Aidan loves playing in water. Whether it’s with his sand and water table on the balcony, or at the swimming pool or beach, he thoroughly enjoys it. What with the hot summer weather we’ve been having lately, Gwen bought a plastic collapsible pool for him to play in. Tonight we set it up in our porch, and you’ll be able to tell from the pictures how it went:

You can see more, and higher resolution photos in the Picture Barn.

PS: no geocaching this weekend. Well, we did pick up one cache yesterday (on our way back from MEC), but it was just on a whim (since it was close).

With the onset (onslaught?) of summertime temperatures, the door to our balcony has been open more often than not. Aidan loves going out there and playing in the water and sand table. He also likes greeting people. It’s not unusual for him to look at someone and then greet them with a “Hi!” or a “Hellooooo!”. He’s since added “Good Morning” to his repertoire, but the good doesn’t come out clearly, and it doesn’t matter if the sun is setting. Thus, the binner* pushing his cart down our lane this morning was met with:

Helloooo! Hi! Gooo morning! Morning! Hi!

And as is typical, Aidan is so disappointed when he doesn’t get anything back in return.
*Binners, for those not-big-city-dwellers, are people who typically push grocery carts around the city collecting recyclables. Often they find recyclables in garbage bins (dumpsters) and the like. Thus, ‘binners’.

On Friday we went out for fish and chips. As an aside, “our” fish and chips place has gone through a number of ownership changes, some good, some bad. The lastest owners/managers are of South Asian descent. When we first started going there, it was owned/run by some Newfoundlanders. At the time it was called “The Windjammer Inn” and had an appropriately “English” fish-and-chips decor. It’s now called “The Winjjammer Inn”. The decor hasn’t changed in the least. And, frankly, the fish and chips is better than it has been in some time.

Anyway, as we were completing our meal, a couple of older ladies seated behind us finished their meal and had to walk by us to leave. One of the ladies, hunched over and using a walker, stopped by the table and exchanged some words with Aidan. She had a nice soft voice with a quaint Irish lilt. As she left the restaurant, Aidan turned to her and yelled in his gentle voice, “Bye-bye Granny!”. He repeated it again, just for her benefit.

Granny is, of course, what we’ve taught Aidan to call his great-grandmother — also short, grey haired, and with an Irish lilt. It was quite cute.

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Today, we got an unexpected phone call from Gwen’s uncle Paul. He and his wife Jeanette were in town visiting her sister down in White Rock and wanted to get together. So, we frantically cleaned the house. Fortunately we were in good shape, having cleaned (and vacuumed!) most of the upstairs yesterday. We had a good visit and walked to Red Robin for some mid-afternoon lunch. Aidan missed his afternoon nap and was predictibly wound up. Fortunately, in a good way — hyper and restless, but not cranky.Aidan was pretty friendly with both, warming up pretty quickly. In fact so warm, that he happily brought Jeanette books to read and deposited himself in her lap, and climbed all over Paul. He was very much in their face, but I don’t think they minded in the least.

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Not much geocaching this weekend; we tried some yesterday but only got one. The main reason was that the boy was pretty cranky and we were having a hard time keeping him occupied and happy while we searched for caches. Plus, it’s been pouring rain all weekend. Maybe we’ll pick up a couple tomorrow.

Oh yes, Aidan is cute.

But sometimes he can knock us around a bit.

For example, recall this:

That’s what Aidan’s room looked like in March of 2005. We had cleaned out the “spare” room, painted over the ugly lime green walls with a very aesthetically pleasing two-tone pattern with a nice “jungle animal” themed border. I think that Debbie Travis would have been impressed. Here’s what it looks like now:

Yup. Yesterday afternoon, Aidan decided to do some remodelling of his own. He’d been picking at the border for a few weeks — or seemed to have been. I never actually saw him doing anything, but we could see where the border was starting to come away from the wall as if someone had been picking at it. It wasn’t Gwen or I, nor the cats, so that only leaves one person. A couple of weeks ago, he actually removed a small section of the border near the corner — I found the remains in his crib the next day. This time, you can see he removed as much of it as he could. I discovered this as I was putting him to bed last night. He must have done it earlier during the day when he was in his crib for what was nominally supposed to be a nap but was more “quiet time”. Hmmm, yeah, no wonder.

So now what? Do we replace the border? I think we have some left over, but I’m not sure if we have enough to replace what’s been removed. And, what’s to stop him from removing the replacement? If we don’t replace it, what do we do? Do we just leave it for now? If we remove the backing (which is still attached to the wall), a somewhat uneven line will be revealed where the two paint tones meet.

We’re … torn….

PS: I took the “after” picture tonight as I was putting him to bed. He thought that having his picture taken as he was going to bed was the neatest thing. He sat up, smiled a huge grin, and repeatedly yelled “Cheese!”. That’s pretty irresistible.