Gymboree! September 20, 2012

Layla is doing Gymboree, and she loves.loves.loves.loves.loves it!  She get SO excited about going when the day finally rolls around, and she is constantly singing the Gymboree songs (i.e. “We want, we want, Gymbo, Gymbo”).  I’m glad her time has finally come for her own class, because she has been a spectator to Hayden’s various classes for so long – Tae Kwon Do, swimming, soccer, basketball…  We had Hayden signed up for Tae Kwon Do for a year, and it was twice a week (that’s a whole other story), so she would go, twice a week, and sit patiently on the sidelines.  With that being twice a week it didn’t leave much time for any other classes, so when that finally finished we quickly signed her up for her own thing, and boy is she loving it!  I’ve mentioned before how she gets scared of big characters and some stuffed animals (this morning she told he she was scared of her piggy humidifier, which she has loved turning on for months now), but for some reason she loves the gymbo clown that they have which is about her size, that the teacher “wears” on her feet and hands to make move.  I can’t figure that girl out. 😉

Hayden is just about too old for Gymboree.  We took him when he was young for quite a long time.  There are a couple of classes there which he could technically join, but for the most part he’s “outgrown it.”  Layla’s class is on an evening, so usually one of us will take her and one stay home with Hayden, but during the times when he’s had to go he’s done a really great job of sitting and just watching.  He seems to really enjoy just watching the class from a distance.

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Granddad

We were lucky to have a visit from Granddad recently.  Hayden was SO excited that Granddad was coming, and I think he nearly wore the poor guy out from all of the things he wanted to do with him! We did manage to do quite a lot with him.  We ate our way through the Farmer’s Market, went to a sort of auto festival thing in our town, went to a paint-your-own pottery place (Granddad made a nice plate that had the kids’ handprints on it), as well as hitting the Children’s Museum, the zoo, the Monon Center water park, lots of dinners out
, an Indians (baseball) game, a Colts preseason game, Symphony on the Prairie…. I think we did it all – I’m tired just writing about it, imagine how poor Granddad must have felt!  Any downtime we did have was filled by Hayden dragging Granddad around the house showing him all the little things he’d been dreaming of showing him since he found out he would be coming (the basement, video games, toy trains, books, etc).  Granddad was a great sport about being pulled around in so many directions, though.  We already can’t wait for the next visit! (Although I don’t think there will be anything “new” left to do 😉 )

More Funnies

I know it hasn’t been that long since I wrote a post on the funny things the kids say, but they just keep coming up with them and I don’t want to forget!

The other day I took Hayden to the dentist, and on the way home we stopped to get some gas.  We’d been in the car maybe 3 minutes when we stopped for gas, and as I’m getting out of the car Layla says (the quotes are intentional – this is word-for-word), “Let me out, I need to stretch my legs.”  She’s 2 1/3 – and yet she came up with that sentence.  She just blows me away with her language and comprehension.

Hayden was wanting me to watch him build a “camera store” with legos yesterday.  He wasn’t impressed with my lack of focus on watching him, and he told me that I have two eyes and I needed to watch him.  I think this is a take on the expression I use commonly – I only have two hands.

This picture also made me laugh.  Granddad was here recently, so here’s a nice shot of him playing with the kids.  John and I were behind them and ducked down to try to make it a nice picture of Granddad and the two kids.  This was one in a series of pictures we took, so for this one I decided to “photo bomb” it, you can see in the background.  The thing that makes me laugh is we were watching our neighbor’s dog, Macy, at the time, and I can see now that she was trying to photo bomb my photo bomb!

Brummy accent?

Recently Hayden has started talking like he is from Birmingham. He has suddenly started putting U’s in words instead of A’s or I’s. A few example:
Dad, can we play curds? (card)
Mum, is that a burd? (bird)
This table is hurd. (hard)
Can we go in daddy’s kurr? (car)
Look daddy there’s a stur. (star)

We have no idea where it came from!  He has never even been to Birmingham!

The Five Year Old September 19, 2012

Hayden. Many things have been said and written about my first little munchkin over those five years but I thought it would be a good time to give a current picture of him.

Food – He is a turkey. Let’s start there. He doesn’t want to eat anything except peanut butter and jelly. If there is anything green near or on his food he won’t eat it. He freaks out if there are pips or seeds in his food. Pepper is about the only vegetable he will eat. If he eats something he doesn’t like he has a very inelegant way of just spitting it out and letting it dribble down his chin. On the other hand he loves desert! The words ‘ice cream’ and ‘dessert’ can transform the boy in seconds!

Toys – He has gone through a few phases in his time. Obviously his world was dominated by trains. But as he announced a few months back ‘l don’t love trains, I just like trains’. To be honest we didn’t really notice too much of a different at the time but he had backed off trains a little. Probably only plays trains ~3 days a week instead of everyday. He really started to get into Legos. He is so structured in the way he thinks Legos is the perfect toy for him. He follows instructions well and is actually incredibly focused when it comes to Legos. Focus is not generally one of his specialties that I am sure I will be to later. The other big thing for him right now is his love for Robots. Not quite sure where it seemed from but that is the new love. For his birthday he got A bunch of transformers and robot based toys so that seemed to keep him happy.

Friends – Hayden is picky on his friends and also gets a little overwhelmed if there are lots of kids and he will try to find one kid (often the bossy girl) and try to just play with them. His best friend without a doubt is Oliver but unfortunately Oliver has started at a different school so it will be harder for them to hang out as much now. Robby,his cousin, is his other big friend. When them two are around they are in separable and Hayden just wants to follow Robby everywhere and do everything he does.

Daddy’s Boy – he is still a huge daddy’s boy (I never thought I would have said that when he was 2!). However he has gotten past his period of being rude to him mum. He still always wants to know if it is a daddy work day and always has this heart breaking dejected look (“there are too many daddy work days”. “Daddy work days are too long” etc) when I tell him it is. he is very protective of my over Layla. If we are swimming for example if I play with Lay for like 10 seconds he will come and get himself in between us and challenge “why do you play with Layla more than me?” and poor Layla normally loses it because Hayden is so insistent.

Big Brother – Hayden is a caring big brother a lot of the time. He likes teaching Layla things and showing or telling her how to do things. As all siblings the always want the same toy at the same time and they will constantly fight for it, but nothing new there! He certainly cares for her, I feel he is often thinking or looking our for her, so hopefully theist continues in a few years when she starts bringing the boys home!

Sports – Hayden likes sports but he doesn’t really care for competitive or team sports. We tried him with football/soccer (ended up picking daisies and staring at the clouds) and basketball (had no idea what was going on and was generally just lucky if the ball didn’t land on his head) with little success. So we thought lets try a more individual sport like Taekwondo. He made it all the way to black stripe but I think they just felt sorry for him, bless him. He was supposed to build focus but we would always see him daydreaming or playing with his belt rather than listening or performing the exercises. However saying all this sometimes we will be playing outside and he will want to play football (soccer) and he is a pretty useful dribbler of the ball, and baseball and the boy can really swing a bat! He loves Race cars and monster trucks, and you could define that as a sport so maybe that will be his calling.

Personality – It is hard to sum his personality in a few sentences. He generally wakes up in a bad mood. He is just a slow waker up. Once we get him past his morning cartoon and breakfast he starts to get going. He is generally pretty serious about life. Despite his seriousness though he has he has a cheeky smile and grin that can light up any room. He has a happy dance which he does when he is playing with toys he loves. Often involving trains! Often he is a follower not a leader, but at the same time very stubborn once his mind is made up. He is very curious and often profound in some of the questions he asks (“when will the world end?” etc). He wants to learn, know how things work. Not the most independent kid, but sometimes I think a lot of that is just that he wants to me to hang out with him. He is the champion procrastinator too, again because I think he just likes us to hang out with him. Like I said a tough kid to sum up in a few sentences, but he is a keeper and I love every moment I get to spend with him.

Milt September 5, 2012

Suddenly Layla is very interested in milk (“milt,” she says – Hayden used to say “moot”). She’ll tell me she’s “thirsty, Mommy!” I’ll ask her what she wants and she’ll say something like, “Juice, no, milt actually Mommy.” Then she HAS to pick out her sippy cup (“I pick cup, I pick cup!”). She has me hold her up so she’s standing on the counter (with me holding her tightly!) and she’ll evaluate the cup situation and v.e.r.y. slowly decide which one she wants. We are going through cups really quickly all of a sudden, because when she is just drinking juice or water (ok, hardly ever water unless it’s from Mommy or Daddy’s cup, but I am thrilled that both she and Hayden will on occasion want water – Hayden likes it because he can dispense the water and ice himself from the fridge – whatever works!) she can use the same cup throughout the day, but obviously that’s not an option for cups with milk in them since it spoils so quickly when it’s not cold.