Posted by: Alex
Erin will probably be our last child. Perhaps if I didn’t have to work things may be different, but two is all I feel I can handle as a working mom. Knowing this, I find I am mindful of all the ‘lasts’. This will be the last time I am cocooned up in a hospital with my brand new baby. This will be the last time I buy size 1 nappies. This will be the last time my days revolve around feed, burp sleep. The list is long.
At the same time I am fearful that all Erin’s ‘firsts’ will erase Aidans. I worry that I didn’t pay enough attention to remembering with him, because I didn’t think I could ever forget anything about him. But I will if I don’t record them somewhere, and that’s what this is about: Remembering Aidan in all his first child glory.
Like the way before he could crawl that he would spin around in circles on his bum, laughing all the way.
And how his dad got his first laugh out of him by beatboxing. And it only worked once.
How we waited till the only 2 days I have ever been out of town for work to start crawling. I was sitting at the airport waiting for my plane home when he upped and crawled after the cat.
How he was born with the tip of one ear folded over, and Hunny tirelessly tried to stop him sleeping it into the same fold. It straightened out on its own soon enough.
How he ate everything when we started solids. Any veg, loved his dads bolognaise, pureed chicken.
His first word (after dada) was ‘up’ not a request to be picked up, but a decription of where the lights were. Then his Afrikaans Ouma taught him the Afrikaans equivalent, and lights became ‘up-boo’
For months lights were ‘up-boos’.
Butterflies were bitty-bitty-byes.
He still struggles with pronunciation of some consonants. ‘L’ is substituted with ‘Y’, ‘J’ with ‘D’; so Jelly sounds like Dey-yey.
He can make almost anything into a motorcar, even if motorcar is a block of wood and ‘motorcar has no wheels’
Thursday is his favourite day of the week, 3 his favourite number, and he loves spotting ‘A for Aidan!’
He loves trains, fire-engines and space rockets and will beg you to play Youtube video’s of these things over and over again.
The most prized of his matchbox car collection is ‘truck flames on the side’
He can twist my arm in an instant with his mispronounciation of ‘Pweese Mama’, and he is incredibly polite when half asleep, taking his bottle with a ‘Tank-oo Mama’ (yeah, we still give him one bottle a day – when he wakes at around 4AM)
He has the tiniest freckles on his nose – you have to be right up close to see them, and the most amazing eyelashes.
He has the coolest belly-laugh that he cannot control, and a naughty sense of humour already, deliberately answering your questions incorrectly with a grin on his face: ‘Green light means STOP!’
He is clever and sneaky, and will send you out of the room if he wants to be naughty, and ask the other parent if one says no.
He hates loud noises unless they are his own. Thunder sends him running to a parent for a cuddle. He gives the best hugs.
He amazes us daily with his ability to remember songs, rhymes and stories in two languages. When he was just starting talking and brought out a new word we would first have to figure out what language it was before we could try to distinguish the word.
He talks to his toys, takes some to bed with him, even putting them on his pillow and tucking them in with a blankie.
When he went through a brief fear of the plughole stage he was worried for his bath toys, insisting we take all of them out of the bath before we took the plug out.
He loves to help his dada make food, and he eats his supper much better if he has helped make it. He also watches the food channel with his dad.
I feel so blessed to be a part of this boy’s life, being able to watch him grow up, but as he passes each milestone I know I will miss the little boy he is right now.
I love you my gorgeous sweetheart boy.
