She Walks the Line October 5, 2011

Layla is officially a full-blown walker now.  She hasn’t completely given up crawling yet, but the majority of the time she is walking.  She even stands up on command if she is crawling a lot and we tell her to stand up and walk.  It’s that adorable baby walk where the arms are usually way up in the air like she’s holding on to someone’s hands.  I remember when Hayden did that, and over time the arms would come further and further down until for a while they were straight out in front of him like Frankenstein.

I bought them both shoes for the autumn, and I have been nervous about her wearing them outside because if she were to crawl on the concrete the toes would quickly get worn.  Luckily, I discovered this with a cheap pair of shoes from Target before I put her in the non-cheap Stride Rites and Umis!  So she has her outside shoes that are completely worn in the toes, to the extent that we are on the verge of an official hole in them, and then her pretty indoor sparkly ones (what could be better than sparkle shoes?!!).

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Baby steps September 8, 2011

Layla is still not properly walking, but she is spending a lot of time on her feet cruising around and takes a couple of steps at a time before she falls into us.  She doesn’t have the balance thing down very well yet, and her upper body gets way ahead of her feet.  But, she’s getting there slowly.

She has a handful of words that she uses.  Probably the clearest thing she says is still Mama.  She also says night-night really well.  “Yeah” is another one she has been using for a while, and she uses that correctly.  She is not great on Dada, but one day she said “a” (as in, Da without the D) a few times while I was trying to get her to say it.  She is very clear about what she wants with pointing and making kind of whiny noises (“uh, uh”).  She repeats the lion noise “rah” with John and I can get her to make the dog sound “woof” which is very cute because she just says fffff.  Hayden was asking me this morning when she would call him Hayden, so I was trying to get her to day “Den” because I know “Hayden” will be difficult for her.

Walk, or not to Walk October 21, 2009

Hayden is starting to become somewhat of a handful when we go with walks.  It breaks down like this.  If we take his stroller then he just wants to push it the whole way instead of riding in it.  If we even touch it then he gets cranky at us and has a mini fit.  Attempting to put him in the stroller without his written permission – parental suicide!  Sometimes he’ll change his mind half way on the wall and start to climb in the stroller, and then he will either just want to play straps, or might let us push him the rest of the way depending on his mood.

Well I’ve started to have enough of this.  While I’m pretty patient, if I’m on a walk I do actually want to walk a little bit rather than crawl along, and if we have the dogs they defiantly get very restless and will just start pulling so I want to shake his habit.  So the other day we tried to go on a walk without his stroller.  The first big mistake was to go out through the garage, so he immediately walked over to his “trailer” and started to push it and told me to open the garage.  I tried to explain to him that today there was no stroller – it was clear that one of two things was going to happen.  We were going on a walk with the stroller, or we were not going on a walk and Hayden was going to scream and roll around on the floor for twenty minutes.

OK so next time I wasn’t so dumb and I made him go through the front door.  Genius I hear you say.  Well this worked find except he just ran off towards the garage and complaining it wasn’t open so he couldn’t get his stroller out.  I was determined to walk without it, so I pick him up and started to walk.  He kicked screamed for at least two houses when I finally managed to distract him with a fountain in the pond near our house and then we had a nice walk from that point forward.  Obviously no talk of the stroller from me.  So now I know he’s good to walk you just have to break the connection…

We tried this again at the weekend, and this time the same sequence occurred.  I was thinking it might have given it up, but nope – he still wants his stroller.  So my latest plan was to leave the house carrying him so he can’t run to garge to get his stroller – genius! 😀  Well almost – he had a bit of a fit about “want down, want down” but i went with him the opposite way to the garage put him and down and asked him which way are we going – he pointed off the way i wanted and away we were with perhaps just one tear…   I think we’re getting there 😀

He loved the walk by the way – he likes to grab the dogs leash and walk them – he thinks it’s the funniest thing in the world!!

Cruising – for real this time July 23, 2008

Hayden started cruising yesterday!  He loves remote controls and cordless phones, so he took some proper sideways steps while holding onto the couch yesterday to reach one!  He has been lifting his legs up while standing and holding onto something for a while now, but this was the first time that he really moved anywhere.  He’s on his way!

He also fell in love yesterday.  We went to a ‘picnic at the park’ free family concert outing in the next town over and met Grandpaman and Grandma G and their friends there.  When Hayden saw one of their friends, Becky, he stared and stared and went very shy and smiley around her.  It was so cute!  Eventually he did let her hold him, but for a few minutes it looked like he might be too shy to go to her.

Cruising July 8, 2008

Yep, Hayden has started cruising!   He’s not really walking around all that assertively (like Isabella was at 10 months when we visited right before she started walking), but he is getting there!  The last couple of days I have stood him up so he is holding onto the couch, and he has reached behind him so one hand is on the coffee table, the other is on the couch, and he is standing between the couch and the coffee table facing outwards.  Then he grabs a coaster, gets distracted, and sits down to investigate the coaster. 🙂  He walks well when we hold onto his hands and walk along behind him.  He’s getting steadier and steadier.  He is also pulling himself up to a standing position, like when he is in his pack n play he’ll grab onto the side and stand up for a long while leaning against that.  He hasn’t started standing on his own yet without support.  I’m sure that’s just around the corner, and we aren’t trying to rush him since this all leads to walking and all parents tell us how worn out we will be chasing him around then! he he