It’s funny, they creep up on you.

Today we bought Aidan his first bike. Well, technically we were proxies for Grandma and Grandpa who wanted to buy Aidan a tricycle for his birthday. Unfortunately, our living arrangements don’t really allow us to have a trike — no where to store it, and really no where to ride it except on the side walk. But we live on a hill — 22% grade according to the signs — and trikes don’t have brakes. And frankly, Aidan’s a bit of a small guy and last year he wasn’t really big enough for a trike. This year, though, he seems to fit the 12″ bikes quite well. And, we found a bike with a parental handle on the back — which seems to be ideal! The one shown to the right is the bike, but the one that we bought doesn’t have the Tigger head on it, or the tassles. Instead it has a black handlebar bag with a Tigger on it. And instead of spokes, it has solid discs in the rims. We must have the ‘08 model.

We also bought him a helmet (skateboard style) that came with elbow and knee pads. The kicker is — they’re sized for ages 5+ and Aidan’s head size is at the top end of the head sizes that the helmet will fit (21″ vs 21 1/4″ max size). 5+ years old? Do these kids have freakishly small heads? After I got the proper size pads in the helmet, he stopped complaining that it hurt when it was on. :) He seemed to like the elbow and knee pads, and wore them over his pyjamas for a good portion of the night. Actually, he seemed to like the idea that they were to keep him safe if he fell (or in toddler terms, ‘crashed’). I know this because he proceeded to throw himself at the floor, repeatedly. At least his elbows and knees were safe. I did worry a bit about his wrists, though.

At any rate, we’ll get some pictures once we have a sunny day.

Of course, it’s supposed to be a birthday present so unless he specifically asks for it we might keep it from him for the next few weeks.

The other milestone that we’re dealing with today is moving Aidan from the crib to a toddler bed. Well, that’s not strictly true — his crib converted into a toddler bed. And, he’s been down since 7:30ish. There were tears, with him saying that he wasn’t ready for his crib … and I’m not sure if he meant that he wasn’t ready for the toddler bed, or if was just generally not ready to go to bed. Gwen stayed down and calmed him down. I’ve been down twice in the half hour that followed to calm down more tears. But in the past half hour (it’s 8:45 now) I haven’t heard anything from him. And, not once did he get up out of the toddler bed. Let’s see if that holds all night long.

And we’ll deal with tomorrow night tomorrow.

Woo-hoo! 200 finds as of this afternoon. A FTF (first to find) on Thursday, another FTF on Saturday, and 14 total caches on the weekend.

Here’s some photos of us celebrating 200 at the cache site (“Vancouver Decachelon — Bramble Scramble”, GCG809):

You can check out our stats or a map of our finds.

I have graduated from Mimi to Mommy! I know he means it because he said it about 20 times in a row to get my attention. I am so Happy that he did it before his 2nd birthday. I was a little jealous that Daddy has been Daddy for a very long time and I had to get excited about Mimi. Now I just hope I don’t live to regret wanting it so much.

So, tonight it started snowing. It’s supposed to snow all night and all through tomorrow too, likely making this the largest snowfall Vancouver’s seen in 5 or 6 years. 20-30 cm expected.

So, this makes it Aidan’s first snowfall! We’ve taken him into the mountains last winter, so he at least has seen snow before, but not falling from the sky.

Coincidentally, Gwen bought him a snow suit last night. I say coincidentally because this snow wasn’t forecast last night. Anyway, we bundled him up and went out into the night for him to experience this strange phenomenon.

He watched the snow falling from the doorway initially, just staring at it. Once we got going and out walking, he seemed to thoroughly enjoy it, chatting on the whole walk down to Choklit Park, and back.

I took some video too, but it didn’t turn out. That explains the small number of photos too. Oh well. Hopefully we can get some video and better pictures tomorrow.