Lost in Translation

Hayley has been talking up a storm lately. I know she must think we're dense when she tells us this big long story and we just say, "uh... yeah... that's right." A conversation with Hayley is like speaking to someone who speaks a different language. You have NO IDEA what they're saying but occasionally you hear an English word that you know. Such was storytime with Daddy last night as Hayley told us all about Corduroy and his Easter egg hunt. All we know is that she had a lot to say about the wab-beet (translation: rabbit) and the egg.

Privacy? Ha!

I went to get Hayley out of bed this morning and the moment I opened the door she promptly yelled "Monkey!" and pointed at the monkey on her border. She's never actually said the word monkey before, so I wasn't aware that she actually knew what a monkey was. Usually when I get her up in the morning I say something to the effect like "How'd my little monkey sleep?" Apparently she wanted to make it clear to me that she is not the monkey! She then said "sheep" and pointed to the zebra. Guess we'll keep working on animals.

So after Hayley's breakfast I headed off to take a shower. Usually Hayley will sit in the family room and watch an episode of Pinky Dinky Doo while I get ready. Of course today she must have been feeling her oats because she decided to take advantage of my helpless condition. I'd gotten my hair lathered up with shampoo when Hayley came running into the bathroom with a mischievous look on her face yelling "tower, tower." (I've long given up on ANY expectation of privacy ANYWHERE in the bathroom!) At first I thought she was saying "towel," but then she said, "Pooh, tower" and the next thing I knew, Pooh was in the shower with me! "Oh, she's saying SHOWER!!!" I pulled a wet Pooh out from under my feet and told Hayley that Pooh didn't need a shower, he'd just had a bath last week. She smiled and ran out of the bathroom. Moments later she was back with "that" look on her face. She grabbed the towels that were right next to the shower (you know, the ones I'd placed there to towel off with) and took off down the hallway towards the bedroom door where she dropped the towels and ran back into the family room.

As I dripped my way to my misplaced towels I wondered to myself how I'm ever going to survive when Hayley's partner in crime gets here. It doesn't look good for me so far.

The Big Slide

We spent Saturday back out at the strawberry patch picking strawberries. They had a "deal" going and we ended up with five pounds of berry goodness to bring home. You'd think that five pounds of strawberries would overwhelm us, but we seem to have made a pretty good dent in them. If we look a little red in future pictures, you'll know why!
Today we took Hayley over to the park for some playtime. Brian had told me that he had been letting Hayley go down the "big" slide by herself. I rolled my eyes at him thinking, "of course she's big enough to handle the big slide." That was until Friday when I took Hayley to the park by myself and about had a heart attack when she scampered up the jungle gym to get to that big slide. It really is a BIG slide! I grabbed her before she could head down and took her to the slide that is more age appropriate. Of course today, with Daddy there, I felt a little more courageous and watched as my fearless babe headed down that big slide all by herself! My little girl is growing so fast!
The "Big" slide
Climbing up the jungle gym
An action shot
Some video of Hayley going down the little slide

Another night of blissful slumber...

in her new bed! If only I could sleep this good!

Not to count our chickens...

...but we "think" our little princess may have flawlessly made the transition to her big girl bed! Over the past few weeks we've been preparing Hayley's new room. She will eventually share this room with little brother and the nursery will become their play room, but for the next year or so, it is all Hayley's. Brian and I spent a weekend painting and putting up a new border for her. Last weekend we moved her crib into her new big girl bedroom and for the past week she has been sleeping in her new room all in preparation for last night's grand finale.

I'll preface all of this by saying that Hayley REALLY enjoys going to bed at night. Each evening we wind down (actually there isn't really any "winding down" for Hayley) by watching Wheel of Fortune at 7pm. Hayley has always loved Wheel of Fortune and likes to hear contestants call the letters. She also looks forward to any pharmaceutical commercials that come on during that time. We've never been able to figure that one out, but she will drop everything she is doing to zero in on a pharmaceutical commercial. Anyhow, after the bonus round, Hayley grabs her milk, tells Mommy "bye," and grabs Daddy's finger to lead him off to storytime. After a few books, she then tells Daddy, "I done." Daddy will repeat Hayley's command and she will follow up by telling him, "bed, seep." At that point, it's off to bed where once in bed Hayley promptly tells us "bye." Never did we expect to have a toddler who so adamantly enjoys going to bed (and being left alone I might add). The comfort of this enjoyable, predictable and easy bedtime routine has made both Brian and I very nervous about the big girl bed transition. After all, why would you want to "fix" something that isn't broken? We absolutely enjoy our peaceful evenings and knowing that they are quickly dwindling doesn't make us at all anxious to do something that would make the peace cease immediately.

Last night we followed our regular bedtime routine except this time, Hayley was placed in her big girl bed. She got a little irritated at first and kept trying to climb into her crib. She'd drop Pooh in the crib, and go back and get her blanket and Froggy and drop them in the crib and then look up at us and fuss. After all, she wanted to go to bed!! Finally, I laid down on the bed with Pooh and Froggy and showed her that it was a place to sleep. She laid down next to me. After realizing that it was comfortable, she sat up, pushed me, and told me "bye." In other words, "get the heck outta here, I'm ready to go to bed!" I stood there and rubbed her back a bit and then slipped out of the room before heading off to watch her actions on our surveillance camera. Yes, we've hooked up a camera in Hayley's room that allows us to "spy" on our little dear all by turning to a channel on our tv. (Next, Brian plans to implant Hayley with a GPS microchip. We wouldn't want her to ever "get away" with anything!) It took Hayley a while to figure out exactly where to sleep in her new bed to be comfortable, but bless her heart she laid there and eventually went to sleep without so much as a fuss.

We had originally intended to start letting her sleep in the big girl bed at night while keeping her in the crib for naps. Naptime can be a little challenging as Hayley likes to sit and chat for a good 30 minutes before falling asleep. I figured naptime would be a difficult time to keep her in bed. But, after last night's success, we decided we should try the big girl bed for naps as well so we didn't confuse her. So at 1pm off to the big girl bed she went. I sat her down in bed and she immediately told me "bye." She seemed pleased as punch to be in her bed, so I left the room. She jabbered for a good 30 minutes like usual and then, SILENCE!

So, at this point, we're 2 for 2 and cautiously optimistic that we get to put a check next to one of those New Year's goals! It's days like this when we think, "hey, this parenting thing is pretty easy!" Yeah, I know, we'll probably get the rug pulled out from under us later this week!

Here's a little snippet of Hayley's first impression of the big girl bed. Lucky for us, her attitude changed quickly.

Hurricane Roars!

In case we haven't mentioned it before, Hayley is very advanced. She's so advanced in fact that we're afriad she's hitting those "Terrible Twos" just a tad bit early. We've had several power struggles over the past week or two and Ms. Hurricane just doesn't seem to understand who's wearing the pants, or shall I say shoes, around here. It definitely keeps our outings interesting and I'm sure we'll thank Hayley later. After all, she's just trying to keep us on top of our game in preparation for her little brother. He's going to be a troublemaker she tells me... moreso than Chloe or Pooh.

Hayley's vocabulary has really taken off over the past few weeks and it has been fun to hear what new word she will pick up on. She's obsessed with animals... particularly cows. Every large mammal is a cow. We took a walk the other day and ran into a lady walking a German Shephard. Hayley instantly began mooing at the dog. Granted, he was the size of a cow, but I think I probably need to expose Hayley to some larger dogs besides Chloe.

Yesterday was Valentine's Day and Brian and I spent a romantic morning together creating our wills... because nothing says love like planning for your death! After our morbid morning, we were able to enjoy lunch by the bay. The weather was perfect and we sat outside and enjoyed a nice lunch with each other. Overall, it was a great Valentine's Day. I could care less about flowers and chocolates... I'll take lunch in a beautiful setting with my favorite, good-looking Valentine anyday!

Hot flashes, indigestion, and loss of brain cells

Ah, pregnancy. It's a beautiful thing. I must be getting spoiled because now just being nausea free is not enough. I'm asking for more. Brian and I have the same conversation each night as we climb into bed.

Me: "Is it hot in here to you?"
Brian: "No, not really." (as he pulls on his wool socks)
Me: "You didn't turn the heat on did you?" (Knowing I'm probably going to wake up at 3am in a pool of my own sweat)
Brian: "I don't want Hayley to get cold."

Obviously his internal thermostat is broken because it couldn't possibly be me. In fact, I'm beginning to think that all these Floridians are certifiably crazy. The other morning Hayley and I headed outside to take Chloe for a walk. I had on shorts and a t-shirt, as did Hayley. It felt WONDERFUL outside. As we walked, we ran into one of the neighbors who looked at me strange and said "aren't you all cold??" He was wearing a sweatshirt and gloves. Obviously I wasn't cold and I could tell he was worried about the welfare of my daughter. His thermostat must be broken too. Luckily, Hayley seems to run about as warm blooded as me right now, so we're a good pair.

I think Hayley is warm because of all the running around she does and I'm pretty sure that I've identified the source that is making me so hot blooded. I like to call it my "fire within." It's coming from my esophagus. It's on fire all day long. Eating is becoming an exercise in misery once again as EVERYTHING I ingest results in the all day burn. Some foods are more pyrotechnic however. My general rule of thumb is that if it is enjoyable to eat (ie: decaf coffee, chocolate and tomato based foods, so long sweet Italian), then it will probably induce indigestion that is incurable by Tums or Maalox (of which I should own stock in by this point). I had (what I thought was bad at the time) indigestion with Hayley and we all know how much hair my little baldy had for her first year of life. If Frog Prince is born bald then I think I can safely shoot down that whole indigestion is linked to babies with lots of hair study.

But of all the perils of pregnancy, I've concluded that the most damaging one of all is the loss of my mind. I didn't have much to spare this time around as I'm pretty certain I hadn't fully recovered the brain cells I lost while pregnant with Hayley. At this point, I sometimes wonder if I should be responsible for myself, much less a toddler. One of my pre-baby projects was to clean up our home computers. Our home PC has been running like a dog and my laptop wasn't much faster. Part of the problem is that my hard drive was FULL of digital pictures. I bought a shiny new external hard drive and proceeded to backup both computers before reformatting the drives. The process went smoothly on both computers and I was pleased that I'd made it through this whole process without any problems. UNTIL... I decided it was time to begin work on Hayley's two year old birthday slideshow and I began searching on that shiny new external hard drive for all of those digital photos of my princess. Everything that I didn't care a lick about was backed up on that hard drive except the ONLY thing I did care about... ALL MY DIGITAL PHOTOS!! Of course I called Brian at work, completely hysterical that I'd LOST every memory of Hayley's first years of life. Once he calmed me down and reminded me that unless I'd scrubbed the drive the odds were good that I could somehow get my pictures back. Yes, his wisdom and ability to stay calm in an absolute CRISIS is just one of the many reasons why I married this wonderful man.

So after $70 (worth every penny) and some time on the Internet, I think I have recovered just about all of our hundreds of pictures. It's taken me hours to sort back through all of the pictures and reorganize them by date, etc. but I feel like this is a worthy punishment that I am grateful for at this point. My new plan for photo storage now includes keeping a copy of all pictures on that shiny new hard drive, as well as burning a copy to cd and taking it to a top secret, weather-proof offsite storage location that is manned by an armed guard 24 hours a day. I don't want any crazy people (you know, like me) getting access to my photos!

Ah, pregnancy. It's a beautiful DANGEROUS thing!