Clean Plate Club July 28, 2009

Even though Hayden is generally a champion eater we are always looking for ways to encourage him.  Recently we came up with (I am writing “We” as there is a dispute over who actually came up with this!”) the idea that everytime he cleans his plate we shout out “clean plate club” and get really excited.

Hayden loves it!!  He’ll just start shouting it half way through his dinner (his indication that he has finished and he deserves to be in the clean plate club).  However it doesn’t quite pronounce it correctly…. in fact the first few times he was shouting it we had no idea what he was saying.  It’s more like “key put cub”…

He has now advanced to picking up his plate banging it and tipping it upside down and shouting “key put cub” at full volume.  Which is fine except for all the ketchup all falls on the floor!

Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner May 27, 2009

I know a lot of the recent blogs focus on Hayden’s speech, but we are at that point where his speech accelerated from 10 words a month ago to about 200 now so you can’t blame us!!  Well the word he seems to put the most passion into is “Outside” as Kara already referred to.  What she didn’t mention is that he says it with a rude boy West London accent!  It’s more like Outsiiiiiaid.  I’m very proud of my little boy!!

Another one of his favorite phrase is “another one” – apparently you actually say “Another one” a lot – when you have a children that repeats everything you say, in particular the phrases he knows well, you realize you say certain things 5/10 times a day.  Anyway to backup my earlier point – he says “another one” more like “nuvver one” – Perfect little cockney boy I’ve created it!! 😀

One extra point on this post – it shows I’ve been away too long and also all my brain cells have been fried by drinking too much or something – I spelt London, “Londen” for a moment!  That is really worrying.

All good things must come to an end in “T” May 13, 2009

Above you will find a picture of one Mr. Chatterbox.  Mr. Chatterbox chatters from the time he wakes up until the time he finally rests those tired eyes.  He has so much to say!  He has so many words that I wouldn’t really know where to start if I were to try to catalog them here now.  Yes, he talks and talks and talks and talks… until there are other people (besides Mommy and Daddy) around.  He goes to daycare and he will have been talking all morning, jabbering away “reading” this book or that or talking as he plays with his cars or eats his breakfast, and as soon as we step into his classroom he goes silent.  I don’t know how much he comes out of his shell as the day goes on, but I know I can’t get him to say a word when I drop him off.  And we will have family or friends come over and we’ll tell them all the fun new words he has and will he demonstrate any of those words then?  No, he will then make a mouse look drunkenly obnoxious.

No matter the word, he will usually make it end in a very pronounced “T.”  Sheep is sheeT (our friend Helen cleverly pointed out that it’s much better he is saying sheep than ship in this instance), duck is duT, truck is tuT, nut is nuT (fancy that), milk is mooT (that one always makes me laugh)… the list goes on.  It’s really cute how he emphasizes the T at the end.

Whenever he says outside it always has an exclamation point at the end.  Outside!  He says this often.  Whenever I put a zip up sweatshirt on him he starts saying “outside!” even when I am just trying to make him warmer inside.

Color me happy

Hayden knows his colors now and can say some!  He says green and – of all things – purple.  Not blue or red, which I would think would be much easier to say than purple.  But I digress.  We talk about colors a lot while we play cars and blocks.  John has always been particularly good about that – “Hayden, here comes the RED car!”  Today I was having him hand me his legos by color and he was getting excited that he knew the colors I was asking for.

Letters update

Hayden is making great strides with his letters!  Now he reads these letters: A, B, C, D, E, G, H, I, M, N, O, R, V, W, Y.  I could probably stick F in there, too, because he was playing with his fridge magnets this morning and pretty much said F, but I think that was the only time I’ve heard that one.  He is so cute with those fridge magnets because when he puts the letters in the big thing that tells him the letter and sound it plays a little song (D says duh, D says duh, every letter makes a sound, D says duh) and he will do this little squatty dance when the song is playing.  He doesn’t dance often, but he gets excited enough with those letter songs to dance most of the time!  Also, when I start to sing the alphabet song he will always chime in with C after I say “A, B…”  M and N are cute because he says Mmuh and Nnuh.  I think I was over-pronouncing them so he could hear the difference between them more easily and I have inadvertently given him a speech impediment!

I had thought he could only read the capital letters because that is what we have been going over, so I was really surprised when he started saying the little letters the other day.  He was putting together a puzzle that spells his name that I got him in San Fran.  It has all small letters except for the H, and he shocked me a couple of days ago but picking up each one and saying the right letter.  Most of the little letters look completely different to the capital letters, so I am happy he seems to be making the connection easily.

Vacation! May 6, 2009

We had a lovely time on vacation, can’t believe we’ve already been back a couple of weeks!  We went to Naples, FL.  We were warned by many that there are a lot of retirees down there, which was true but suited our pace fine.  John said many times that he could definitely retire there – beautiful beaches, warm weather, plenty of golf (golf courses after golf courses – what a shame thing to do to the native land, I say!), and the place itself (restaurants and such) is very nice.

We went to a different beach every day, usually in the morning in order to get back in time for Hayden to have a nap.  We also went swimming in our condo complex’s pool, typically after nap and before dinner.  There seemed to be plenty of families in our condo with small children, but unfortunately the place didn’t entirely cater to families.  I agree with the theory John came up with, that because it is such a golf-focused area they don’t want to intentionally draw a lot of families in because it could turn off the people they really want to attract – golfers.  There wasn’t a play area and the no baby pool, but we made do by swimming with Hayden in the beautiful big pool and walking around the complex with him when he would get restless in the condo.  We took many walks around the complex, and it was funny because he started imitating the birds on his own.  He was going “Ah! Ah!” and it dawned on us that he kept doing it right after a bird would make a “caw”-ing sound.  So funny!

The photo above was the first beach we went to.  You can see that he really liked the waves.  What you can’t see in this picture is there were loads of sting rays that were patrolling the area right before the waves were breaking.  So most people were staying out of the water.  We only wanted Hayden to dip his toes in but as you can see he kept wanting to go further and further in, so that was a fun battle. 🙂  It was really crazy – the sting rays were not far from where he was.  Of course, they are swimming up and down the shoreline so most of the time they were not very near but then they would come back and we would have to pull him away.  We also saw a couple of dolphins on the last day, which was really neat.  John had taken Hayden into the water and he saw something a little ways away.  A couple of minutes later it came out of the water again and I was able to see it.

Apart from the beaches we went to the Naples Zoo.  That was a nice place.  They have these ‘primate islands’ and you have to wait for these boats to take you around to see the monkeys and apes, which was a cool idea.  We also went to a nature center that was near our condo, and that was cool too.  They had a butterfly garden which was really pretty.  There was also a mangrove where we could see all these jellyfish.

Letters

Hayden is seriously starting to read his letters and numbers!  Granddad got him a giraffe puzzle for Christmas that has a letter on one side of each piece and a number on the other side.  We were putting the puzzle together yesterday (one of his many fave activities), he picked up and M and said “mmm.”  He did it a couple of times, so it wasn’t just a coincidence!  He picked up and O and said “ohh.”  Later we were looking through a book with numbers and he looked at the 8 and said “eighTT” (he really pronounces the T at the end).  We have an alphabet toy on our refrigerator that sounds out the letters, and he has been saying “B” for a while now when he plays with that (and other times he sees a B).  This morning we were doing the giraffe puzzle again and he said M and O again and this time added N (“nnn”)!  He was also saying “one” a lot while we were on holiday, but he hasn’t been saying that for a while (apart from “that one” and “another one” which he says constantly 🙂 ).

That one! April 27, 2009

Well, it has been a really long time since my last post.  We were in Florida last week, so once we get some pictures up I will give an update on that.  In short, we had a great time!

Hayden is really coming along with his speech now that he can hear properly.  He’s even moved onto two-letter words!  He says ‘that one’ about 100 times a day.  He points to things and says ‘that one,’ and he either wants to have whatever it is or know what it is (usually the former).  His favorite word is (still, if I haven’t mentioned before) ‘no.’  “Do you want dinner?” “No.”  “Do you want to talk to Grandma?” “No.” “Do you want to go outside?” “No.”  “Do you want ice cream?”  Silence.  See, he doesn’t say yes yet, this is the problem.  So usually if a question is asked – pretty much any question – he will say no.  Even if it is something he wants.  Occasionally he will say nothing and just look at you, like if you ask if he wants ice cream.  He knows he really shouldn’t say no, but he’s not gotten the yes thing down yet.  So he doesn’t say yes but he DOES say teacher.  (shaking head) Figure that out!

Day 3 – Rain, rain and more rain…. April 5, 2009

Hayden didn’t poop yesterday. That can only mean one thing…he will poop overnight and then once he’s awake there’s no going back to sleep – he will shout and shout until I come get him! So up at 6.15 this time…These munchkins are determined to stop me getting any sleep!!

Hayden wasn’t in the best mood this morning. I mix between teething (which can be solved with some pain relief) and getting seriously worried about where his mummy is. I could tell he wanted Kara this morning and wasn’t sure where she was. He will be so excited tomorrow morning!! We had to work through a couple of time outs (caused by sharing and refusing to stop shaking the gate) but he recovered from both well.

Good thing was the F1 was on early so we laid about on the beanbag and watched some of that before we headed out. He is loving that the F1 season has started (honest he is addicted to it :)) – but a monsoon came along and stopped the race so it was time for us to do something…

We have a new family tradition to go to Einsteins (bagels) on Sunday morning. I wasn’t sure if it was breaking tradition if I didn’t go, of if I went without Kara, but considering Kara is out having lots of fun snowshoeing (and etc) then I think we were justified in our choice to go!! So Hayden had his usual bagel and loved it (he had already had some cheerios so I wasn’t completely sure how he was going to get on) and behaved himself impeccably. It was weird being there with just him. Having conversation with someone that only knows 20 words is a little one way…. 😀

Afterwards I was in two minds too either head home and or go over to this park Kara had told me about. I knew he would need changing soon but it was a lovely sunny morning and we were close. We chose the park. I was a little worried when I got there as we were the only people there and it was a huge climbing area. I meant huge.. Must have had 20 swings and about 20 different slides and tunnels. The minute I got Hayden out of the car he just ran towards it. Left me for dust!

This park was great. The whole time we were there, about 45 minutes, we only saw a couple of joggers. Hayden loved it. He went down almost every slide (i even went down one really tall one with him but I picked up some much static on the way down off my fleece i thought i was going to electrocute myself!! ) climbed everything there was to climb and went on all the swings – all the time going “weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”…Just as we were leaving four families turned up – perfect timing!

Just as he was getting ready for nap time – the rain came (and came, and came.. 7 hours later it’s still coming down) Also thunder and lightening – I was worried he wouldn’t sleep by he was knackered so it wasn’t a problem. He had already looked like he was going to pass out when we were on our way home from the playground.

After he woke up the weather somewhat put a damper in our plans. We decided to just chill around the house. We spent some time looking at photos and he was very excited each time we were looking at pictures of either me (and he point at the picture, say dad-da and then point at me, some of these pictures were old so I was very impressed) or Kara and obviously accompany it with a “mum-my’.

He said “nanny” for the first time, but unfortunately my mum didn’t hear it…(even though she was on the other end of the phone!!). The rest of the afternoon we just played with different toys, a game of football, “soccer”, hide and seek, stack the cd;s (his current favourite) and an hilarious game of if you’re happy and you know it (mainly because watching him try to jump is magic! Hayden was easy and in a pretty good mood – Lucy on the other hand was a nightmare! She is feeling so sorry for herself right now, her leg is still obviously hurting her, and she can’t go out without someone. The problem was it was pouring down all day, and I had Hayden so couldn’t really get her outside. She must haved wined permanently for 4 hours. It will driving me crazy…. it should have been a chilled afternoon with Hayden but it turned into a stress fess because of Lucy – she is still being odd even though I’ve taken her outside. Also I just found pee in the dining room…but I’m wondering if it’s actually MiMi because she seems to be scared to get wet and hasn’t peed in ages!! Oh well the fun of having animals!!

We finished the weekend the only way I knew how -with Cars the movie of course!!
Can’t wait for Kara to get back! Neither can Hayden, he was calling her name just before bedtime again!!

Day 2…..Abbey learns about Karma and Hayden has some confusion over a duck and a doll

Hayden decides 6am is a reasonable time to get up.  I’ll take it as a complement that he wants to make the most of the day with me – right? I have to look at this positively…  The problem is I have a double sick dog on my hands..she’s already having to wear a cone, now she has something up with her stomach.  So she kept me up til past 1.30am, so I know I’m going to suffer today….

Early morning pretty uneventful.  Just watching footy and playing cars.  The way to keep both Hayden and Daddy happy!!  Well actually as fan of My Name Is Earl, I’m all about Karma….well Abbey got some of that today!!!  This morning Hayden went just out of sight, I was just heading up to get him when I heard a cat in distress!  Hayden had Abbey by the tail and she was almost airborne!!! Poor girl!  I told Hayden off, but he just stared through me like he was daydreaming!  He does this when we tell him off – least he’s not timid!!  To make sure she really got the message that Hayden doesn’t share food… he locked her in the basement (in the storage cupboard!) for the day!  Hayden 2 – Abbey 0 today!!!

Next main event – off to the Children’s Museum and it was great!! I was playing a dangerous game though with Sophie’s birthday party at 1pm….  I’m not sure who was more excited to be going to the museum, but we both loved it!  I didn’t get to see some of the big kid stuff, I’m going to save that for next time!…  First up there was a full size race car so Hayden got to sit in it.  My camera played up a bit so I couldn’t get as good of pictures as I wanted – seeing him sat in that car two hands on the steering wheel was just priceless – Lewis Hamilton watch out!!

Next we headed up to the play area (via the ramps which were fun for him, tiring for me), and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him more content.  From the minute I let him out of his stroller/push chair he just rain up to the area with all the sand toys and played there for 10 minutes, then went over to the water section and had a ball for like 15 minutes – I was worried he wouldn’t want to leave (especially after he had made out with the giant duck) but there was so much else to do he didn’t care.  He played with everything in there; trains, slides, giant magnets, tunnels, soft play, giant road with wooden cars, lawnmowers to push around.   He was in heaven!!

After that on to the lego section where he got to build a tower with the big blocks, quickly on to the dinosaur areas where he was very impressed and excited! he loves dinosaurs (what boy doesn’t!!).. and then lunch.   I think I was a good dad with prepared food so he didn’t have to eat all junk food (i try to do my part as Kara rocks by making him healthy).  Although he did get a couple of bites of my grilled chicken burger and loved it!  He definitely likes Chicken that’s for sure!!  After that I could sense I had a time bomb on my hands and we needed to make a move…

I was right – he was asleep within minutes of getting in the car.  In fact I stopped at a light and his juice went flying as he fell asleep with it in his hands.  This actually posed a bit of a problem – if Hayden takes a nap, any nap, anywhere, he thinks he is done with naps for the day.  I had other ideas (i wanted to try and get some sleep myself!!)  Anyway he woke up just before we got to Sophie’s birthday party!  He loved it at Sophie’s house.  He took over her toy room and played with everything, especially the kitchen set she had (third time he has got very interested in one of these! Gordon Ramsey watch out? he did know to put the chicken in the microwave, but he also try to put a huge ball in there – so I’m not so sure..  He also found her vibrating Elmo chair which gave him big kicks!

We stayed for about an hour and half, time for me to get more lunch and beer.  On the way out Sophie came over and gave me a hug.  I crouched down and told Hayden to give Sophie a cuddle (this means kiss to Hayden..).  He lent over and planted one on her – she was not impressed and run off to her mummy!!  What a charmer!

Obviously when we got home there as no nap.  I kind of knew it, but I did try and way but he jumped in crib for 30 minutes to poke fun at me.

So instead we make the most of the beautiful day and headed outside to play with his tractors.  We had lots of fun out there, but one time out was called because of lack of wanting to share his crackers.  I almost let him off, I knew how tired he was, but I’m sure he’s just testing me still so I stood my ground!   After his time out once he’d gotten over it we just chilled and read a book in the sun.  I had a beer, Hayden had some juice.  Sweet!

He must have said the word “mine” about 1000 times today.  I’m not kidding you.  I pull the milk container out of the fridge and “mine”, as i’m bringing his dinner “mine”, we see his stroller “mine”, even the dogs – “mine”.  Funny thing is, he didn’t do it at Sophie’s!!  He did claim the outside was his when we were leaving the children’s musuem.

Time we got to dinner he was down to business stuffing his dinner (fish fingers, peas, and fruit!) down his neck.  He wanted seconds again!!  I must be doing something right!!  Then up to bath time – he got so excited he was shouting “bubble” all the way up the stairs!!

Great day, but would have been even better if Kara had been here!  Just as I was getting him out of the bath and going back into his room he gave me a chorus of “mummy, mummy, mummy” – He’s not the only one missing her….

7pm and he is fast asleep! 😀  I just hope he doesn’t poop in the night and wake himself up.  Lie in please Hayden!