Slimy & Slimier: a Game of Kings

This week, Aden and Nugget decided that it was time to give the world a pictoral guide to Slimy & Slimier. If you've never witnessed the glory of this event before, pay close attention - it's a very sophisticated game, full of delicate subtlety and absolute precision, and these players are at the top of their game. For dedicated fans, it doesn't get much better than this.

T'anksgibbons

All right - now that we've gone for weeks without posting, now that we've lost just about every reader of this blog, now that our ratings are in the pits, NOW is the time for massive posting. Oh yeah - that's what we call stragety. Or stagrety. Or... something. Definitely not strategy.

Anyhow, Thanksgiving was a blast. The Withers clan set up camp here at Overhill, arriving in waves. First in, Aunt Wren & Uncle Joe, followed by Grandma Marjorie... with a surprise appearance by Grandpapa Scott! Well, he called ahead, so it wasn't really a surprise, but I'm trying to build drama here.

Aden was thrilled to see each and every one of the houseguests, especially because they gave him kisses on his belly and took him from his parents whenever they needed to do other stuff (the parents liked that too!). All sorts of new developmental milestones were achieved that week, including: giving high fives, babbling in a death metal / cookie monster voice, getting everyone sick with a cold, blowing snot, throwing things at the dog, and eating delicious mashed-up "big people" food. It was pretty awesome.

On Thanksgiving day itself, Melissa, Aden & I went over to Uncle Chris & Aunt Kim's house, and had a lovely mid-day dinner with Chris, Kim, Steven and Grammy Barbara. Sadly, we don't have any pictures since I was sporting a massive migraine on the way over (which thankfully resolved itself by the time we sat down to eat) and forgot to pack the camera. But dinner was great, and Aden even tried a little pie and squash, which he enjoyed very much. Since it was unseasonably warm, we got to play on the lawn after eating, which is the first time Aden's ever gotten to crawl around on grass (that we know).

After that, we came back home to Overhill for an evening Thanksgiving dinner - by the end of the night, the turkey wasn't the only one who was stuffed!

While it was sad to see everyone go at the end of the week, Aden got some good one-on-one time with each and everyone, and had a great time.

As mentioned earlier, Aden and Nugget reached an entirely new level in their relationship this past week when Aden finally started interacting directly with the dog. Namely by draping himself over the dog, who had been sleeping, and pounding on Nugget's flank with a toy! Shockingly, the dog didn't eat him, and just laid there taking the abuse. Of course, I didn't have my camera for that... but I sure had it ready when Aden came back for round two, climbing up on the supine dog and grabbing fistfuls of fur. The dog didn't even stir for that one.

Since that formative event, the two have begun playing a game that we here like to call "slimy and slimier." It goes like this:

1. Aden puts a toy in his mouth
2. Aden takes the toy out of his mouth
3. Aden puts the toy in the dog's mouth
4. The dog chews on the toy for a second or two
5. Aden takes the toy out of the dog's mouth
6. Aden puts the toy back in his mouth
7. Repeat

So far, everyone seems pretty happy with this game, and Aden's shown no signs of lycanthropy (that's what dog drool causes, right? Just a slight case of werewolf-ism?), so we're going to let them continue building their buddyship.

Clearly, we've got plenty to be thankful for. And the gibbons aren't so bad, once you get used to all the banana peels around the house.

Working up to Thanksgiving

Whew. That was a whole lot of turkey. In fact, we got so conked out on all that good stuff, we're weeks behind. So, let's start with the Thanksgiving ramp-up.

Aden's been around family since before we even touched down on American soil - Gramma Marjorie was there on our first trip to visit him in Guatemala, and Grammy Barbara met us at the airport on our triumphant return home (I think that if the airport officials had let her, she would have been in the control tower making sure that they brought us down safely). But Thanksgiving promised to be a veritable onlsaught of relatives, so we began warming up the weekend before.

First, we brought Aden to visit Grandpa Bob and Gramma Leslie. We all had a great time - Bob proved fluent in Aden's native tongue (gibberish) - whenever Aden would squak at him, Bob would squak right back, which Aden of course found hilarious. Both Bob and Leslie read this blog, so we they prepared for the visit from The Supreme Bananan Smasher by stocking up on extra cleaning supplies... which, astoundingly, they didn't have to break out once! Bob and Leslie's beagle, Twinkle, wasn't too excited to meet the new houseguest, but did very well under the circumstances, and we've got high hopes for a future Aden/Twinkle friendship.

After that, Aden got to meet Uncle Chris, Aunt Kim, Cousin Steven and Great-Aunt Carol. Again, many hikinks were had, and there were giggles all around. The kid's a charmer!

We also had a visit from our friend Jen and her kids Jalen and Isabelle (I have a hard time remembering exactly when in the weekend, given the haze of turkey and stuffing that clouds my memories of the last few weeks). Aden fell in love at first sight with Jalen, which makes us wonder if he might have had an older foster-brother in Guatemala. Jalen is 5, and Aden crawled right up to him and hugged him at first sight. That was pretty fantastically cute.

And then of course, there were all the visits from Bill, Tori, and Jessica (all of whom, of course, are Aunts or Uncles in their own way), not to mention Ben & Kate Hitmar. Oh, and Aden's first visit to Schwadesign, where he got a ride from Josh; Amy and Alyson stood around and made googly eyes at him; and Anna wanted to eat his ankles.

Given that Aden made it through all of this pre-Thanksgiving build-up without a hitch, his status as a charmer has officially been confirmed. As always, though, we'll let the pictures be the final proof of that.

Crawling out of the tryptophan coma

If there's anyone out there still reading this blog, we apolgize. The entire Withers family has been hibernating, trying to metabolize the huge dose of turkey, potatoes and stuffing that we recently ingested. Regular posting will resume as soon as we can roll off the barcalounger and download photos.

However, it should be noted, pictures or not, that Aden really digs every one of the relatives he's been introduced to in the last two weeks... almost as much as he loves pie. And that's saying a lot, because he really, really, really loves pie.

3 Generations of Goofballs

Well, Grandpapa Witherses visit concluded today, and it was a complete raving success. GP bestowed all sorts of wisdom upon Aden, like ways to improve his funny face techniques, the joy of hollering through the storm door, advanced belly tickling, and various other Grandpapa-type things. To our amazement, Aden did not try to use Papa's moustache as a handle for wild acrobatic tricks - we had assumed that was a given.

It's great to see Aden thriving so much as a social butterfly, especially since his dance card for the next week or so promises to be packed. Hopefully everyone will be able to handle his love of drool and fart noises. Personally I think that in his hands, they're elevated to an art form, but we all know that not everyone knows what to think of avant-garde art. And if there's one thing that Aden's proving on a daily basis, he's a (little) man bent on pushing the boundaries of his age. Like Picasso without all the anger-management issues, or Van Gogh with both ears, or, uh, Jackson Pollock with a bottle full of formula. You get the idea.

Blogsplosion!!!!!

Holy smokes people - it's easy to fall behind on this whole blogging thing! Especially when there's so dang much going on... since the last post, Aden's done so much more than mangle bananas. He's gone on long walks with the dogs, met his new buddy Julian, gotten his first ever Schwadesign shirt, met his Grandpapa Withers, learned to smoosh his face against the storm door, gotten tickled, laughed a lot, climbed multiple sets of stairs (yeek!), licked all sorts of things that shouldn't be licked, done a bunch of stuff that I won't have room to mention (sorry, folks!), taken his first trip to Ikea, and generally been incredibly cute in any number of diverse situations. Phew!

Rather than go on and on, we'll just let the pictures do the talking... and there's plenty of them to be had!

Rants & proclamations

In the last post, I mentioned Aden's favorite new game, "Stand Up in Front of the Stove and Yell Into the Oven Window." It should be noted that this is actually just a new subset of his old favorite game, "Stand in Front of Any Window, Pound on the Glass and Rant Gibberish, Pausing Only to Lick and Drool on Said Glass."

Yesterday was a big morning - Aden woke up at 4, so there was plenty of time to play The Window Game, as well as the Harass the Cats Game. That one's great because now that the weather's cold, the cats don't run so fast, and they keep pausing in warm spots so Aden can catch up to them.

In fact it was such a long morning that he even decided to try something new, and dabbled with this napping thing that everyone's talking about. Nothing major, mind you - he's not ready for a total napping commitment - but he got a good 45 minutes in laying on his dad's chest post-bottle. So, as the saying goes... baby steps.