom, do you see the word I see? It’s a five-letter word that begins with ‘L’ and ends with ‘S-E-R.’ In between there’s an ‘O.’

“I don’t see it, Aidan,” said Lindsay.
I was slightly annoyed, not seeing why Aidan should be helping his mom and not me. But I looked for the word too. “I’m not finding it either, kiddo.”
At the same moment, Lindsay and I both looked up from the Boggle cubes. “Hey…wait a minute.” We both glanced at the baby and he had this smug little grin on his face.

“AIDAN JAMES VANDERHORST!” said Lindsay.
Oh boy. I rolled my eyes. “Aidan, really.”



A couple days ago R. Sherman offered to send over some MU baby clothes, and because I knew Sherman meant it sincerely, I mentioned it to Aidan after his midmorning nap. He was still rubbing his eyes, but he muttered something about how he’d been wanting some cloth diapers anyway. This kid is wicked, I tell you. We’ve got to rein him in.

Lately he’s taken to wearing his little stocking cap and swaggering around the apartment. One moment he’ll be lying there in his flannel blanket, looking around wide-eyed as Bambi, then suddenly ZING, ZING, one-liners are whizzing everywhere.

Just this afternoon he told me to step on it with the diaper change. “Being too weak to change my own diapers is bad enough. Do you think I like lying around here naked?”

I deliberately moved very slowly as I toweled him off and buttoned up his little Onesie. He got pretty steamed, but I think he learned a valuable lesson. This kid may talk some outrageous trash (I won’t even tell you what he said about his doctor at the hospital) but his dad is not about to be pushed around by a six-day old.