Different, but good.

I'm learning new things about my boys every day. For instance. I know that Ethan craves physical touch. He loves to be held. He loves his ears, feet and head rubbed. Which if you've had children or been around children you'll know that getting them to hold still for a foot rub is nearly impossible. With Ethan, he'll almost always stop to enjoy the massage. If I try this with Ayden, and I have, I'll most likely get a 'don do that!' statement from him. Ethan also hates isolation. Sometimes he's screeching loud enough to bring down the house and so... he get his special play time in his bedroom with the door shut tight. I learned very quickly that he loathes this with every fiber of his being. It is like the ultimate punishment for him, instead of calming down because he's alone he'll usually get more frenzied and upset. So I don't put him anywhere by himself very often any longer. Yesterday was one such day where I was going to lose my head if he didn't stop screaming. And apparently for him not screaming and following me around the house was not an option. He was gently escorted upstairs and set in his room. After I'd finished making dinner I went up to get him and he was laying by the door suffering from a self induced screaming coma. WHICH is easily remedied! I picked 'screaming coma' baby up and just held him and held him.....aaaand held him. Because, what? he loves physical contact! We sat together for about a half hour, maybe longer before he was ready to go somewhere else.

 {Daddy's headset}

Ayden on the other hand is much different. I'm still trying to figure him out! Not that as Ethan gets older I won't have more to discover with her personality. But I have him pegged right now, Ayden... not so much. Ayden is quite stubborn. I'll say come here, he'll look me straight in the eyes and say 'no!' purely for the fact that I asked him to come somewhere. I say go here- he goes to the opposite corner of where I wanted him to go. So you'd think that reverse psychology would work on him right? In some cases maybe it would, but for most- he'll most likely be glad that he doesn't have to do what I asked. "Ayden, don't eat your lunch." Ayden will think for a bit, then... "taye Mommy." And he'll proceed to do whatever he was doing before I interrupted him. I sort of have to trick Ayden into doing things, which is not very easy for me. I'm not a very good trickster and he sees through me a lot of the time! Yesterday we were having dinner and Ayden was pulling his usual routine of refusing to eat his food. So we made it a game. The problem is, if its the same game he's played before, he'll most likely not play it. Last night we played, Ayden will sneak a bit of his food and Mommy will catch him at the last minute and cheer!... we did this for e-v-e-r-y bite. I'm learning that Ayden likes to have special alone time with his Mommy and Daddy. He likes to have our time and attention to himself. This isn't very easy to pull off with two kids, and I can't image it gets any easier with more children. But right now, we let Ayden stay up later than Ethan and then he gets his time with us.

{Showing you his battle wounds}

Ayden's showing you his burnt hand. He stuck his entire hand on a fireplace at GGPAs house and roasted all 5 of his fingers. 4 of them blistered and 3 bad enough to require band-aids. I think we can easily assume he won't do that again! At least not for a very very long time.

Sorry this post is kind of boring. I am keeping this for my kids mostly and I want them to know about their little personality traits they had and may still have eons from now!