twister, birthdays and SNOW oh my!

Earlier this week we went over to play with Luke and Alyssa. Hailey had fun "attempting" to play twister!
Today we celebrated Amber's 4th birthday and she had the party at a bowling alley. This was Hailey's first time bowling and she did well overall. It was hard to keep her contained and entertained in between her turns, but thankfully Taylor was a huge help!



Also, today is Jordy's actual 7th birthday and tomorrow will be 2 years post transplant! Can you believe it?! What a miracle she is! She is having a big birthday party later this month. Happy Birthday Jordy!

And lastly for all of you who live out of state and can't fathom the amount of snow we have, here are a couple pix my husband took earlier this week (as you can tell from the train in the pix).

Look at these snow banks! Notice the car in the one below, these banks are at least 10 feet tall on either side of the road!

reading on the potty

Hailey loves to see herself on the camera, but that means as soon as I pull out the camera she runs toward me to see the picture rather than actually smile. So this picture below is priceless!


We are still potty training and one tip given is to have your child sit on the potty and read books. Well, for some reason Hailey has discovered a love for this. Does she actually go potty, no, but she loves to sit and read books. So tonight while I was preparing dinner she decided to take ALL of her books and tote them via a basket to the bathroom in order to sit and read!




On another note, Hailey will start going to daycare 2 days a week. My mom who has watched her the first two years of her life needed to get a job outside the home. We found a daycare we like close to home and Hailey starts 2 weeks from tomorrow. I am so happy I have not had to put Hailey in a daycare before this point in time, but now that she is older and "self-sufficient" (ha, ha). I am actually looking forward to her being with kids her own age. She is very social and actually when we went to "interview" the daycare she jumped in playing and cried when it was time to go. So in a couple weeks we start a new chapter in Hailey's life. I think we may be in for a few "bugs", but thankfully its getting to the end of cold and flu season!

conversation between friends

Watching a train go by with daddy ...

Hailey was able to play with her friend Wyatt tonight and they had so much fun! Notice the trampoline behind them. Wyatt received that for Christmas and they practically jumped all night. Valerie and I have been friends since grade school and these two have been friends since about 9 months old and they are at a fun age now. They really interact with each other and play quite well. Tonight they actually had a little conversation about the movie Nemo they were watching. We laughed so hard, it was so cute!

Hailey's favorite thing at the moment is to play with her little figures. These consist of little animals, disney character sets and little people. It is entertaining to watch her set them up and play pretend.

beautiful

My dad took these on our trip last week. We can never get her to smile in an actual picture at this stage in her life, but I think these actually came out beautiful!


On the update front, Hailey has taken gymnastics for about a month now and absolutely loves it. She is really blossoming and talks about it all week. When we started in the class she was beginning her "scared" phase and so in her first class she was scared of everything, but now she jumps on the trampoline all by herself, she tumbles and flips with the teacher and even walks the balance beam high off the ground. Today we were just thinking back to how far she has come in the class in such a short time. It is also great for her to be around other kids her age and she already has made some new "friends".

On the sleeping front she is regressing. She has ALWAYS slept through the night. Even when she is sick she sleeps through the night, but lately she has been getting up and wanting to sleep with us. I am working on putting her back in her own bed, but its so much easier to put her in with us and fall asleep (bad mommy). The trouble is, sometimes she just lays awake and talks at 3am! Help me! Last night she was up at 3am, then up at 6am! I think the reason she is waking is due to noise. Our heaters make noise sometimes and she is now "scared" of them which doesn't help, then once she is up why not come to mommy and daddy's room. So tonight I need to be firm and bring her back to bed even if it means less sleep for me :-)

bust a move

Happy Birthday Kailee!

I love these two pix! Can you tell she is tired though?!

Today we drove north to celebrate Kailee's 4th birthday! They had the party at Jokers and Hailey had the time of her life. I couldn't keep her still enough to even sit for a moment. Needless to say she is TIRED tonight!

The train below was the highlight of her time. It took a lot of persuasion to even get her off to go on another ride.

pix

Are you looking at me?!

singing and watching herself on the tv

Superbowl XLII

Well I am overwhelmingly disappointed about the game, but here are a few pix to show that some team spirit was being displayed tonight in spite of the bad ending ...

binky and potty update

With all the binky talk on a few of my family and friends blogs, I figured I would give a binky update.

Hailey is binky free except for when she is sleeping! I am one who doesn't mind binkies at bedtime, but when it was the constant companion of a 2 1/2 year old I felt enough was enough. If you remember awhile ago I tried cutting them down and it worked for a short period, but I always kept one that wasn't "broken" around and so the broken ones became forgotten and the unbroken one always found :-) It seemed after I gave up on this approach her binky obsession because worse. I hit a wall around christmas when we were out and she had a temper tantrum at in the mall because she wanted binky and banky. Granted she was tired, but my personal feeling is at this age she didn't need to be walking around the mall with them.

So our new approach was to put a shadow box above her bed and that is binky's new home. During the day they stay in there only to come out when she is tucked in bed. I didn't know how this would go over, but within a week binky and banky didn't exist outside of bed. This is a HUGE milestone for her. Just last month we couldn't go in the car or leave the house without binky or we would pay HUGE consequences. Now she doesn't even ask for them.

On the potty front, slow and steady wins the race. There is ALOT of potty talk going on in our house and she prefers to walk around in "undies" when she is home - thank God for the absorbent ones! She has gone a few times in the potty, but only at my mom's house. Go figure! She even requests to sit on the big potty now and will sit and read books for 5 minutes or so. Haven't we trained her well! Ha, ha! Right now she seems to ask to sit on the potty right after she has already went which means she is aware, but its too late. I am not pushing anything, but kind of letting her guide us. The pictures of her on the toilet in her towel are priceless. For the past few nights at the end of her bath she looks up at me and requests to sit on the "big" potty. I had to get a few pix, she will look back and yell at me for this someday :-)

Lastly, I have just been thinking of something lately. Do you ever wonder what your kids remember from when they were born till now? I know it sounds crazy and at my age I don't remember anything from that young so you think they don't ... I beg to differ. Ever since Hailey was little when she sees pictures of herself in the NICU or watches her one year video montage she gets all sad, clingy and whiny. Especially when she watches the video montage. We haven't watched it in awhile and yesterday at my mom's house she pulled it out and asked to watch "Hailey video". My mom said she kept saying over and over as she was watching it - "baby, boo-boo Nana" and I know she realizes that baby is her because she says, baby Hailey. Does she cringe because of the pictures or is there something still in her sub-conscious mind where she remembers a little of the pain she went through?! I guess we will never know for sure, but I bet it is a little of both and that makes me sad for my little baby. Sometimes I feel guilt for her early birth and repeat over and over how I could have prevented it. Then I think of how blessed we are that she has no lasting issues beside reflux and I realize what a GREAT blessing came out of that bad situation.

And to end a couple cute pix from the other night at Meme and Papa's house.

cuteness

Hailey has a favorite food and no its not cookies, its tomatoes. The girl LOVES tomatoes. I keep them in the house and she eats them like grapes. Yesterday we were at a birthday party and they of course had cake and ice cream, but that isn't what Hailey was interested in, she was at the veggie tray (yes it was on her level) eating the grape tomatoes and I am pretty sure she ate most of them. I am not sure what started this love affair with tomatoes, but you better watch out if you have tomatoes around Hailey because she will eat them all.


Hailey comprehends more and more every day and comes out with new stuff. She is also doing more imaginative play which is fun to watch. At bed last night I asked what her favorite part of the day was not expecting her answer because she usually responds to my questions by just repeating what I say "favorite part of the day" and she shakes her head - well to my shock she answers - "gymnastics". I thought it was a fluke and asked again, sure enough she answered it again and repeated it to daddy this morning. Just in the past few days she has really started carrying on full conversations where she answers questions and asks questions. My baby girl is growing up!!!! Back to the tomato conversation, tonight I asked her what her favorite part of the day was and she answered "tomatoes" - go figure!

Hailey's idea of reading books ....

Hailey has also been really enjoying art lately, she colors on her chalk board, her dry-erase board, she has crayons for the tub (big hit) and then she has the usual crayons, coloring book and paints. Well, if you notice a pattern most of these can be erased ( chalk, dry-erase, tub crayons) so to my shock we were coloring in a coloring book the other day and she took the eraser and tried to erase the crayon. I laughed so hard!

Dancing with "my bear" ...

And to end this post I wanted to say Happy 1st Birthday Bradyn! You don't realize how fast they grow until you are at a one year olds birthday party and you realize your child is only 6 months away from being 3! God help me!

random

I love the pix above. Hailey likes to play "ELMO" with Dooda and will sit for quite awhile at his computer playing.

Tonight Hailey painted daddy a picture for when he comes home from work.

Not much new to report. We are stepping up trying to potty train again, last week Hailey actually stopped my mom told her she had to pee and went ahead and peed in the potty, but then hasn't since. She loves to walk around in her princess undies though, but has no shame peeing in them. I know it will happen, but I can't wait for this process to be over :-)

fear

I don't know at what age children develop true fear. Hailey can be cautious or not want to do something because its new to her, but she has never shown true fear until recently.

The reason for her fear, "windy" as she calls it. It was very windy outside and Hailey has 3 windows in her bedroom. The windows were shaking and when the lights were out you could see the branches bend and sway outside her window. Since she has slept through thunderstorms before I never thought going to bed would be a problem, but about 15 minutes after laying her down she started to whine and cry. I went in and her eyes were glued to the window and she kept saying "I scared", " I scared of the windy". I felt so bad as she whined and looked at the window.

Even now that the "windy" is gone she will still look at me randomly and ask - "all gone mommy?", "windy, all gone?" She has also been giving me a hard time going to bed because of her fear. To help with this she now uses a night light and we have had to completely cover one of her windows with dark blanket so she can't see the "windy."

Here is a pix of her new curtains - (guess I need to go out and buy some that match?)

Also, today Hailey started a parent-tot gymnastic class. She loved it! They do warm-ups as you can see in the pix below, then they let the kids have about 10 mins of play where they can use the equipment, then they do circuits, today was the balance beam, then more fun with balls etc.

"my bear"

We are trying to wean binky and banky once again. We started awhile back with cutting the binky down and it worked for a short period of time, but I became lax and the habit became worse than ever.

She is at an age where I can explain binky and banky are only for bed and she is doing pretty well with it. She has a shadow box above her bed that she can reach and she keeps her binky's in there for bedtime. Occasionally she will walk out with one or both of them, smirk at me and then run back and put them in bed so I would say at this point the process is going pretty well.

What we have noticed though is that as we are weaning binky and banky she has grown a new attachment to a black bear she has owned for awhile. I don't know what drew her to this particular stuffed animal, but it now goes everywhere with her in place of her banky. If you ask her what its name is, she proclaims "my bear" and this is what she calls it. I guess it is better for her to be walking around with her bear than dragging banky through the mall.

B-I-N-G-O

Hailey has a cd with toddler songs that she loves. It has 42 songs so she has many to choose from, but the one that she has been singing most often is B-I-N-G-O.

She does pretty well singing with the cd, but on the way home from Luke and Alyssa's house tonight Hailey started singing it on her own without the help of the cd.

It went like this ... H-I-J-K-O and Bingo was his name-o!

happy new year

2007 was a year we will never forget, a year that forever changed our lives. Its hard to believe how fast time marches on whether we are ready or not. I am looking to this new year with expectation and praying that this new year will be a blessed one with miracles big and small in each of our lives.

Our church put on a movie/game night with karaoke which I have to say was very funny! Hailey napped from 3:45p-7pm and actually stayed up and rang in the new year with us. That was quite memorable and she did great.

Due to his job daddy had to work 2nd shift new years eve, but made he made it home 5 minutes before midnight which was quite a feat!