This year Aidan ‘got’ Hallowe’en.

He picked his costume out with his mother several weeks ago while they were at Old Navy … he wanted to be a bat, but they didn’t have any in his size.  Instead, he chose to be an elephant.  And, was quite happy to be an elephant.

Nana and I took him down to the False Creek Co-op to Trick-or-Treat since our neighbourhood here in Fairview is *awful* for Trick-or-Treating.  Case in point: we got a total of 4 kids all night long.  Listening to some of the people down at False Creek, by 7:30 pm some of them had gone through 150 or more.

Anyway, Aidan had a grand time, knocking at the doors (yelling “Knock knock!” each time) and mostly greeting everyone with a “Trick or Treat!” and a “Thank you!”.  There were a few occasions of raiding the candy bowl before the person actually offered the bowl, but it was pretty good.  And, he was pretty excited to be getting candy, often telling me “Look at all the candy I got!” as he left houses.

The rain held off and it was pretty warm to boot.  By the end of our hour out, he was getting tired and spooked by some of the costumes and decorated houses.  The excitement was wearing off and his toddler mind was starting to process some of what was happening around him.  There were a few houses with ‘scary’ music playing that he shunned, and by the end of it, any moderately sinister pumpkin was enough to disqualify a house in his mind.  No matter, he had plenty of fun and got more than enough candy.

The door of last house we went to was answered by a cute little girl about his age wearing a bee costume.  He just stopped and stared at her.  I don’t think she even got a ‘Trick or Treat!’.  She looked at him and happily gave him some candy.  He continued to stare.  She gave him a big smile and asked “Want more?” and proceeded to give him more.  I had to pull him away.  After the door shut, he turned to me and said “That was a very pretty bumblebee!”.  We headed back to the car for a short drive home and in addition to admitting he was tired (he never does that!) he also told us about the pretty bumblebee.  Very cute!

Aidan attends his first day of preschool a little later today. Here’s some pics of his outfit. He looks so grown-up!

Tonight Aidan was pretty tired after a hard day being a toddler.  Aside: today was also a pretty successful day on the toilet training front.  Fingers crossed.

Anyway, back to tonight.  Going to bed, he wanted a book to be read to him.  However, we’d already been through the pre-bedtime negotiations and we’d settled on watching a Peep.  After Peep, it was off to bed and he managed to grab a book and tried to keep it with him in the bed.  Retrieving the book sent the toddler into hysterics.

After a little bit of intervention, the boy asked for a Kleenex.  But he didn’t want a Kleenex from the box in his bedroom, oh no.  He wanted one from upstairs.  In the face of this clear delaying tactic, the request was denied.  Hysterics continued.  And continued.

Off and on for another 15 minutes.

So, I paused the news (oh how I love our PVR) and went downstairs, Kleenex in hand.  I went in, handed it to him, and he said “That was very nice, thank-you.”  He then put his head on the pillow and said “Good night!”  And I went back upstairs and an hour later … I haven’t heard a word.  He has clearly gone to sleep.

And equally clear is the fact that he was so very upset about having to use a downstairs Kleenex instead of an upstairs Kleenex.

Toddler logic.  Go figure.

This past weekend has been interesting in terms of seeing Aidan interact with technology.  First, while chatting with Grandma, she was getting him to move the mouse to various places on her face (her nose, her head, etc).  Now, I had never seen Aidan try to do this before — and he was doing it with very little problem.  Adding to the level of difficulty is that he was using a trackball !

The next day I was sitting on the sofa with my Eee and he crawled up on my lap.  On a whim, I tried to find some Flash game for him to play (since that’s where kids games seem to have gone) and found the incredible companion site to one of Aidan’s favourite shows (and ours):  Peep and the Big Wide World.  That site has a number of different games, some of which were easy for Aidan, some of which were harder.  His favourite game was one where you made Quack jump on one of three tubes of paint (each of a different colour) to squirt paint onto a fence.  The goal was to combine the primary colours to match the colour on the card that Chirp was holding up.  Aidan’s favourite part of the game was making Quack jump on a nearby hose, which causes water to go everywhere, cleaning up the fence and soaking Chirp in the process.  And, as any fan of the show knows, Chirp hates water.

That time, Aidan was using the touchpad on the little Eee.

*I* can’t use the trackpad reliably well.  Although I suspect it has something to do with the size of the pad compared to the size of my hands. :)

After a blog post from Kerry, I started in earnest looking for a real video game appropriate for Aidan.  I was originally thinking about the DS, what with it supposedly being a kid’s game system.  But then I was picking through the racks at the Superstore and saw some Wii games that might be appropriate too.  After picking some up … and putting them back, I headed home to do some research.

Video games for the pre-school crowd are just not *there*, you know?

But consistently one stood out, and on Monday Aidan and I wandered up to Toys R Us and purchased “Diego Safari Rescue” for the Wii.

I’ll write a real review of this soon, but suffice it to say that it’s gone over quite well.  And … Aidan’s conquered this control system too.

I continue to be astonished at what a different life Aidan is having (and will have) compared to what Gwen & I have had.