Hayden is Six! Twenty Questions August 30, 2013

Hayden turned six this month!  He’s getting bigger all the time (still 90th percentile in height).  He’s starting Kindergarten at the big school, he’s been taking loads of field trips at day care this summer (and riding the bus to those), and he’s doing more and more things for himself (begrudgingly).

1) What is your favorite color? Black

2) What is your favorite toy? Lego police station (but he says he wants another lego police station at Christmas – sigh!)

3) What is your favorite fruit? Raspberries

4) What is your favorite TV show? Paw Patrol (recently changed from Curious George)

5) What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch? Chicken nuggets

6) What is your favorite outfit? Nothing – says he doesn’t really have something like that 😉

7) What is your favorite game? He says he doesn’t have one, but I’d say it’s Rush Hour Jr

8) What is your favorite snack? Rocket snack (Trader Joe’s version of Goldfish)

9) What is your favorite animal?  Lizard he says (news to me)

10) What is your favorite song? Bad Boys (Whatcha Gonna Do When They Come For You)

11) What is your favorite book? Star Wars

12) Who is your best friend? Jesse and Robby, and Drew

13) What is your favorite cereal? Cocoa Krispies

14) What is your favorite thing to do outside? Ride my bike

15) What is your favorite drink? Lemonade

16) What is your favorite holiday? Christmas

17) What do you like to take with you to bed at night? Bed toys

18) What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? Cocoa Krispies

19) What do you want for dinner for your birthday? Red Robin

20) What do you want to be when you grow up? Construction worker or something else – lol

He had his birthday party at Ben and Ari’s this year.  The kids got tokens and played arcade games for a while, then we went to the party room and ate pizza and cake.  Afterwards most kids left except Jesse and Robby and the 3 of them played two rounds of mini golf.  Hayden was soooo excited about his party and had an absolute ball.  After that we went home and played with some of his presents before swimming for a while in the neighborhood pool.  We rounded off the day with dinner at Red Robin with the Carter’s.  The staff sang Happy Birthday to Hayden and he got a little ice cream sundae.

We are lucky to have such a fun, sweet little boy!  It’s been great fun to watch him grow and change.

Advertisement

“You Forgot to Spray!” and other happenings August 14, 2013

We went through a phase for a while where we’d put the kids to bed and they’d get up several times before falling asleep, needing to go potty or have a drink or tell us something – typical stall tactics.  I’ve been able to reign this in quite a bit recently, and it’s now not unusual for them to stay in bed once put down (Hayden is particularly fantastic at this anymore – although he does take try it on with John pretty regularly).  One thing that has helped with Layla is my monster and dinosaur spray.  Every night for the last couple of months I have “sprayed” all around her bed with my two sprays.  Even though we can’t see the spray, it has kept all the monsters and dinosaurs away while she is sleeping.  Every night we spray (sometimes she has to come out of her room to tell me I forgot to spray!), and every night while I’m spraying she asks me if it will “last all day night”.

Another silly thing we are doing is pretending the food that she hasn’t eaten wants to go into her belly to see its friends who she has already eaten.  She’ll be eating, say, cereal and leave half a bowl.  I’ll scoop up some on a spoon and put on a funny voice to ask her to please let me in so I can go see my friend/mommy/daddy/sister/brother/cousin.  Today she was even having me give each spoonful a name (rejecting most of the names until I got to the ones she liked).  It can certainly slow down a meal, but it’s worth it to know she’s had a good amount of food, and over time it seems to have gotten her to start off eating a good amount on her own before I have to do the show.

Kindergarten!

Somehow Hayden started Kindergarten today! When he hears me talking about him starting Kindergarten he tells me he’s already been in Kindergarten, because he did Kindergarten at day care. So I will qualify it by saying he is at big school now! He left this morning on the bus. I’ve felt pretty ready for him to start big school, since he’s six now and he seems really ready to start school and proper learning (I thought I would be fine with him going but did get a little teary as he was getting on the bus). He really flourished in Primrose’s Kindergarten program, and I’m excited about the advancements he’ll make in school this year. I kind of took for granted all he

was learning during his day care Kindergarten year, and then the “summer camp” session started where they stop the classroom learning and it became really clear through out the summer that he’d been learning tons during the school year because he kind of stopped learning there in the summer and as such stopped being interested in reading and numbers.

It’s going to be strange getting used to him being in school Mon – Fri. I typically do a flex schedule with all my hours completed M – Th so I can have the kids on Fri. Now it will just be me and Layla during the day on Friday. That will be good though because I haven’t really had any one-on-one time with her, whereas I had almost three years with Hayden. Watching all the excitement of us getting ready for Hayden to start school over the last few weeks has made her super excited about starting Kindergarten in two years!