20 Questions for Hayden August 25, 2014

Somehow Hayden is 7 already!  He has had a great year being 6, and I’m sure it’s all upwards from here.  He loved Kindergarten and really flourished.  He’s got a big year ahead with starting a new school at the International School of Bologna, which he is excited about!  It’s fun watching him mature more and more every year.  He says things now like, “Mommy, do you think I could do [x]?  I don’t think I’ll be allowed to because [y] but I’m just asking.” 🙂

His birthday fell during our move, so we had his birthday party in July to make sure we had time for a party.  He really wanted it at the Monon Center water park, but it got rained out so we did a last minute switch to Dave and Busters.  His actual birthday was the day we flew to Italy.  We asked him if he would rather be in Indiana for his birthday, be in Italy already, or be flying on his birthday (in case we had flexibility to choose when), and he wanted to be on airplanes and in airports for his birthday – and that’s what he got!  We also got to fly first class due using points to upgrade, so that made it extra special!  Although, we got ice cream sundaes on the flight and for some reason Hayden didn’t want any…?  I just can’t figure that one out.

1) What is your favorite color? Black

2) What is your favorite toy? Wii

3) What is your favorite fruit? Peaches and apricots

4) What is your favorite TV show? The show with the bear and the girl – something new we’ve watched in Italy but don’t know what it’s called.

5) What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch?  Bread he’s been eating here with butter (making essentially an empty sandwich).

6) What is your favorite outfit? Lego Star Wars shirt

7) What is your favorite game? Mine Craft

8) What is your favorite snack? Chocolate granola bar

9) What is your favorite animal?  Dolphin

10) What is your favorite song? “The robot song” – I think this is called “Party Rock Anthem”

11) What is your favorite book? These Aren’t the Droids You’re Looking For (Star Wars)

12) Who is your best friend? Drew

13) What is your favorite cereal? Cocoa Krispies (“but I don’t eat it anymore”)

14) What is your favorite thing to do outside? Play in the big playground in Hawaii

15) What is your favorite drink?  Peach tea (cold)

16) What is your favorite holiday? Christmas

17) What do you like to take with you to bed at night? Bunny and fox

18) What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? Waffle and fruit yogurt

19) What do you want for dinner for your birthday? McDonald’s

20) What do you want to be when you grow up? Nascar driver

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No Training Wheels! September 26, 2013

Hayden has learned to ride his bike without training wheels.  We’d been casually talking about taking them off for a while, and he assured us that once he was 6 he would.  Well, he turned 6 and sure enough he was willing to give it a try!  One weekend John took them off and guided Hayden around the sidewalks as we walked to a neighborhood party.  Later that weekend we took the bike into the grass (he insisted on being in the grass in case he fell) and he started to get the hang of it.  He actually really enjoyed it once he learned to keep his balance.  It took a bit of convincing to get him to go onto the cement.  We kept telling him how much easier his bike would be to maneuver on cement, and eventually he gave it a try.  Now he’s really confident and zipping around on it all the time.  In fact, he’ll be a good partner to run with as he cycles along – it sure is difficult to keep up with him while just walking!

 

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.

Kindergarten! August 14, 2013

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!

Best Friend June 23, 2013

Hayden has a best friend at Primrose now, which is really fun for us because it has taken him a long time to really gel with anyone there. He’s pretty particular about who he deems a friend. He started talking about this friend in May, and we got an invitation to his birthday party a few weeks ago. I RSVP’ed to his mom and said Hayden has been talking a lot about his new friend, and I was smiling as I read her response to how much they hear about his “best friend Hayden”. Unfortunately, this friend cut down his time at Primrose to two days over the summer, so he doesn’t get to see him all that often at the moment. But last week he started talking about a new friend at school, so it sounds like he’s got someone he likes to hang out with when he doesn’t have his bestie around. And it all comes down to birthday parties. He’ll tell me he has someone he wants to invite to his birthday party (which will be in August – not really too near but from what his teachers say all the kids are always talking about who can come to their birthday parties, no matter how distant in the future it is).

Singin’ and Addin’ April 30, 2013

Hayden loves to “put on a song” or “put on a CD”, which means he is going to start singing.  He’ll take a book and “sing” the story that he is seeing, with a lot of musical sounds in accompaniment (almost like “doo-doo-doo” but more of an unspellable sound).  Yesterday he had been looking at a train book, and he started singing a song that said “train” over and over with various humming/instrumental sounds in between.  It’s fun to see such a creative side coming out in him.

He also spends a lot of his energy on adding.  Specifically, he likes to think of things that add up to 12.  He could easily pass and hour or two asking, “Does 6 plus 6 equal 12?” “Does 9 plus 3 equal 12?” or “what does 7 plus 5 equal?” If I give the right answer, he’ll tell me Yes, good job!  But if I tease him and give him a different number he’ll laugh and tell me no.  I try to get him to branch out a bit since he clearly has 12 down really well and I’ll try with another number like 15, but he is not too receptive about other numbers. 

It’s also worth noting that he has mentioned several times lately that his favorite number is 7.  He had several favorite numbers before, but 7 seems to be holding the top spot currently.

Teeth! April 15, 2013

I’m really sad that it has been so long since either of us posted.  I got a new position and went up to full time in March.  It’s been good and luckily it’s mostly manageable, but so far it hasn’t left enough free time to keep up with blogging (and then the longer you go without blogging, the more there is to write about, and the more daunting it seems to start posting!).  So I don’t really know where to begin, so I’ll start with the face that our (5 year old) baby boy has started to lose his teeth!  He lost the first, heart breakingly, when John and I were in Cozumel on vacation and the kids were with Grandma and Grandpa for a few days.  It wasn’t really even that loose, but it decided to pop out while we were gone.  I remember when I lost my first tooth, and the second one fell out the day after the first, so I thought Hayden’s second would come out quickly, but it took until 2 days ago which was 5 or 6 weeks later.  It was pretty loose for a while, but he doesn’t really seem to bother with his teeth when they are loose (I remember I was a big time tooth wiggler when mine were loose) so it took a long time to come out.  I picked him up from a birthday party on Saturday, and it was gone!  He didn’t seem to realize, nor did anyone else who had been at the party.  So with both of the teeth it seems like they must have come out when he was eating and he swallowed them or something because we’ve never seen them once they’ve come out!

Time for a Change December 13, 2012

We’ve gone to the same day care since Hayden was less than three months old.  We’ve had our ups and downs there – as you do with anything you stick with for 5+ years.  Hayden in particular has had a few periods of time where he REALLY doesn’t want to go, and we’ve had to work with his teachers and sometimes the director to sort through the issues he’s had.  Then he’s gotten back on track and we’ve coasted until we hit the next bump.  I’ve felt that it is only fair to let them know whatever issues we are having and give them a chance to address them before we leave.

Lately he’s been having a tough time again.  He is a gentle boy, and the boys in his class are pretty aggressive.  He says every day that the boys are mean in his class.  I’ve tried suggesting that maybe they are just playing, and pointed out how our dogs look like they are fighting when they play, but we know that even if it looks like they are trying to bite each other we know they are just screwing around.  Even when viewing it through that lens, he still keeps coming back to them being mean, and I feel that he is old enough and sensible enough to know if something feels like play versus aggression.

So, we’ve decided to try a new preschool.  I’ve toured this school before, in previous times of trouble with their current school.  I’ve always been impressed but our issues have always been worked through at the other school so I’ve never ended up taking the plunge and transferring.  Hayden is really excited about going to the new school.  There is one boy in particular who he doesn’t like in his current class, and he asked John if we could make sure he doesn’t switch schools, too, so he doesn’t have to deal with him in his new class.

They’ll start at the beginning of next year.  I’ll be off work for almost 2 weeks at the end of the year, so they only have one more day at their current school.  Hayden was sweet yesterday.  He said he wanted to get Carter – one of his classmates – a Christmas present.  I asked if he was going to miss Carter when he switches schools, and he said yes that was why he wanted to get him a present, because “I’m Carter’s best friend.”  I was glad to hear that he feels like he has a friend there right now.  That was another thing that has been bothering me about how things are going there right now – not only does he think the boys are “mean,” he doesn’t really seem to have any friends.  He was always excited to play with Oliver last year, but he’s now in Kindergarten at the public school.  When we first started back after the summer he was talking about Carter a lot and they seemed to be good friends, but when all this physicality started he was even saying Carter’s name when we were asking who was being “mean.”

So, here’s to change!  Let’s hope it’s a good one!

Growth Spurt October 31, 2012

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. 🙂

Hayden’s Family Drawing August 29, 2012

Hayden brought this drawing home from day care last week, and I just LOVE it!  He’s managed to draw all of the people in his family and even included Lucy!  It’s easy to tell it’s Lucy because it’s so skinny and has a thin long tail.  Not sure where Mimi and Abbey are, or why none of us have arms, but I’m happy that we are all smiling and I managed to get eyes which John would be jealous of if he had any to see.  Layla has an uncanny resemblance to R2D2 – Hayden is pretty into Star Wars now (to John’s delight) so I can’t say for sure if this is a coincidence or not.