Baby Lesson #78

Teething biscuits are MESSY!!!! The good news is Hayley loves her biscuits and afterwards she gets a bath to boot!

Below are some pictures of her after bathtime fun. Hayley has found a new appreciation for nudity and between this desire to be carefree and her new mobility we had a heck of a time getting her diaper back on her after her bath!

A BIG Nipper

So Hayley is officially a crawler (or linoleum lizard as they're sometimes called in Florida). Sadly, her new found mobility got us kicked out of Little Nippers today. You see the rule is that once your baby starts crawling, it's time to leave Little Nippers. We (Mommy) really enjoys the social time with other mommies and their babies and I was hoping we could keep attending for a few more weeks. My thought was that I could keep Hayley occupied with some toys and that maybe she would just sit on our blanket and play, but alas, I should have known that my little rebel was going to show off her new skills. As I sat her on the blanket, I could see it in her eyes. She was practically shaking with excitement at all the open space. I quickly changed my tactic and thought "maybe if I just hold her in my lap..." WRONG MOVE Mommy! Hayley let out a shriek so loud that everyone in the room turned to look at us. With a heavy sigh, I set Hayley free and she took off across the room, stopping at each mom and baby and squealing at them as if to say, "Look at me, I'm HOT STUFF!"

So now that we have lost the weekly comfort and advice from the nurses at Little Nippers, Mommy will have to look elsewhere to find the answers to "what is normal?" I guess what I've learned from our time at Little Nippers and my short time with Hayley is that with a baby there is no such thing as "normal." This is a tough pill to swallow for a slightly neurotic new mother like myself. Speaking of neurotic...

Brian informed me that today he found a gray hair on his head. He told me that he thinks it just must have been a hair that didn't grow right and therefore was not "pigmented" properly. If he's getting gray hairs now, just wait until Hayley turns 13!!!!

Here is some new video of our little linoleum lizard doing her thing!

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Unbeknownst to me, Daddy has been clicking his tongue at Hayley for several weeks now. He would typically do this while changing a diaper or wiping her face when he needed her to be still as she would stop fidgeting and just stare in fascination at him. Over the weekend she finally figured out how to "click" her own tongue and has been having a ball copying us. Now whenever we go anywhere I can here in the carseat clicking away. Her new accomplishment really makes her feel like hot stuff!

Big news from a big girl!

Jail Break!

I put Hayley down for her afternoon nap today. She was fine until about ten minutes after I had put her down when I heard her just screaming, obviously furious about something. This is very unusual for her as generally when I put her down she will play for several minutes before drifting off to sleep, but rarely fusses much less cries. Of course I ran to her room to check on her. I was absolutely shocked when I opened the door and saw her STANDING in her crib and looking right back at me, her face as red as a beet! Not only was she standing, but she had managed to pull the blanket that hangs above her crib completley off the wall and into her crib. I think it must have scared her, which is why she started crying.

She has just begun to master putting herself in a sitting position from her tummy and obviously we WERE NOT expecting her to be pulling into a standing position already. She's not quite crawling, more like scooting (or slithering as I like to call it) and at this rate she may just be walking before we know it.

Sick of Being Sick

For the past two weeks we have been a sick family! Hayley first came down with a minor head cold shortly after Christmas. It quickly cleared up, but then Mommy started coming down with the same thing. A few days ago, Hayley came down with another cold except this one was much worse. She's had a rough couple of days coughing and fighting a runny nose, but after a few calls to the pediatrician, nightly humidifying, larges doses of Vicks Baby Rub, Triaminic and some good old fashioned Mommy and Daddy loving I think she's finally on the road to recovery.

We spent today working out in the yard while Hayley sat in her excersaucer supervising. We have been working on re-landscaping the back of our house and will post some pictures once we get it completed. Hayley was a very content little girl which is definitley a good sign she is feeling better. We put her down to sleep tonight and she didn't make a peep. Now she usually doesn't fuss when we put her to bed, but we do usually hear her in her room talking and playing with her music box so we became a little worried when we didn't hear any noise tonight. Daddy's intuition spurred him to go in to check on his little girl. The room was dark so he had to let his eyes adjust as he slid open the door. You can imagine his surprise when he finally was able to make out little Hayley sitting up on her knees in her crib flashing a big gummy grin and staring right back at him. She has never done this before, nor had we ever seen her pull herself up on her knees like this. You could tell she was just beaming with pride of her grand accomplishment! Brian of course has now lowered the crib mattress as low as it can go. I think he is convinced she is going to figure out how to climb completely out at the ripe old age of 7 months!

A New Year

I'm trying not to start the year 2007 with a bad attitude, so for my first paragraph I'll make some small talk and save my rant for paragraph two! We had quite the excitement here in Greyhawk Landing on New Year's Eve. As Brian and I sat down to enjoy dinner (with Hayley asleep per her 6pm bedtime, even on New Year's Eve), we quickly noticed flashing blue lights out our back window and a police flashlight shining in our backyard and across the street. The police car continued to proceed up the street and then after a few minutes circled back down our way. Of course we were panic stricken... it was obvious the police were looking for somebody. After several tense minutes we were relieved to learn that it wasn't a serial killer, and it wasn't a burglar, it was.... A COW!!!!! Yes, the police were on mad search for a COW that had gotten lose in our neighborhood. Now living in Florida I've been concerned about encounters with gators, snakes and spiders, but cows had never even crossed my mind. Looks like Bessie must have made a clean break because as far as I know she was never found.

So for my vent to start the year... Hayley is a little GIRL (and a darn cute little girl if I do say so myself). You may think that I'm telling you something that you already know, but lately there seems to be some confusion. Hayley has quite the personality and manages to attract a lot of attention anywhere we go. She squeals whenever she sees someone in a store and is quick to flash a gummy grin which evokes an immediate response out of strangers. The problem is that if she gets called a "cute little guy" one more time her Mommy may just have a conniption. Not that I can't understand it... after all, she's bald as can be and I know that she can look a lot like a little boy. So what's a mother to do to help her girl out! I understand now why babies get their ears pierced, but between Hayley, myself, and Chloe, I don't need another task to add to the list of daily hygiene maintenance and I've always thought of ear piercing as a "rite of passage" for young girls. I could put a bow in her hair, but the lack of hair makes that impossible as well! My only option seems to be dress her in pink. But that doesn't seem to work either as she has been called a boy multiple times while wearing pink flowers on her shirt. I guess I should be thankful, I'd probably be even more peeved if I had a boy that was being mistaken for a girl all the time!

Here's some video taken of Hayley on New Year's Eve. She's laughing and playing with Daddy, one of her favorite things to do! Cheers and best wishes for hair in 2007!