Even though Hayden is generally a champion eater we are always looking for ways to encourage him. Recently we came up with (I am writing “We” as there is a dispute over who actually came up with this!”) the idea that everytime he cleans his plate we shout out “clean plate club” and get really excited.
Hayden loves it!! He’ll just start shouting it half way through his dinner (his indication that he has finished and he deserves to be in the clean plate club). However it doesn’t quite pronounce it correctly…. in fact the first few times he was shouting it we had no idea what he was saying. It’s more like “key put cub”…
He has now advanced to picking up his plate banging it and tipping it upside down and shouting “key put cub” at full volume. Which is fine except for all the ketchup all falls on the floor!
Hayden can count to 10 now. We have been incorporating numbers into a lot of things that he does – as he climbs up the stairs we count them out, we have foam numbers in the bath that we line up and count, we count cars when we are driving. He has a very sing-song way of counting; the numbers go up at the end. Last night John and Hayden were counting at dinner and Hayden started alternating his numbers with John. John said 1, Hayden said 2, John said 3, Hayden said 4, and so on. It was so funny! He’s been able to read his numbers for a while now, but saying them in order is new.
We discovered a couple of months ago that Hayden loved stickers. We could use this to our advantage by using stickers as a reward. He went through a phase where he did not want to have his diaper changed, and once we threw a sticker reward into the mix he became much more agreeable. (He still sometimes makes diaper changes difficult, but not nearly as often).
Summer is in full swing, and we have had a couple of outings with Hayden’s cousins, Jesse and Robby. We went to the Monon Center water park, which was such a fun day! It’s a new center that opened last year, and it’s perfect for their age. There’s a baby area that was good for Robby and Hayden, and another area that was for slightly older kids (preschool and older, I would say) but it was shallow enough that they could still play on some parts in that area, too. There is a lazy river that we floated on. There are two sections on the lazy river where you have to go under water that is pouring down waterfall-style, and the water flows a little too powerfully I think. Hayden was really anxious whenever we would approach a waterfall (he was literally trying to scramble out of my lap), but if we got over to the side you could somewhat avoid it slightly and that seemed better for him. It was such a hot day that there were tons of people there, but luckily it didn’t hamper our good time.
It means you’ll need to update any RSS feeds you had set up. Probably also want to change your bookmarks unless you had the root domain (www.haydengoodwin.com) bookmarked which should still bring you back here..
Hayden finally started saying Lucy’s name a few weeks ago. He’s had Abbey and Mimi down for a while, and Lucy has seemed a difficult one for him to get up the nerve to try. It comes out “O-sey,” like “horsey” without the H or R. John and I have found ourselves calling her O-sey most of the time now, too! Also in the Goodwin household for the time being, milk is moot and heavy is heaby. I’m sure once he starts saying them correctly we will too… or will we? 🙂
Last time my cousin Mandy was here she pointed out something I hadn’t really noticed before. When Hayden is sucking his thumb he puts his other hand up to his cheek. He has his left thumb in his mouth and his right hand laying there on his face. He does this most of the time when he is thumb sucking, particularly when he is tired (which is the most common time he sucks his thumb in the first place). It’s pretty cute!
Hayden and Layla's Place 