Easter April 15, 2013

Again, not really sure where to start since we haven’t written in so long.  So Easter it is!  We went to the neighborhood Easter egg hunt, as we like to do each year.  Thought we would miss it this year as we were scheduled to be out of town, but had to cancel that trip at the last minute due to predicted snow.  So had to quickly go get Layla an Easter dress for the occasion to peak out from under her coat (since it has taken FOREVER for spring to get here!).  Layla was scared of the Easter bunny and wouldn’t sit on his lap, so bit of a bummer that we couldn’t get a photo of the kids together with him.

Easter weekend we went to Grandma and Grandpa’s on Saturday.  Normally we have a big Easter brunch with the whole family, but everyone was out of town except us and Grandma and Grandpa, so we had a little get together with Chinese food.  We were able to

throw together a post-Easter brunch with the rest of the gang the following weekend though (by now it might be apparent that the kids had PLENTY of Easter time this year).  They also had an Easter egg hunt at their day care center.  Then Sunday we went to Grandpaman’s and Grandma G’s.  Our friends the Carter’s joined us – they are here from the UK for 3 years, much to our delight.  My dad and Gretchen were kind enough to invite them over, and we had some wonderful food and play time there.

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Christmas January 5, 2012

What a wonderful Christmas!  Hayden was at the best age for the holiday.  He was so excited all month long about everything to do with Christmas – the lights, Santa, presents, Christmas songs, “candy train” (our advent calendar), Christmas cartoons…  It was really a blast to go through the Christmas season with a 4 year old – it made it feel magical, the way it did when I was little.

We tried to make the most of Christmas time by taking advantage of all the special events.  We went on the “Polar Express,” which was a train ride from the neighboring town of Fishers up to “the north pole” (Noblesville, one town up) to pick up Santa.  We did our annual neighborhood Cookies with Santa, and Hayden got to tell Santa what he wanted for Christmas (trains, trains, and more trains, because he “really loves trains” – as the month went on we were able to convince him to ask for some other things since he already has a truckload of trains).  Meanwhile, Layla got to show that she is at the exact right age to want to have nothing to do with the big, strangely dressed man, even if he does wield candy canes.  We went to a big Christmas model train exhibit at the Eiteljorg museum in Indy which was really remarkable, and right up Hayden’s alley since it encompassed his two very favorite things – Christmas and trains.  We went to the Children’s Museum “Jolly Days” Christmas experience.  One night a couple of days before Christmas we did what I hope is becoming a tradition since we also did it last year – ordered pizza and ate it on the couch while we watched the movie Elf.  Yes, a 4 year old eating pizza on the couch, I am a wild woman!  I couldn’t bring myself to let Layla loose with pizza sauce and furniture, so she was in her high chair, but I moved it so it was aaaaaalmost in the family room.  🙂

Hayden would have a lot of fun listening to Christmas songs in the car.  He would always ask for Christmas music if it wasn’t already on.  He liked to sing jingle bells or Rudolph – my mom was babysitting for us and I got a text that she was enjoying listening to his sweet voice singing Rudolph and jingle bells over the monitor while he was supposed to be sleeping.  Even Layla started doing her own singing along to jingle bells after a while (her version of singing is mostly singing “eh eh eh” to the tune, and every once in a while throwing in a word that sounds about right).

We spent Christmas Eve with Grandma and Grandpa and Dusty and Andy and their respective families.  Christmas morning we spent at our house unwrapping presents and eating cinnamon rolls.  Hayden was really quite good with it all considering the amount of waiting for other people to open and not really being able to play with everything right away.  I remember last year it really became too much for him after a while.  Then in the afternoon after Layla’s nap we went to Grandpaman’s and did some visiting with Grandma G’s family.

The whole Christmas thing was really great.  John and I also had nearly 2 weeks off work, and it was such a joy to just spend tons of time together as a family.  It was really hard to go back to the routine this week.  But, I guess if we could do that all the time it wouldn’t feel as special.

Strawberry picking June 27, 2011

Over Memorial Day weekend we went strawberry picking.  I had wanted to do it last year, but I got to the farm too late for strawberries (I guess having a 1 week old cramped my style last year 🙂 ), so last year we picked blueberries instead.  Madeline (“Nanny”) was staying with us so she came along, and Grandma and Grandpa came, too.  I thought Hayden would enjoy picking the berries, but I was wrong.  There was a lot of whining and talk about wanting to “go back in my van.”  Even the promise of ice cream when we were done picking didn’t really intice him.  Apparently he was interested long enough for us to capture one picture of him. 🙂  We got just under 10 lbs of berries, and I made 2 batches of freezer jam (which equates to… lots of jars in my freezer).  There were still tons of berries after I made jam.  I had them in tupperware to last as long as possible, which really did keep them good for a long time.  I was bound and determined to eat every last one of the berries, and eventually we did.  Thank goodness the kids are fruit junkies!

And afterwards, we did all enjoy some ice cream.  Hayden was funny because as he and I were standing in line for ice cream, everyone else was outside.  I realized I didn’t have any money, so I asked Hayden to go outside and tell Daddy we need money.  He ran outside up to John and excitedly said, “We need money, Daddy!”  I don’t think it translates as cute in writing, but you’ll have to trust me that was (so I hear, again, I was inside).  It was also funny because it was sort of a test.  It’s relatively new that you can tell him to tell someone something and he will do it at all or convey the right message, and it’s not 100%.  There was an equally good chance that he would have gotten distracted along the way and never made it to John at all, or not remembered what he was supposed to tell him.

Hayden’s surgery April 13, 2011

On Monday Hayden went to Riley Children’s Hospital to have urological surgery and have his ear tubes taken out.  He was supposed to have the urological surgery in January, but we ended up postponing it so we could combine it with having his tubes taken out so he would just have to have general anesthesia once.

We had to be at the hospital at 5:45, so it was quite an early start for us considering the hospital is 45 min away.  Hayden wasn’t allowed to eat or drink before surgery, so that was one good thing about it being so early since he wouldn’t have to be hungry for an overly long time.

We tried to prepare him as much as we could the day before.  I tried to talk about every detail I could think of, from the hospital gown to the toys they give him to the bed on wheels that would take him to the operating room to the mask they would put on his face before he fell asleep.  He really seemed to take it all in because we weren’t there very long before he was asking where the bed on wheels was (no wonder, since I had likened it to a train).

Right when he got there he got a little dolphin beanie toy and a toy car, plus we had given him a monster truck so he had a lot to be excited about.  He was happy and calm, lounging on my lap watching cartoons and playing with his car and monster truck before surgery, but they still gave him a drug 1/2 hour before they took him away to calm him.  They weren’t sure about giving it to him since he was pretty relaxed, but we went ahead anyway since we thought it would help him be less stressed when we parted ways.  About 15 min after he took the drug, he was sitting on John’s lap looking through an I-Spy book and he just slowly fell forward until his head hit the book.  It looked like he had fallen asleep while reading, but his eyes were open.  Obviously the drug was working!  We all had a giggle about that, including him.

They took him away at 7:30 and did his ears first.  After about 45 min we talked to the doctor (after some miscommunication about where we should wait, we didn’t get to talk to him in person but they got him on the phone for us – not ideal but what are you going to do) and he said everything went fine.  The urology part we knew would take longer, so John and I went to get some breakfast.  Riley has a cafeteria and a McDonald’s.  Isn’t a McDonald’s in a children’s hospital a little like a cigarette machine in an oncology wing?  ANYWAY, the breakfast food in the cafeteria didn’t look very good, so John and I sucked it up and went to McDonald’s for the first time in – well, really I don’t know how many years but it is well over 5 for me.  I had an Egg McMuffin, hold the Canadian bacon, and it tasted good but my goodness how salty!  I don’t know how an English muffin, egg, and cheese can be that salty, but they sure make it that way.  I’m glad that I have the knowledge that too much salt in a diet is a bad thing, otherwise I would be getting those more often just because it tasted good!  Am I digressing? 🙂

I want to say it was a little after 10 when the surgeon came to see us to say it was over and Hayden had done well.  He said they make you wait 30 – 45 minutes after surgery to see them there, but I think it was only 10 minutes or so after he left that they said we could see him.  The recovery nurse said he woke up really fast after the anesthesia and didn’t seem upset when he came to, so that must have been why it wasn’t as long for us.  It was so good to see him – that time apart was stressful, even though we knew he was in good hands.  I predict in 100 years they will allow a family member or close friend in the operating room with the patient, because it would be good to have someone with you when you are having surgery and it is SO hard for parents to be separated from their kids when they are undergoing it.  Think of how much OB deliveries have changed in the last 50 years.  They used to knock out the mother, the father was in the waiting room, bar, or work, the baby was kept away from its mother, etc.  Now things are radically different.  Did I digress again?

So yes, it was such a relief to see him again.  He was his usual calm self.  He was wondering why he didn’t have clothes on, but other than that didn’t really say too much.  It wasn’t long before he was going from that immediate recovery area (where he was hooked up to machines to monitor vitals) to another recovery area where he could watch tv and eat popsicles.  After a little while there we were able to go home.

My mom had watched Layla for us, which she said went very well.  We came home and Hayden got some paintable monster trucks that he was super excited about.  He did puzzles with Grandma, painted his trucks, ate a very small amount of lunch, and eventually watched a movie on my lap for a few minutes before we both fell asleep.  He remained in good spirits throughout the day, even though he was obviously in pain during parts of the day.

Recovery will take a couple of weeks, due to the nature of the surgery.  His pain does seem to be getting better each day, though.  Each morning when he’s first woken seems to be the hardest, but today when he woke up there didn’t seem to be any pain which was a great sign.  I still gave him some medicine since he went to preschool and I didn’t want to risk it.

So, everything seemed to be a success, and we are so glad it’s behind us now!

Trick or Treat November 4, 2010

Three is a fun age for Halloween.   This was the first year I feel like Hayden was quite interested in trick-or-treating, even though he definitely lost interested long before the bigger kids.  🙂

Halloween was on Sunday this year, and Saturday my mom’s church had a “trunk or treat” event where you could take your kids to the parking lot and go car to car to “trick-or-treat.”  I guess these things are getting more popular but I had never heard of it before.  We took Hayden with Mom and Jim, and Hayden’s cousins Jesse and Robby came, too.  It was really cute, and it gave Hayden a bit of a preview/reminder of what this trick-or-treating business is.  The adults who were handing out the candy had gotten all dressed up – it was a really fun time!

Sunday was the real deal.  We went to the neighborhood Halloween party, which goes for an hour before official trick-or-treat time starts.  We had some chili, hotdogs, and snacks and Hayden did some coloring and playing with neighborhood kids.  From there we started the trick-or-treating.  John took Hayden around to start with while I took the car home and met up with them after a few minutes.  He was really enjoying it.  He wanted to go to every single house, and when there was the odd house we knew wasn’t giving candy he would protest, not understanding why he couldn’t go ring their bell.

After he’d done a fair amount of trick-or-treating, we went down to the cul-de-sac where our friends live.  We decided to pass out our candy down there as our house always gets bypassed since we’re at the neighborhood entrance and off the main drag.  Our friend Kris had made some mulled cider which the adults enjoyed while the kids all played around.  It was a fun weekend!

Favorite questions May 11, 2010

Hayden’s speech has really exploded in the last few months.  It’s so fun being able to really talk to him and know he understands most of what we are saying.  Of course, this means that when John and I are talking to each other there is not much that gets passed him.  It’s funny to see Hayden react to something I say to John, for instance when he has said or done something funny and I say to John, “Did you hear him?  He just said [insert funny thing here].”  Hayden will start laughing and look at John excitedly so we can all laugh at what he has said.

He asks a LOT of questions right now.  More precisely, he mostly asks the same questions a LOT.  His favorite game right now is “What’s this one parked?”  He takes his cars out of his car case one by one, and he asks us “what this one parked?”  We will tell him where he should “park” the car on his car mat, and he’ll “drive” it over to where we said while he talks about all the cars and the traffic jam/parking lot he is creating.  This morning we were playing the “what’s this one parked” game, and when I would offer a suggestion of where it should go he would say, “how ’bout, how ’bout right there” and put it where he wanted.  The game is evolving!

What you bring this to me? This is translated as “Who gave this to me?”  At the moment he is fascinated by who gave him his toys.  He knows the answers to a lot of them, so often times he will ask me “what you bring this to me” with a smile and I will tell him he knows who brought it for him, who was it, and he will tell me.

What Mimi doing? He also asks about Lucy and Abbey, but Mimi is the most common.  Although he does ask this when we are home, too, the most common time for him to ask this is when we are in the car, or somewhere else where I have no way of knowing what the dog is up to.  So, I have to guess what she might be doing.  It cracks me up that he will randomly ask about the pets when I can’t see an obvious trigger for the thought.

Where we go after…/what we doing after…? This is a big one right now.  He always wants to know what the plan is for the day.  He’ll wake up and tell me it’s not a day care day (see previous post on this topic), then ask me what we are doing.  After I tell him what we’re doing today (day care or not),  he’ll ask me what we are doing after whatever I said we are going to do.  Then ask what we are doing after that.  This will go on until I have mapped out the day, and then he will ask what we are doing after bed, as in what are we doing tomorrow.  As the day goes on he will proceed to tell me what is coming up in our agenda, and when we haven’t done something yet that we are planning to do he will tell me it’s not open yet (“Gymboree not open yet,” “Grandpaman’s not open yet”).  He respects the plan, but when he’s very excited about doing something he does his best to rush through what needs to be done first to get to the main event.  Last Friday Grandma watched him while I had a list of things I had to do.  We talked about all the things on the agenda for the day, which were Gymboree, lunch, Grandma’s house.  When we were at lunch he ate a pretty small amount for him, then he must have told me and Grandma, “I all done” about 60 times while we ate.  He knew he had to have lunch before it was time to go to Grandma’s house, and he had the bare minimum of lunch in order to get it done so he could move on to Grandma’s house.  He hadn’t taken into consideration obviously that he was going to have to wait for us to finish, too.  I think he thought if he could just say “I all done” enough times it would drive us out of there eventually (and I actually believe he was right – I don’t know how many more polite responses I had left to “I all done”).

Which way we going? Another big one right now.  Whenever we get in the car he asks which way we are going.  He doesn’t seem to know his left from right yet, but he wants to be told anyway.  Many times he follows the answer to this question with “Which way left (or right) is?”

Easter April 13, 2010

We had a fun Easter!  Hayden helped me dye some eggs.  He really enjoyed putting the color tablets into the water, but apart from that he lost interest in the actual egg coloring and was more interested in all the stickers and other things that came in the egg coloring kit.

Saturday we went to Grandma and Grandpa’s and he got to play with his cousins Jesse and Robby.  He loves going there and playing with all the different toys.  We were able to coax him outside to play some soccer with the boys for a while, but as everything outside-related is with Hayden at the moment, it only lasted a short time until he was lured back in by the thought of all the toys that weren’t being played with.

Sunday when we woke up we saw the Easter bunny had been to our house while we slept, and he left Hayden candy and presents and hid the eggs we had colored!  He had a great time finding the eggs and was very excited about his presents.  He got a scooter, soccer goal (not sure if that was more for him or Daddy?), and a couple of little cars.  He really enjoyed his scooter and soccer goal that day, but it’s been difficult to get him outside again to play on them since.  (I’m shaking my head in disbelief as I type that.)

We also planted some seeds for Hayden’s Sesame Street garden.  He has three little Sesame Street kits to grow tomatoes, watermelon, and peppers.  They are actually doing really well so far in their starter kits!  We’ll see what happens once they are transplanted.

Later in the day we went to Grandpamans and Grandma G’s for Easter dinner.  We had a lovely time and great food there.  Toward the end of the visit Hayden tripped and banged his head on a low ledge.  It seemed a pretty hard hit and we all felt really badly for him (I think we were all ready for a bit of blood when it happened), and somehow he got away with only a small bruise.

Thanksgiving December 8, 2009

We had a fun Thanksgiving holiday!  Hayden’s Grandma Goodwin (Nanny) was here with her friend Dave, and we did our usual routine of going to Grandpaman and Grandma G’s on Thanksgiving Day and Grandma and Grandpa’s on the following day.  Hayden was a pretty well behaved boy during both events, although he did find it hard to sit at the table for too long at Grandpaman’s house.  He was starving by the time we sat down to eat, so in order to keep him from going crazy we were feeding him as the dishes were still going around.  There were 19 people there (!), and by the time everyone’s plates had food piled high and we’d said our thanks and cheers, he was just about done eating.  Luckily, the way the room was arranged he could not get out of the dining room because people were blocking the exits, so he stayed near enough that we didn’t have to run after him too much.  My cousin Mandy and her parents, Aunt Marilyn and Uncle Bill, came down from Chicago as well as Grandma G’s brother and his family and her aunt and uncle.  Add to that the five of us and Grandma G’s parents, and it was certainly a full house!

Grandma’s was fun, too, and Hayden had a great time as always playing with his cousins.  There was a kid’s table set up, so he got to sit off with his cousins for dinner.  He did a good job with that.  Jesse and Robby actually finished their food much faster than Hayden, so John sat with him for a while as he felt badly he was sitting by himself. 😉

St Louis November 11, 2009

John and I went to St Louis a couple of weekends ago to see the Colts on the road.  We managed to do a lot in a very short time.  We got there about 4:00 and went straight to the Budweiser brewery for a tour, which was pretty cool.  Then we had dinner on “the hill,” which is the Italian district.  We had a great Italian meal.  Our waitress told us about an ice cream place that is apparently “famous” on Route 66 called Ted Drewes.  We couldn’t resist checking it out (especially if it meant going on infamous Route 66), and when we got there the place was ridiculously busy!  People were all over this building like ants on picnic crumbs.  John got a strawberry shortcake (“what’s the best thing you have that doesn’t have chocolate in it” – weirdo! 🙂 ) that we shared, and it was delicious!

The next day we went to the arch in the morning.  They had a really nice museum at the bottom that we toured while we waited our turn to go up.  After the arch it was game time!  There were so many Colts fans, it seemed like a home game!  St Louis is not doing well at all this year, so naturally they are not getting the home crowds that you do when you are doing well.  The Colts won easily.

Hayden stayed with Grandma and Grandpa while we were away.  He had a ball!  Grandma’s toy room wins again.  I’m not sure he was actually ready to come home when we picked him up.  He didn’t want us to leave, but he didn’t seem in a hurry to leave himself!

Photo albums July 8, 2009

Hayden’s been really interested in looking at our photo albums lately.  He will go through them and excitedly name the people in them, including himself (he started saying his own name recently).  It was while looking through photos that I first heard him say “Brama” (for Grandma).  John said that a couple of times he was looking through the photo albums with him while I wasn’t there and when he got to pictures of me holding him as a baby he would start swatting the baby and try to push it away from me.  (This is what he tries to do to other kids/babies if I am holding them.)

Speaking of Brama, when Scott was visiting we went to lunch at a restaurant where Hayden and I often meet my mom for lunch.  I was getting him out of his car seat and he recognized where we were because he started saying, ‘Brama! Brama!’ even though she wasn’t there and there wasn’t anyone around who looked like her.