mister

mister is what my brother calls aidan.  he always has.  i am not sure why, but tio mono is kinda the unofficial nickname giver in the family.  mine is munumana, in case you were wondering. 

i took this picture yesterday and then stared at it for a long, long while.  aidan is not an easy kid.  there is nothing easy about him.  he is 100% all of the time...  100% determined, 100% questioning, 100% quizzing, 100% sincere, 100% delightful, 100% devoted and of course, 100% frustrating.  and i love every bit of who he is.

he had a tough week.  we hurt for him, but are very proud of him.  he articulates his thinking and his feeling well, we need to be better at listening.  to think of it now, though, he always has.  sometimes i miss the three year old aidan and his way of speaking.  there were no k sounds or s sounds or v's or f's.  actually the list was quite long.  to hear him talk about ebaporaton [evaporation] was pretty much the cutest thing.  if you were patient you would be walked through the whole dang water cycle.  and when he would 'wee a bout a dout amials to nania' [read a book about animals to nadia] your heart would melt on the spot.  i miss that time.  maybe i listened harder because you had to if you wanted to make sense of his speech.  all of those speech quarks are gone, so the messages are clear, even grown up sometimes.  on friday he called a friend to ask if he wanted to spend the night.  i listened carefully to make sure he was getting all of the necessary details and of course, not a detail was missed.  what i noticed more though is his speech pattern.  he says things like, "i look forward to seeing you" and "we have dinner ready and your welcome to join us" ... i need to listen more.  he's growing up right before our ears and we are missing it.