February 12, 2007

“Orange real pillow,” that’s what Hayes calls his first pillow. Yes, we’ve made a transition of sorts. Hayes now has a pillow, get’s tucked in nightly and sleeps with his head on said pillow. It’s a big change from Hayes’ old fall and sleep days where we’d go into to check on him and he’d look as if he’d been happily playing then fallen over into a sleep induced coma.

So big boy time is rapidly approaching. Now… I guess we’re going to have to think about taking him out of the crib. On second thought, maybe we’ll just leave him there.

January 19, 2007

For the past few months, Hayes has started to be scared of things. Specifically: noise. It started out benignly enough, as he used to get startled and laugh and say ,”again!” Then, suddenly, the same things that made him laugh, made yell “noise!” quickly scan the room for it’s source and scampering to his nearest trusted grownup to be picked up.

It’s weird, this noise thing. My brother, Dave, had it when he was a kid, but he was scared of any loud noise. I vividly remember being at a 4th of July parade and having Dave burst out crying when a fire truck passed by with sirens wailing. For Hayes, it happens for certain types of noise. And even then, it seems rather arbitrary. He’s scared of the furnace going on. He’s not scared of airplanes flying over head. He’s scared of the vacuum, but wants to go see it when it’s on. To me, they’re pretty much the same bass-type sound. To him, it’s the difference between wide eyed “noise” and wide eyed excitement of seeing something he loves.

Either way, it’s nice to know that he’s tentative about some things. It’s kinda been taking the edge off his stunt baby routine. Which is, you know, good.

December 19, 2006

I used to be one of those Christmas haters. I was totally anti-holiday cheer guy. I told Jen I didn’t want a tree when we first moved in together. She got one anyway. I made her decorate it without me. What a jerk I was then.

Then something changed. Or, rather, someone came to be. Hayes. Hayes is totally excited about Christmas. He’s really excited about Santa. And he love Frosty, which he associates with Christmas because I made the mistake of DVRing the Frosty cartoon on TV

Good thing, too because he loves it so much so that he sings it EVERY morning. He only knows one verse so he just sings that over and over and over. I wish, for some reason, that it would annoy me. I even act like it at work, because, you know, how can you explain that you want to hear your son singing Frosty 10 times in a row each morning.

But… it’s so damn cute. I love it. Good thing for Christmas! Yah, I know, ironic that Frosty has made me less so about Christmas.

December 7, 2006

One of the great things (out of many, many great things) about having a child who’s learning the language is rediscovering how fun words are. Pineapple is a good example. Say it out-loud: “Pineapple!” Gotta admit, it’s fun to say. It also happens to be one of Hayes’s favorites. And can you blame him?

I mean, he likes to talk about apples (another fun word) and he enjoys saying “pine cone.” So imagine his joy when he found out that he could say “Pineapple.” And so what if that’s what he calls the Christmas tree? I mean, it’s more fun to say than Christmas tree, which incidentally he can also say.

It also makes for great conversation:

Hayes: “Wanna see pineapple! Wanna see pineapple! Wanna see pineapple, please!”

Bystander: “For godsake someone give that child a pineapple.”

Me: “Uh.. he just wants to see the Christmas tree.”

Hayes: “Wanna see lights on the pineapple too!”

So, I’ve been struggling about whether we actually just start calling the Christmas tree a pineapple. I mean, it’s fun to say, right? And the Christmas tree has been in need of a makeover for some time. How else can you explain those stupid upside down Christmas trees you hang from the ceiling?

November 9, 2006

We’ve been pushing Hayes to learn his name. Ok, perhaps pushing ain’t exactly right. We don’t really push him to do anything — except behave, which normally fails. Anyway, a few weeks ago he got it. When asked his name he’d say, “Name: Hayes” Well, that’s how’d I’d write what he says. He doesn’t know what a colon is, so, well…

It was about that same time that we coined a new name for Hayes. You may remember he was HBomb for a while. Now he’s stunt baby.

Name: Hayes.

Occupation: Stunt Baby.

Yup, that’s him. And he’s earned it. It began at our friends’ place in Maine. With two year old twins, they’ve got a child safe downstairs, so we kinda let Hayes do his thing. They also have tricycle type things. Maybe they’re child safe. They’re certainly not Hayes safe. Not when I caught him trying to stand on the seat. I scolded him, and that was that.

So I thought.

Next thing I know he’s demanding, “Dada! Help!” from another room. I run in. Hayes is in a crib. In a crib. WTF? I scan the room. Next to the crib, the tricycle. He had used the tricycle to vault into the crib. I took him out. He did it gain, right in front of me. Tricycle seat > grab onto crib rail > pull himself over the edge > land on head > roll to his feet in crib.

Stunt baby.

Last week he took it to a whole new level. He got his first stunt related injury. He was sitting on the arm of the couch. I told him to get off. He does. Next thing I know, he’s falling backwards in slow motion (I’m not sure how he does slow motion), twisting a half gainer as he goes. His hands go out to brace himself for impact, but he underestimates and his hand can’t stop his entire force. He hits the ground.

Smack!

Pause.

“Waaaaaaaaa!”

Bloody nose.

Think he’d learn? You don’t know stunt baby. He was laughing within minutes. As soon as the nose stopped bleeding, he was at it again. We’re in trouble. Big trouble.

November 7, 2006

As Hayes’ vocabulary has rapidly expanded, so to has his demands. One of his most recent is to tell you to “Change diaper!” I know, kinda fitting given the name of my blog.

This morning he woke up and demanded, “change diapers,” continuing to scream about it until I came in and changed it. In his defense, it was very wet.

Of course, this was during my morning get ready time. Since I am the only one home with Hayes in the morning, I need to leave him in his crib so I can do the bathroom stuff to get ready.

So, anyway, I changed his diaper, and put him back in his crib without clothing. He demanded a shirt, so I put one on and returned to my bathroom duties.

“Change diaper!” he screamed again from his crib. I normally don’t react to a second request, but for some reason this morning I decided to. Good thing I did. He was standing, holding his diaper.

“Hayes, why did you take your diaper off?” I asked him.

“Hayes poop!” he replied. I took the diaper from his hand. Sure enough Hayes had pooped.

I returned him to the changing table, wiped up, put a new diaper on.

“Yay!” Hayes exclaimed.

I’m beginning to wonder how long I can keep my morning routine up.