Pushing the limits September 17, 2010

Hayden has recently being trying to determine his boundaries and see what he can get away with.   We’ll tell him off and he’ll just smile at as (knowing he’s being naughty) and continue to do it.  We’ll start warning him if he continues, and threaten to take toys away.  He’ll normally just answer back and asking which toy it’s going to be.  You see his head working that if it’s something negligible he might consider taking the hit and doing it anyway.  Sometimes you can see him doing things he knows he’s not allowed just to see what happens.  I think this is the natural cursioity of a three year.  Luckily so far Kara and I have been very consistent with him and we also always follow through on our threats to him (usually involving putting Grave Digger on top of the Fridge) so I think it’s starting to learn some of the limits.

If he does misbehave the one thing that nearly always works is the count.  I count backwards from 10, and I hardly ever have to get past 9 before he’s panicing and begging me to stop counting.  The funny thing is I have no idea what I’m going to do if I ever get down to zero!!

Dear Hayden – My Three Year Old August 4, 2010

Dear Hayden,

You have just turned three, despite you telling me in the weeks leading up to your birthday that you are going to turn five.  I think in the last few days we have decided to agree on the fact you were two and now you’ll be three.  You have of course been asking what will you turn after you are three.   I’ve just tried to change the subject so you don’t get too confused!  Otherwise you’ll expect a birthday and presents every week!!

You are the most amazing little boy, and I cherish every moment I get to spend with you.  I look forward so much to the weekends (or “it’s not a daddy work day”) when I get to play with you. I feel like we do a lot at weekend, and I feel that you always want to be doing things with me.   You always want to know exactly what we are doing.  In the morning you’ll ask where we going, and then “what we doing after” that, and “what we doing after”… etc.  Typically you wait for us to tell you, but just this Sunday morning, you made up your own mind and asked to go on a “Bike ride with daddy”.  Of course we did, because I’m a sucker and will do whatever you want!!!   And the bike ride was great!!  In fact I took you past the local golf course and pointed it out to you, as I like to make sure you see all the important things on our rides.  You then told me; “I want to play golf with you daddy when I’m older!!” – Music to my ears.  At the end of the ride you turned and told me that you “want to go to the golf show, colts game and a baseball game!”

I feel right now you really enjoy spending time with me, I feel you really look up to me, and I feel that you really love me.  I hope those things never ever change.  I asked tonight who you loved and you immediately said Daddy.  I did ask who else you love and you told me Mummy and Layla – so I know it’s not isolated to me, you know you have a fantastic mummy too, and a beautiful little sister that you are doing so well adapting to.

You are such a boy!  You love anything on wheels and anything involving a ball.  I think you take after me in some of that, but you get your good cute looks from your mummy.  You have a ridiculous amount of toy cars for a three year old, you are so good, and you always seem to do what we tell you, that we can’t help giving you rewards for your good behavior.  Also we just love your reaction to getting something.  You are so grateful, you always say thank you, and then you play with your latest toy for hours and always want to take it upstairs to be with your.  Somehow you are only three but you’ve been two about 6/7 baseball games, 2 Pacers games, 4 Colts games, the Speedway 3/4 times, etc.   I’ve never shied away from exposing you to these things and every time you react so positively and well behaved that we have been able to take to more things like this than many people experience in their lifetime.

You are a great sleeper and a great eater.  Green beans and broccoli might be a push, but you eat veggie burgers (lucy burgers!) and hummus which keeps your mum happy, and you love chicken nuggets and steak, which keeps me happy.  You love fruit and home grown tomatoes which keeps everyone happy!

You have a fabulous sense of humor.  You might be a little guy, but you already know how to be funny.  Occasionally we’ll read a book and you’ll know exactly what the different pictures are, but you’ll make up something else just to get a reaction of us (e.g. it’ll be a Turtle and you’ll tell me it’s a Giraffe!!)

You are tough.  If you fall over, or knock something, you don’t really care.  If you cry we know you’ve actually hurt yourself.  Even if you hurt yourself you just ask us to kiss where it hurts, and then everything is OK.    That works fine except for when you hurt you bottom!!

I could write for hours on how special you are, and how much you mean to me, but I think you get the idea.

Happy Birthday Hayden!

Love Daddy

Dripping.. August 4, 2009

Recently Hayden is getting in a habit of overfilling his diapers!  A few weeks back we were at Joe’s Crab Shack and he was just starting to get fussy at the end of the meal.  While Kara paid up I took him out of his chair and outside so he could look at the boats and the water.  He felt a little on the heavy side as I picked him up but I was just concentrating on getting him outside so he didn’t start to go crazy in the restaurant.  As we got outside I suddenly felt that warm feeling against me that  you just can’t mistake!    I pulled Hayden away from me and suddenly realizing he was dripping like a tap and his entire trousers were cover top to bottom in pee!!  Poor little guy was just bursting out of his diaper.  We didn’t have a change of clothes for his so he had to walk around in his diaper until we were ready to go – which made me laugh (which considering I was covered in pee was pretty good of me!!)

A couple of weekends back  on the boat I was standing next to Hayden and then that warm feeling came around again…..this time the warm liquid started to roll down his legs on to my feet!  It was a cold weekend so things could have been worse I guess!!   Larry’s boat might have a funny stain on the carpet for a couple of weeks though!

Things come in threes right…. so while my dad was here we went to the Monon Center swimming.  Hayden and I were enjoying a nice tour around the lazy river when I got that feeling again!!!    I notice there weren’t many boats around us at the time – probably because we were leaving a yellow trail behind us!!!  Thanks Hayden!!

So just to show it’s not totally personal last week while we were at the Fisher’s Summer Concert Hayden was sat on Grandma G’s lap listening to the music and hanging out when she got to experience that warm feeling!!!  At least she is now fully initiated as a Grandma!!

In Love With A Fire Truck

Granddad wanted to give Hayden’s his birthday presents before he left so he could enjoy Hayden opening them.  Well he bought him this big toy fire truck.  Well I’ve never see someone so in love with a piece of plastic (no rude comments here please).   From the moment he got it out of the wrapping paper he got excited and then just hugged this thing to death.  It has three buttons that make all these lights and sounds come on so that made a nice background to the symphony (we were at symphony at the Prairie).  I think Granddad hit the spot with this present!

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!

Daddy’s Day!! July 7, 2009

Hayden gave me a great Father’s Day!  I got a card and presents from him (he got me golf lessons as he think he is already better than me – probably true!!).  Then Hayden and I went to the splash park together to have some father/son time.  We are lucky in that we have two splash parks within walking distance of our house (but we drive of course – this is America after all!!).

At the first park he was excited when he first got there, but then when he saw the water he started to get a little apprehensive. He was following this girl around and just starting to get comfortable, and he followed her over to one of the water toys that was just gently spraying out water, then out of nowhere it started spraying really hard and knocked Hayden off his feet!! He of course starting crying and then, justifiably so, wasn’t really very interested in the water anymore! We hung around and played on some of the dry climbing frames but largely started away from the water.

The second water park was a little more friendly for him as the water sprays weren’t as violent. Poor pouring water rather than spraying water. However he kept leaving his toys around for other boys to find, and kept trying to take other kids toys who didn’t want to give them up, and then by that point the kids that had his toys didn’t want to give them up either 😀 So lots of distraction techniques but it all worked out fine.

He did a great job telling me it’s was daddy’s day!   That was very cool 🙂 I figured “father’s day” might be too much of a mouthful so told him today was daddy’s day and he kept repeating it! I liked that a lot!

Later on we just went for Pizza and Beer before bedtime!! Shame it only comes around once a year.

dirty and clean.. July 1, 2009

Hayden keeps coming out with stuff and I have absolutely not idea where he got it from!!   But I love how he shows how his brain is developing.

I was putting him into his swing and the tray on the swing was covered in mud and dirt.  So I was getting a cloth to wipe it clean.   As I started to clean it he pointed at it and said “dirty”, once i’d finished “clean! clean!”  seriously no idea where he picks this stuff up.

He was playing with the light remote in the living room the other day.  Every time he turns it off “dark, dark”… turns it on “light, light”

The final example like this that I like the most is when he is getting stuff out of the fridge to help me with breakfast, he really struggles with the juice container (when it’s full) and he tells me “heaby, heaby!!” obviously meaning heavy.   I told him he is Mr Strong and he looks really proud!!

Daddy’s Beer

If you’ve seen my Facebook status recently you would have already realized how proud I am of my young man.  He likes to help me in the morning getting my breakfast ready.  He recently realized that he can open the Fridge with his new strength so now he get the Milk and Orange juice out for me.  Well next to the Milk there is a bottle of beer.  Hayden in his wisdom got really excited when he saw it and said “daddy’s      beer” (notice the space between words – he likes to emphasise the beer part!!!   I was very proud of him.

This weekend just got he excelled himself even more.  He was opening one of the coolers that we had on the boat and found one of my beers.  This time he took the steps on his own to take it out of the cooler and hand it to me with a nice “daddy’s”.   Since then he had been allowed to watch as much Dora and eat as much chocolate as he wants!!

Nanny!

Hard to know where to start with the Nanny story (she’s stayed with us for a three week holiday!).  I guess I start at the beginning.  We had been prepping him for a while about her visit.  He would run around the house shouting “Nanny” and would run into the office (because he is used to seeing her on the web cam on the computer!) and point at the monitor.  It’s funny how he builds these associations.

As soon as Nanny arrived Hayden took to her straight away – probably because he remembered how much he gets spoiled!  Since he’s been talking he typically goes very shy if it’s not just Kara and me, but not with Nanny – he was chatting away to her straight away.

Her suitcase had a big heavy label on it …..- No wander it was full of toys and books for Hayden!!  Everyone day a new toy mysteriously appeared, a huge grin appeared on Hayden’s face, and Nanny was number one again!   Every night Nanny would come in when I was getting him ready for bed and I turned into chopped liver!  All he wants is Nanny and then he settles in for a night time reading session with Nanny before bed.  He makes her work though as he normally wants 2 or 3 books read to him!   Then he would give her a kiss and go to sleep immediately excited for the next day with his Nanny!!

We all went to an Indians game one night (local baseball team) and at the end of the game they had fireworks.  Hayden hadn’t really seen fireworks properly (well certainly not close up and loud like these were).  It was also about 9.30pm so it’s real late and these are loud and bright.  He started on Kara, after a while he got a little scared and scrambled across to me.  It was good for another 5 minutes or so and then he got spooked again and this time scrambled across to Nanny where he hung out for the rest of the show.  He looked very happy and obviously felt very safe!!    I suspect Nanny is telling everyone she meets about this story how she was the one he needed when he got scared!!

On her last day he was extra clingy to her.  It’s like he knew she was leaving!  At bath time he gave her the biggest cuddle and refused to be put in the bath as he just wanted Nanny cuddles!!  Her face was priceless!!   It’s such a shame she can’t see more of Hayden (and vice versa).  They clearly love each other very much!

Come back soon Nanny – we all love you!

Singing June 30, 2009

Kara beat me to this a little bit with her twinkle twinkle… but singing is a new activity for me and Hayden at bathtime.  We got some classics down already like “lalalalalalalalala”, “mermermermermermermer” and mine and Hayden’s personal favourite “nananananananananananana” to the tune of Banana Splits.    Everytime I do that he gets really excited and sings in response to me.  He is getting better and better at the different notes.  Obviously he has a great teacher in me!!

Last weekend at the lake I was teaching him Smoke on the Water (Deep Purple) and he smashed it up!!  He is a born rock star (especially if you saw how he plays my guitar already!)….