Let Me Entertain You February 18, 2011

Hayden is really into singing.  He is constantly either singing a real song (like Ba Ba Black Sheep or Yellow Submarine), making up a song with words, or “do-do-do”ing.  Often he will be doing a “music show” for us, which is him doing one of those things for a long time while he sort of wanders around us and asks us if we like his music show.  He likes for us to also “sing it,” which can be difficult when he is making up the song as he goes.  We have CDs in CD towers in our family room, and he loves to pick out a CD and put it in the CD player himself, and then he usually demands that we sing the song with generally no regard to whether we even know the song. 🙂  I can’t remember if I wrote this before, but the sound for the CD player comes from our surround sound, so to hear the music you have to turn that on in addition to the CD player.  It is low to the ground, so I usually touch the on button with my foot (since I’m usually holding Layla and it’s easier to do that than bend down).  Hayden now knows that the sound comes from the surround sound box and he, too, will try to turn it on with his foot!  It cracks me up to see him steadying himself on one foot to try to turn it on.

He also loves making Layla laugh.  He shakes his head back and forth and makes this loud noise to try to make her laugh.  It used to really get her giggling, but she seems relatively immune to it now, so he does that and asks why Layla’s not laughing.  He also likes to play peek-a-boo with her when they are in the car, and that will get her laughing.  This morning I was trying to put his shoes on him and he said, “Wait, I can’t see Layla, I want to make Layla laugh!”  He is often trying to come up with something new to get her laughing.  Usually as long as he is paying attention to her and laughing she will giggle.  She is very interested in where he is and loves getting attention from him.  It’s cute seeing them in the review mirror in the van, because lately they are having a lot of fun back there together.

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A Whole Different Baby February 3, 2011

Layla has reached the age where she is very active, interactive, taking everything in, and learning every minute.  It seems like she was just born, so it’s funny to me to see what she is like now and think that she’s totally different now to the little baby who pretty much just used to sleep all the time.  Let me count the ways that she is “new”:

1. Her hair is coming in thick and fast.  It was just a few weeks ago that the sides and back of her hair had fallen out and most of her hair that was left was just on top.  Every day I can see she is getting more and more hair and it seems to be getting longer quickly.  When Hayden was her age his hair had fallen out but was coming back in very light blonde.  This does not seem to be happening to her; I don’t think she will ever be blonde.  I don’t think it will be long before she starts getting some baby curls. 🙂

2.  She is an eating pro.  She gets three meals a day, and she’s an eager eater.  My stepdad said it best: “She eats with her whole body!”  Her little hands and feet move in excited circles as she eats.  Cutest. Thing. Ever.  I guess I will have to qualify this by saying that she is a very eager eater as long as I have added some yogurt to whatever I’m giving her.  She will open her mouth like a little birdie when there’s yogurt mixed in, but otherwise she’s not as keen.  The last couple of meals I have forgone the yogurt and she has still eaten it, but in the past she wouldn’t even open her mouth if it didn’t have the good stuff in there!

3.  She is finally taking naps in her crib.  This has been a looooong time coming.  I only have myself to blame for her nearly hitting the 8 month mark before she would sleep in her bed during the day.  I didn’t push it because 1) when I work it was easier to let her fall asleep on her nursing pillow while I worked than try to get her to nap upstairs and then have to manage going up and down the stairs continuously with the real possibility of her never falling asleep.  I knew if I kept her with me she would definitely fall asleep and it would be, well, easy!  And 2) the times I did try to let her “cry it out” in her bed she would start getting in a habit of crying whenever I put her in her crib, even at night.  If I didn’t bother with it during the day, then the nighttime routine wasn’t negatively impacted.  Obviously this approach wouldn’t work for most families, but it was fine for us.  But now that she is taking naps in her bed it just feels like she is so grown up!

4.  She has been sitting up very steadily for a while now.  She’s not crawling, but she does kind of wiggle herself in the right direction when she is lying on her belly and wants something.  But no scooting or crawling or anything like that.

5.  She LOVES laughing at Hayden.  She is very interested in him.  He loves making her laugh, too.  He will shake his head back and forth which usually gets her laughing.  In fact, he was doing that this morning when we were taking him to preschool, but she hasn’t been feeling well and she was watching him but not laughing.  He was telling me that she needed to be laughing because he was doing that.  lol!  When she and I have been home on a workday and Hayden’s been at preschool, she gets visibly excited when I put her in her carseat when it’s time to go get him (and she doesn’t get excited when put in her carseat any other time).

Race cars as an education

You going to think I’m crazy but Race Cars are apparently educational.  Hayden can identify any number under 100 thanks to the magic of race cars!

“I don’t want to do what Mummy Daddy says”

Kara talked a while back that three is harder that two. I think that has been true for Hayden as he was such a good two year who hadn’t really learned the power of a tantrum yet! He also gave up naps a long time ago and I think this really catches up with him from time to time. In fact we recently brought his bed time forward to 7.30 recently and he regularly sleeps til 8am (except on weekends of course!) to help him get a little more sleep.

But back to the title of this blog – So whenever we ask him to do anything he doesn’t want to do (typically it was when we know he needs to poop but he doesn’t want to go to the potty) he start to get upset and then tell us “I don’t want to do what mummy daddy says” I find it very funny – then we explain to him that he has to do what mummy and daddy says because we are the parents and then we circle around.. After three of four circles of this he’ll just defer to “don’t talk to mummy daddy, I don’t want daddy to talk to mummy”  Conversations with three years (especially upset ones) are things to treasure!!

In terms of an update on Hayden’s general behavor I think he’s really picked things up recently.  He’s started to pay much more attention to Layla and is really nice around her (except for when she accidentally ripped his book today!), he’s being really nice to Kara now, he’s naturally saying please and thanks, he’s eating all his meals, showing a little more patience than he was, he seems to be completely potty trained and asks to go when he needs to (both number one and twos).  Of course when he gets really tired he still throws trantrums, and that won’t go away for a while, but he seems to have gotten out of the worse of things…

I know I’ll regret that – just ask Kara about Kroger last week!

Iced in February 2, 2011

Should I just start every post from now until the kids are in school with something along the lines of how crap I’ve been at writing new posts?  It’s the dead of winter, we are literally snowed in (actually “iced” in as it’s more ice than snow) because it is only supposed to be emergency personnel on the roads, and only now am I able to steal a moment to make a post. John’s office has been closed yesterday and today due to the weather.  Yesterday was a regular non working day for me, so the only difference for me was that we were confined to the house.  We had fun though, playing all over the house and having some downtime in the afternoon watching The Lion King (my favorite cartoon movie).  Hayden watched it very intently for 20 or 25 minutes, then he was having me make tunnels with my legs for him to crawl under as well as climbing all over my head.

John was out of town last week for four days, and as a result it seems as though in Hayden’s world Mommy has finally made a comeback!  For many months now Hayden has been a big daddy’s boy, to the extent that many times he wants nothing to do with me if Daddy is around.  (When Daddy’s not around there’s never been a problem, phew!)  But he has seemed to come back around to me since John’s business trip.  Don’t get me wrong, he is still very into Daddy, but he will say to John he wants to do something with me now that previously he would have never wanted to do with me if Daddy were available (i.e. go for a walk).  Its nice to be back!  And I’m enjoying it while it lasts, because he is a typical fickle three-year-old and I know this could change with the wind!