When I’m Older September 17, 2010

One of Hayden’s latest fads is telling us about everything he is going to do when he is older.  He’ll be reading a book, say about cars, and then he’ll tell us that he is going to buy that car, and that car, and that car when he’s older.  He might get to the  end of book where it’s advertising other books in the series, and he’ll point to everyone and tell us he’s getting that when he’s older (except if he finds one that he already has, and he’ll remind us that he already has that one.  It reminds me of when I was younger and trading Panini stickers and we could run through a friends stack (got, got got, need that one, want that one, really want that one, got that one, etc).

He does take it further than just things he is going to buy (and apparently he is going to be very rich as he is going to buy a lot, including an Aston Martin for his daddy :D) and tell us that is going to drive daddy’s care when he is older, and go on bike rides when he is older, and drive that dump truck when he is older, and basically anything we tell him he can’t do, he’s going to do when he’s older (like eat all those chocolate raisins when I’m older!)

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Pushing the limits

Hayden has recently being trying to determine his boundaries and see what he can get away with.   We’ll tell him off and he’ll just smile at as (knowing he’s being naughty) and continue to do it.  We’ll start warning him if he continues, and threaten to take toys away.  He’ll normally just answer back and asking which toy it’s going to be.  You see his head working that if it’s something negligible he might consider taking the hit and doing it anyway.  Sometimes you can see him doing things he knows he’s not allowed just to see what happens.  I think this is the natural cursioity of a three year.  Luckily so far Kara and I have been very consistent with him and we also always follow through on our threats to him (usually involving putting Grave Digger on top of the Fridge) so I think it’s starting to learn some of the limits.

If he does misbehave the one thing that nearly always works is the count.  I count backwards from 10, and I hardly ever have to get past 9 before he’s panicing and begging me to stop counting.  The funny thing is I have no idea what I’m going to do if I ever get down to zero!!

Was it my imagination, or…. September 14, 2010

…did you used to sleep through the night?

Who, me?

I feel certain that she did, but the last two or three weeks there has been some regression in the sleep department.  She has been getting up in the middle of the night at least once, if not twice.  Two nights in a row recently her motion sensor went off twice in the night.  It detects motion in the bed associated with breathing, and if it doesn’t sense the baby is breathing the alarm goes off.  After the second night I looked under the mattress and found the sensor had come off its base which was probably causing the problem, and I upped the sensitivity level.  Last night I actually turned the sensor off because I had found that after having to go to her 3 or 4 times throughout the evening after I put her down that she responded well to being laid right up against her crib railing so she could be propped up a little on her side.  However, that keeps her too far from the sensor and it went off before we went to bed so I decided to turn it off as I couldn’t take a third night in a row of it waking me up unnecessarily.  She slept like a champ until 5!  I remember a few weeks ago she was “sleeping in” until about 8 or so, but I found out a couple of weeks ago that the monitor had been turned down (by Hayden, apparently) so there was a week or so where she may have been waking up a little in the night but not crying properly to where we could hear her without the monitor.  She makes little cooing noises in the night when she wakes up as opposed to loud cries, and I try to get to her as fast as I can so as not to wake John up (which works less than half the time).  I’m going to be optimistic that her not waking until 5 is marking the end of the sleep regression! 🙂

Missing the Brits September 1, 2010

I was putting Hayden to bed and at the end of the wheel on the bus song, I asked him who he wanted on the bus for the last verse (we make up the verses).   Typically he chooses Grandma and Grandpa.  Well this time he choose Nanny.   It’s been a while since Nanny was on the bus so I started Nanny on the bus, and then I paused to remember what it is she normally does on the bus, and he filled the silence for me with “here’s a another present!!” (so… “nanny on the bus says here’s another present, here’s another present, etc).  He totally made that up on his own, but no wander considering every time he see hers she is always giving him presents!

Then he told me how he wanted to go to see Auntie Michelle, Nanny and Granddad at Nanny’s house. And that there would be a lot of toys there.  At the end he asked me which way was England! I pointed East and explain that unfortunate it isn’t somewhere we can make on his tricycle.  Over the last few days he’s just shown a renewed interest in England and I put it down to his missing his English family.  I can’t wait until he can get back there next year.