More Funnies September 20, 2012

I know it hasn’t been that long since I wrote a post on the funny things the kids say, but they just keep coming up with them and I don’t want to forget!

The other day I took Hayden to the dentist, and on the way home we stopped to get some gas.  We’d been in the car maybe 3 minutes when we stopped for gas, and as I’m getting out of the car Layla says (the quotes are intentional – this is word-for-word), “Let me out, I need to stretch my legs.”  She’s 2 1/3 – and yet she came up with that sentence.  She just blows me away with her language and comprehension.

Hayden was wanting me to watch him build a “camera store” with legos yesterday.  He wasn’t impressed with my lack of focus on watching him, and he told me that I have two eyes and I needed to watch him.  I think this is a take on the expression I use commonly – I only have two hands.

This picture also made me laugh.  Granddad was here recently, so here’s a nice shot of him playing with the kids.  John and I were behind them and ducked down to try to make it a nice picture of Granddad and the two kids.  This was one in a series of pictures we took, so for this one I decided to “photo bomb” it, you can see in the background.  The thing that makes me laugh is we were watching our neighbor’s dog, Macy, at the time, and I can see now that she was trying to photo bomb my photo bomb!

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Brummy accent?

Recently Hayden has started talking like he is from Birmingham. He has suddenly started putting U’s in words instead of A’s or I’s. A few example:
Dad, can we play curds? (card)
Mum, is that a burd? (bird)
This table is hurd. (hard)
Can we go in daddy’s kurr? (car)
Look daddy there’s a stur. (star)

We have no idea where it came from!  He has never even been to Birmingham!

The Things They Say August 15, 2012

I know this is a common theme in my posts (what are you going to do, stop reading?  Wait, come back!), but the kids just crack us up with the things they say.  They sound so grown up sometimes without even realizing it.  I thought it was funny enough that Hayden throws “actually” into his stories regularly, but I was floored when Layla started doing it.  “I walk down stairs.” “Oh, you want to walk?”  “Actually, carry me.”  She says actually quite a lot, actually.  Funny.

When the babysitter was here while I was working and she couldn’t figure out how to get a DVD to work, Hayden would come into the office and tell me that Natalie was “having a hard time with the movie,” and I needed to come help.  Or he’ll tell me he’s “having a hard time” buttoning his pants.

Layla has been sticking her fingers in her mouth and biting them a lot lately, so we think her last molars are coming through.  Yesterday I gave her some pain medicine, and I put it in a little medicine cup like what Hayden gets his allergy medicine in every day.  She was pretty excited at drinking out of it like she sees Haddy do every day, even though she didn’t like the taste.  Well, I could have written the script myself this morning at breakfast.  I gave Hayden his medicine and no sooner had I set it on the table than Layla is telling me, “My teeth hurt.”  What a little rascal!  (I am impressed, though, that her language is so far advanced that she says things like, “My teeth hurt,” “I’m thirsty,” “I’m hungry,” instead of directly saying what she wants [medicine, drink, food].  She makes the connection between those feelings and what they are associated with.)

Hayden’s also been calling Layla “Lay” a lot which I love.  John and I (and many others, “actually”) call her “Lay” for short, and I think Hayden has really been enjoying using her little nickname lately.

Oh My Gosh! No Way! (Two Going on Twelve) August 9, 2012

Layla is cracking us up lately with the things that come out of her mouth!  She will say, “Oh.My.Gosh, Mommy.”  She’s also incorporated “No way” into her regular list of phrases.  John was leaving for work yesterday and asked her for a kiss, to which she responded, “No way!”  She also says, “Oh no!” a lot.  For example, our babysitter left her jacket the other day.  Layla grabbed it and said, “Oh no, Mommy!”  She just saw some lightning and heard thunder and said, “Oh no, Mommy!  That scare me.” (More to come on being scared.)

As I type this she has a play phone up to her ear are she said, “Hi, mm-hmm, yeah, hi-bye” and then just kept the phone up to her ear for a long time “listening.”  I asked her who it was and she put her hand out to me and whispered, “Quiet, Mommy.”   I wish I had time to just follow her around and transcribe everything she says, because she is just hilarious!

Where Mummy Go? May 24, 2012

Layla’s speech is really starting to develop. In particular she is starting to pick up phrases.  One of my personal favorites is when Kara leaves the room, a few minutes later Layla will turn to me “where mummy go?, where mummy go?”  I’ll tell her and then off she go “oh” and then run in whatever direction I send her.

It is one of those phrases that is not isolated to mummy though!  Today we were playing outside and a car stopped just outside our house with a dog hanging out of the window.  Layla was all very excited pointing and shouting “woof woof”.  The car drove and Layla turned to us… “where doggy go?”!

To add some effect she now puts her palms out and shrugs her shoulders.  Too funny.

Ipn! May 16, 2012

It’s fun how kids can make you take notice of things that have faded into the background of everyday life for those of us who have been around for a while.  Layla gets really excited whenever she hears an airplane.  She’ll shout “Ipn!” and point to the sky.  It took a while for us to realize what she was saying, but now we get excited with her.  Hayden even beat her to the punch yesterday by shouting airplane when he heard one before she got a chance to call it out. 😉

Her speech is really exploding right now.  She’s stringing together three or more words, and she’s getting easier to understand.  She understands so much, and has for a long time.  I realize that the most when I will be talking to John or Hayden about the day and mention that we should do so-and-so after Layla’s nap, and she’ll start saying, “No night-night.”  I don’t even think about her listening to what I’m saying, but she’s clued in enough to hear “nap” and to protest!

Haddy! January 26, 2012

Firstly, note to self: take some pictures!  We haven’t had any new pictures for about a month, and it’s a struggle to find ones to go with blogging posts at this point.

But the real news is that Layla finally has a “name” for Hayden!  A couple of days ago at day care I picked her up from her classroom and had to go back out to the van to get something before we got Hayden from his classroom, and she started saying, “Aa-ddy, Aa-ddy.”  I started to realize that she was trying to say Hayden, and she was letting me know I was forgetting him!  “Hayden” has proven to be a difficult word for a toddler to say, and we’ve tried to think of other things she can call him like Haydy or Den or Denden, but she really hasn’t been calling him anything until now.  I guess the real question is how long has she been calling him Addy and we’ve not understood or I’ve thought she was saying Daddy.  Now that I’ve caught on I get her to say it a lot.  I’m starting to hear more of an H in the beginning now, so it’s more like ha-DDY.

Her language is getting better all the time, as it does with this age.  She had ear tubes put in this month because of recurring ear infections, and that is also helping I’m sure.  She even repeated “butterfly” pretty clearly last night.  But apart from her speech, she understands so much.  I have to be careful now what I say.  Today I told Hayden he could have some candy if he would go to the bathroom (which he CLEARLY needed to do – when will he start listening to his body and responding on his own?!), and Layla got all excited and went up to the candy jar (even though she hardly ever has candy).  It happens all the time, that I will say something to someone else and she will respond in a way that I realize she knows most of what I am saying.  Pretty cool! 🙂

The not quite as big blog – (on Hayden this time) December 31, 2011

As usual Hayden continues to crack us up on a daily basis so I also needed to go a quick aggregation of some of his new adventures.

When he’s eating he’ll demand that I watch him eat something.  Daddy watch me eat this cracker, daddy watch me eat this apple, etc.  No idea why, but it’s kind of funny.

Hayden is getting very expressive with his facial features and his hand gestures when he talks.  He does this changing the light blub like gesture (vs. Coldplay dancing) with his hand when he’s saying stuff.  It feel very philosophical!

He loves going on bike rides right now, even though it’s cold.  The other day he even chose a bike ride over playing video games!   He still has his training wheels but we’ll work on that in the spring.  He likes going really fast and is starting to get a good sense of balance but the use of the brake is still very optional but at least he normally takes his foot off the pedal so when he crashes it had less impact.  He has also worked out to head towards the grass if he loses control.  He doesn’t really care if he crashes so that also help.

He is getting over apologetic!  He’ll say “Oh sorry” about 50 times a day right now and I’ve spotted a couple of themes.  Firstly nothing is his fault!  If he knocks something over then “oh sorry it wasn’t my fault it just did it all on its own”.  Secondly he never meant it.  So if we are just correcting him, something simple like can you hand me the yellow pen and he gives me an orange one, “oh sorry, I didn’t mean to.”  It’s funny.

The other thing that is new with Hayden is that everything is cool or silly or funny Daddy.   I’ll try to give an example conversations.  “Daddy I want to eat my cupcake with my eyes closed as wouldn’t that be silly daddy.  It would be so funny.  And if I did that I might drop it and it would break on the floor and that would be super silly daddy.  And maybe the cupcake would have green on it and that would be really cool wouldn’t it daddy.”

I’ve noticed recently that Hayden also has three running styles.  One which is full out running.  Used for example at a bounce place where he is really excited.  Two is the skip.  He does this when he is really not that interested inn what he’s doing and generally in la-la land.  Three is the shuffle.  When he kind of glides across the floor like he is ice skating on tip toes.  Generally reserved for when he is really excited about something and is generally accompanied by a giddy expression.

 

The big blog December 30, 2011

I have slacked a lot with my blog writing of late and thought its time I just rambled a bunch of stuff in one blog to try and catch up so this is going to be a bit of a hodgepodge of stuff primary on Layla (because the few blogs I have done have generally been on Hayden).

Layla is becoming a big chatterbox.  Her vocabulary is developing by the day.  She is starting to join some words together and in general seems to be able to communicate well with us.  She certainly understands a lot and knows how to communicate basic yes and no commands to us.  The no is typically a very dramatic shake of her every growing hair which is adorably cute.  She hasn’t mastered her own name or Hayden’s yet, but knows important stuff like baby, mine, apple, banana (nana), mumma, dadda,  juice, more, etc.   Basically she gets what she wants with these words 🙂

Layla is showing to be a real lady. She just loves walking around with a bag or purse on her shoulder. It looks like she is out shopping all the time.  She is also completely obsessed by her babies.  She has to be carrying them around most of the time (not one, but at least two, and a blanket, and some bottles for them).  It’s funny sometimes when you come into her bedroom when she’s waking up, and she’ll already have all her babies accumulated up and be carrying them waiting for us to lift her out of the crib.   But she just  loves babies, for Christ,mas she got a stroller and also a toy crib and high chair and she also makes sure her babies get full use of her baby accessories!   If her babies are out of reach though we hear about it, she will screech ” BABEEE” over and over again until we do something about it!

If I tell her go crazy she does a very cool crazy shake similar to what Hayden used to do.  It’s very impactful with Layla because of all her hair.  She would make a great rock chick!   Talking of her hair – it’s a good job Kara is always here to repair my feeble attempts at pig tails or pony tails.  I just don’t think it’s my DNA to figure that out!  Her hair is great thought and continues to grow so Kara can give her a different hair style everyday.  I can see the days of the future where they spend hours braiding or plating their hair together.

Layla loves the dogs (and Abbey to be fair.)  Whenever she is close to any of the animals she will lower her head and give them a kiss, or a cuddle, or try to go for a ride (dogs don’t always appreciate the last one, and often get straight up which sends her flying!).  She is forever just laying down with them, and generally loving on them.  It’s nice to see.   Especially Stella (which is Larry and Gretchen’s new puppy).  Layla and Stella are just best friends and are always running around together and following each other.

Now Layla is clearly no Hayden Mark II.   It’s funny that we spend all this time blogging and we never go back and look at those blogs, but it just feels like she is so different to him in personality.  Once she gets warmed up (she can start very shy, especially if her mum is around) she is very confident and likes to own the room.  She knows what she wants and is very assertive to take it.  If someone messes with her, or takes something away from her, she will make her feelings know (whether it’s a bite, push, verbal assault – whatever it takes!).   But she does share some attributes of Hayden.  She understands jokes, and loves being funny.  She is very loving to us.  Love her bed toys.  Is a pretty good eater and an excellent sleeper.

Layla also really knows how to shake her booty!  Every time there is music out playing she will just break into her own little dance, that largely involves ducking down her shoulders some (a move I’m convinced she must have learned from me as that was how Kara always made fun of me dancing!) and sticking her bottom and literally shaking it from side to side!    Very funny.

Well I say… December 29, 2011

Hayden has started to realize that he and I talk differently. There be certain word that he will already say with an American accent and I’ll tell him that that I say it like this “fill in stylish English accent” and then he’ll tell me how he says it. Well this was kind of funny a few nights back when I was reading with him… The word in case was envelope. It was a sesame street ABC book and we were on the letter E. He goes “on-vel-lope”. I tell him it’s “end vel lope”. He then corrects me that it must be “on-vel-lope” because that starts with an E and “end vel lope” starts with an N! Getting corrected by a four year old – ouch!

One of my favorites though that has nothing to do with our culture differences is X-Ray. Because there are so few words beginning with an X you’ll be surprised how often this comes up in ABC books! Anyway, instead of x-ray he says “x-er-ray”. I tried to correct him once but he put me back in my place and told me that while I might say “x-ray” he says “x-er-ray” and that was the end of that!