Spring time March 27, 2009

Spring has arrived in the last week or two and it’s meant lots of time outside for Hayden.  Hayden loves the outside because he can play with his tractor, and his trailer, and push all his strollers around in circles until his heart is content.  Kara and I love it because we can sit in our outdoor arm chairs and drink beer while he entertains himself 🙂

Our neighbors have a swing set in their garden with a slide and some swings.  Hayden loves playing on it!  He can climb up the 6/7 steps on his own (sometimes he slips and he has the bruises to show it!) and then goes down the slide on his own (but always backwards!  like he goes down the stairs) and has the biggest smile on his face when he does it!  Lands at the bottom in the mud and then waddles around back up the steps and etc, etc, etc.

We have a trailer for my bike that I like to take him out about on.  Well since he discovered this he is just content to climb in this thing and hang out in their with a few toys and balls.  He’ll just hang out for like 20 minutes doing basically nothing other than sitting in his trailer.  He seems to have a thing about small spaces, he loves climbing in the dog crates and hanging out in there as well!!  Must be a toddler thing!

Something else funny, I was on the swing the other day with Hayden and he started going “weeeeeeee” every time we swung.  It’s funny how kids pick up on stuff like that so easily!

He has his own jungle gym on it’s way so I am sure that will be the result of future blogs..

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Cookie monster and Elmo March 24, 2009

Hayden has suddenly gotten into stuffed animals (aka cuddly toys).  He never took an interest in them until about a month ago, when he started sleeping with this plush Colts football that has a little blankie attached to it.  From there he decided he wanted to also sleep with 2 of his giraffes.  Then he wanted to sleep with Cookie Monster, too.  And now it’s all those things and Elmo.  Elmo presents a bit of a problem because he is a plush wind-up Elmo that sways side-to-side and plays music, and he has a big hard bit in the middle where is motor (or whatever) is.  So not an ideal bed companion.  But Hayden is not happy if we try to leave Elmo out, so we let him go to sleep with him (and the football, and Cookie Monster, and a giraffe, and the blanket I made him, and his duvet) and take him out later in the evening so he doesn’t lay on him during his sleep which would be uncomfortable and possibly wake him up (cannot have that!!).  It’s very cute, though, because he gets so excited when he sees his special stuffed animals – he even kisses them!  I’ve tried before to spread them out a little around his crib so they aren’t in his way, and he will gather them all together and lay on top of them.

In the morning when I go in to get him he likes to hang out in his bed for a bit with his stuffed animals.  He knows Elmo is on the rocking chair and points and fusses toward him until I get him, then he does these little jumps (he does everything you would do for a jump except his feet don’t leave the ground) out of happiness.  He jabbers on about the things in his bed and around his bed, and eventually he decides he wants his milk and is ready to get out.

Give a dog a bone March 16, 2009

One of Hayden’s favorite games right now is to give the dogs their bones.  He will grab a bone and shove it in the dogs’ faces, or if they are already chewing a bone he will grab it from them, laugh, run off so they will chase him, and then shove it in their faces.  He thinks it is HILARIOUS!  Luckily the dogs are stars about it.  Lucy is so good with him; she lets him climb all over her and she is really patient with him.  Mimi is not very good when he tries to lay on her so we are always there when he sets his eyes on her and are trying to work with her on that.  But when it comes to the bone game, they are both very patient and seem to like to play with him as much as he does, even when it means a good chewing session gets interrupted!

Terrible twos?

For about a week and a half after his surgery, Hayden was a new boy but not in a good way.  He was so fussy we weren’t sure they had given us the right kid back!  Many people had told us their kids had a much better disposition after having tubes put in, but we had the reverse.  I actually took him back to the dr for his follow up 2 weeks early because he had been so temperamental, and also he was fiddling with his ears every now and then.  We were seriously starting to think he was already getting into his terrible twos.  He was so touchy that the slightest thing would set him off, he was banging his head against things out of frustration a lot (something he did before the surgery but not all the time like afterwards), if he was picked up he wouldn’t want to be put down and cry and pull his legs up/clamp his legs around if you tried to put him down, etc.  The day I finally decided the follow up needed to be brought forward he had been touching his ears and fussing and I asked if he had an ‘owie’ and he grabbed his ear.  Now, I’m not even sure I have used the term ‘owie’ very much with him so it was probably a coincidence, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to have them looked at.  Anyway, his tubes and ears looked great, so that was a relief!  About a week ago he finally turned a corner and is our happy little boy again, yay!  I can’t remember the last time he banged his head, he is smiling and laughing all the time, he’s not been in a time out for a long time (yes, we had to start implementing time outs during this phase).  It’s great having him back!  Let’s save the terrible twos for a few months (or you can just keep those terrible twos, actually).

H!

Hayden is starting to recognize the letter H.  We have some decorative letters on our wall in the lounge, one for each of our names (K, J, H, A, J (Jude), L, and M) and he is able to point to the H when asked.  We also have fridge magnet letters and he can pick the H out of that.  He’s good at that when there are like 3 letters to choose from.  I’m not sure he would be able to pick it from all the letters, I’ll have to try.  And we have some letter floor mat things and the other day I was asking him where the H was, meaning of the fridge magnets, and he pointed to the H on the floor mat.  He’s either making the connection or John told him it was an H before I came downstairs.

Hayden’s first op March 2, 2009

Hayden had his tubes put in his ears last Wednesday.  He was really good about it.  We had to be there at 7 am for 8 am surgery, and he was not allowed to eat or drink anything for 8 hours prior to surgery.  Normally he has milk as soon as we get him out of bed, so we were worried that would be difficult for him, but he didn’t seem to mind.  When we got there we were briefed about what to expect by 2 different nurses, the anesthesiologist, and the doctor.  They all pretty much told us the same thing, and one thing they kept mentioning was when we saw him after the surgery he would throw a fit as he was coming out of the anesthesia, because he will be disoriented, confused, and probably in some pain.

One of the nurses was so excited when they saw the little ‘lovie’ that we brought for him, which is a soft, plush Colts football with a little blanket attached to it.  Hayden always sleeps with this thing so John brought it for him.  The nurse was a big Colts fan and wanted to take the football to show various doctors and nurses who she knew would like it.  So she took the football and Hayden just tagged along with her while she showed a couple of people.  They even went through the double doors to the operating area and he just went right along with her.  The doors opened at one point and I saw him darting away from her to go explore, and she had to go chase him which was quite funny.

We were told the op would take about 15 minutes, and the doctor came in after about that long to tell us everything had gone fine.  She said he was very good.  She said he didn’t have any infections in his ears (good since he had been on antibiotics for 3 weeks) but there was a lot of fluid in his right ear that she drained out.  Then she left and we thought we would be able to see him quickly after that but it was another 10 minutes or so before we could see him.  That doesn’t sound like a long time, but when you think you are going to see him any minute and it takes that long it seems like forever.

When we saw him after the surgery he was surprisingly not upset like they said he would be.  He was dazed, but he didn’t cry.  There was a nurse holding him and he was fine.  It was not until she made me put the antibiotic drops in his ears that he got upset, and from that point on for about an hour he was very touchy.  I read to him the whole ride home and it seemed like if I even stopped to take a breath he would start crying.  After we got home, gave him some food, read to him a while, and put on the movie Cars he was a little better, but his mood really changed for the better when John took him down to the basement to play – he has a lot of fun down there with toys that he doesn’t play with every day.

Picking up the rubbish

Hayden cracked me up the other day.  Kara and I were just busying our selves in the kitchen and I noticed Hayden bent down to pick something up.  It was a tissue near Kara’s feet.  He carried it (out in front of him like some trophy) walked over to the bin, lifted it up, and dropped it in.  Just like that.  No idea why, but I’m not complaining if he wants to help!

Mimihoudini

Mimi is a magician……

Since we got her, when we go out we put her in her crate.  She doesn’t seem to mind and has been kept in a crate from what we know, before we had her.  Recently we would come home to find Mimi in the crate but the crate tray somehow out of the crate.  This can just about be explained through the small gap at the bottom of the crate just big enough to force the tray out.

Well the other day Kara and I came home, having put the dogs in their crates as usual, to find none other than Mimihoudini there welcoming us with a waging tail.  Somehow she had found way out of her crate!  She is not a small dog, it’s not like she is squeezing through the bars.  We thought it might have been a fluke and we didn’t catch one of the cage fasteners.  So the next time we double checked everything.  We come home, and there she is, tail wagging, waiting to great us.

So we’ll just have to put it down to magic!!!

Head banger

Hayden is a headbanger, and I don’t necessarily mean in the sex pistols way.  He is getting to that age when he doesn’t get his way, he takes a dislike to it and he plays up.  Well his way of playing up is finding the hardest surface he can and then bashing his head against it.  He has a permanent bruise on his forehead.  We have to let his hair grow to cover up all his bruises!  We did find it a little funny at first, but now it’s not quite so funny and we’re trying to help him realize that it’s probably not the best way to vent his frustration….

Dinner time

As I’ve talked about here many times before Hayden loves his food.  He will eat anything, anytime.  Well recently he’s started to get a little pickier (like me apparently) about what he eats.  You can feed him a big spoon full of stuff and he will filter through what he wants, swallow it, and then spit out the remains.  Often we let him feed himself.  He will then pick through what he wants and then when he gets bored he just starts throwing his food to the dogs.  He thinks it’s the funniest thing in the world.  Hence the video.. (you have to admit it is pretty funny..)