Feed Me! October 31, 2012

Layla is traditionally more independent than Hayden was at her age (or would like to be now, if we didn’t push him to do things for himself).  I’m sure being the little sister has a lot to do with it – seeing her big brother doing things and she wants to do them for herself, too.  For instance, we are currently trying to help Hayden learn how to bathe himself.  We have to talk him through what to do in what order, and Layla just follows right along as we tell Hayden what it’s time to do next.

However, for all her independence she has suddenly decided that she wants to be fed.  She will just sit there not eating and say, “Mommy, feed me.” Sometimes I’m able to distract her into doing it herself by doing various things in the kitchen which prevent me from sitting down, but oftentimes I get drawn in and end up helping her some.  I feel like it’s just a little phase that will pass so I don’t see too much harm in indulging her sometimes.  As John said last time we talked about it, we (mostly he 😉 ) fed Hayden until he was 4 as he could get him to eat a lot more that way.  Hopefully we aren’t gearing up for a similar problem with her!  She can definitely be stubborn so hopefully this is not something we have to stand our ground on later.

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Growth Spurt

We’re thinking Hayden is in the midst of a growth spurt, but it’s hard to see the outcome of that when you see him every day.  As I’m sure has been a blog topic in the past, he is a picky eater.  However, when we went to England he was chowing down!  Surprisingly, it was really easy to find food that he liked.  Layla on the other hand, not overly impressed.  She used to be such a great eater, but has been getting pickier the last few months and was particularly picky in England.  Of course, she had a nasty ear infection while we were there, was subsequently on antibiotics, and might have had a short stomach bug as well – so none of that is going to help the appetite.

But I digress.  Hayden, growth spurt.  Even since we’ve come home from England he is still doing better with his eating, in that he seems to be eating more (not necessarily more variety, but seems to want to eat more quantity-wise).  He’s also been sleeping later – in fact Layla has been too – so I think that body is working hard to add some inches.  I think his body had so much fun at Legoland that it wants to make sure the next time we go to Disney that he is tall enough for every single ride. 🙂

England Trip

We went to England at the beginning of the month for just shy of 2 weeks.  It was such a wonderful trip.  The primary purpose of the trip was to celebrate John’s mom’s 70th and our new baby niece’s Christening, for which we were honored to be named Godparents.  We did so much that I don’t really know where to start.

We decided not to rent a car, since Michelle and James would be off work as well and we figured two cars would be enough between all of us since we’d normally be going places together.  That meant poor James was chauffeuring us here, there, and everywhere – but always with a smile, even when he was knocked out by a nasty ear and sinus infection, bless his heart.

We were fortunate that even though we were not that mobile, our friends from when we lived in Basingstoke – the Carters, Gemma, and the Roberts – were able to drive up to see us one day.  We have 5 kids + one on the way between us all, so it was a lot of fun seeing each other and the kids and catching up on everything with them.  The Carters are actually moving to Indy with Rich’s work in January, so we are so excited to be able to see them a lot more soon!  Layla was funny, because she was not too bothered about me holding Maddie most of the time, but as soon as these friends showed up with their kids she got pretty protective, not wanting Mommy to hold anyone but her.  Compounding the problem was apparently Rich and Anita’s daughter loves dark haired women (oddly, since they are all fair (I’m thinking something to do with her previous life)), so she kept wanting me to hold her.  Layla would insist on being held, too, and try to push Sophie away, but it didn’t deter Sophie.  I tried to tell them they were going to have to sort it out because they are going to be spending a lot of time together soon!

The big Christening/70th birthday party (M&M party! – Madeline and Maddie) was a great success.  Maddie was Christened in the same church we had Hayden and Layla Christened in last year, which we found out later was the church where John’s dad’s grandparents were married!  That blew my mind.  I guess it’s not AS shocking considering it’s England and they have many more historic structures than we do in America, but it’s a fairly modest sized church and I consider it an unfathomable coincidence that Hayden and Layla’s (and Maddie’s) great-great-grandparents were married there.  Anyway, Maddie did very well in the limelight, and our kids were also well behaved which we were happy about.  There were plenty of M&Ms being consumed by one Mr. Hayden, as well as cake, so by the end of the night he was literally running/dancing around in circles with some balloons on a sugar high, but I’ll take that over a meltdown, right!

We did some other fun things which I will mention but try not to go into too much detail for fear this post will be too long.  We went to a zoo with some of John’s college friends and their families, went to London with Granddad (unfortunate, rainy weather but Hayden got to see Big Ben which he has been waiting months for since it’s featured in Cars 2 which he was obsessed by all summer, and Mommy and Daddy got Pizza Express which they were happy about, plus London is so great that even if the weather doesn’t cooperate, the sites are still amazing, and last thing about it, it was Maddie’s first time out in the city and she did AMAZING – she only woke briefly to feed while we were eating and we didn’t hear a peep from her the rest of the time!), celebrated the evening of Madeline’s actual birthday in an Indian restaurant while an “Indian Elvis” entertained us, went on a grown-up night out with our friends while the kids spent the night at Camp Granddad’s (which they loved and we got glowing reports on them afterwards), went to Legoland twice (can I mention again what a trooper James is??), and sometimes in the midst of all this action, we even relaxed with MMM&J. 🙂

I think that’s enough for this post.  I left out so much stuff, I might do another one to try to capture a little more but you are released for now. 😉

Mommy’s Girl

Hayden has been a Daddy’s boy for a very long time now (although, I always like to try to note that he was very much a Mommy’s boy for the first 2 1/2 years!), so I am happy to be able to confirm that Layla is still a big Mommy’s girl.  I think most babies (especially breastfed ones) favor their mother while they are babies.  That is where their food comes from, and that means everything when all you have is instinct!  But Layla is about the age Hayden was when he moved to Team Daddy (lol), and so far she is holding true to Team Mommy.

She’s not quite as bad as Hayden was (is still sometimes) in terms of favoring one over the other so much that she is rude to the other one, although she can get that way sometimes.  But I’m happy that I’m one of my children’s favorites.  I’ve teased John all along that if he takes this one then we’ll have to have a 3rd so I can have one! 😉 It’s nice that we have a balance – I don’t think either of us would be happy if we were a magnet to both kids and the other wasn’t.  And someday I know they will both come to realize how much they love both of us.  Getting Hayden to say he loves me is like trying to give a cat a bath, but I always try to get him to say it before bedtime anyway (even when he sometimes slips up and tells me really he just loves Daddy), but a couple of days ago Layla was singing away in the car “I love you, I love you, I love you…” and John said, “Layla, I love you!” and she stopped, then started singing, “I love Mommy, I love Mommy…”  We just have to laugh!