Category: Kids/Parenting

Tips, tricks and adventures in parenting two kids.

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Kids/Parenting

The guide to Haydenese

Y’know, I always looked a bit askance at the parents who could hear their child say something that didn’t apparently have any consonants and interpret that into a paragraph’s worth of meaning. Until Sunday night.

We had a big family get together this weekend for Easter dinner. Hayden was his usual, babbly self—but oddly enough, I found myself translating from “Haydenese” for his aunts and uncles. I sounded like one of “those” parents: “He said, ‘Sorry,'” and “He means, ‘Brown milk.’ You know, chocolate milk.”

Haydenese. Veiled meanings abound.
Hayden. Veiled child. Veiled meanings.

Strange; doesn’t everyone spend 12 hours a day listening to my son talk?

Many of his words are recognizable, but since the rest of my family is coming to visit this weekend, I figured a guide to Haydenese would be useful, so I’m not the 24/7 on-call interpreter again.

Sour? Did you take a shower?/May I play in the shower?/May I please join you in the shower?
Dape Squeegee from my shower (possibly from ‘scrape’)
Maaaeeewww! Mail! Or newspaper.
Sah-ee Sorry
Hritch or hrits Fridge
Row (rhymes with “wow”) Brown, meaning brown milk/chocolate milk/chocolate syrup
Dates or days Thanks
Be Blanket (crucial to playing Night Night).
P A letter of the alphabet (any letter)
Eetee Itchy
Weedee Reading
Two Any number greater than one, another, both, two blankets
Yipe Wipe
Reet Reach
Cee May mean ceiling, especially if he’s just handed you a ball
Pan Fan (again, especially if he’s just handed you a ball)
Ba’ pa’ Back pack or Mickey Mouse
Morny Marty
A’morny! Good morning!
I habit? May I please have it?
Boose Blue’s Clues
Yuboo I love you.
Derediz There it is
Yuhwekuh or Ahwekuh You’re welcome (a new addition to his vocab!)

Anything I’ve missed?

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Kids/Parenting

Can it get any better?

Most parents of more than one child will tell you that second children tend to be easier. They sleep better (my mother-in-law’s second was sleeping through the night at three weeks!) (!), they sleep anywhere, they eat better, they’re portable, etc.

But I’m very concerned that our second can’t be that much easier than our first. In fact—though I hope I’m wrong—I have a nagging suspicion that our next baby can’t be any easier than Hayden.

easy street = dead end
Photo by gshoe95

Hayden is, in my opinion, a pretty easy-going kid. He’s content to play by himself much of the time—and not just content, but insistent (lately he’s taken to telling me “bye bye” when he wants me to go away and let him play by himself). He sleeps through the night (though that one did take some time). He’s generally pretty good about taking naps. He wakes up happy the vast majority of the time.

Granted, most of this self-sufficiency is age related, but Hayden has always been a pretty easy-to-handle little guy. He never seemed to cry much. He took as many as three good naps on a reasonably good schedule by about 4 or 5 months.

I’m just not seeing a lot of room for “improvement,” you know? What do you think—am I just glossing over all the rough parts of Hayden’s babyhood (and personality), or am I pretty much doomed?

Missing the GWP? The Group Writing Project returns next week!

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Kids/Parenting

Fashion maven

My son makes the most interesting sartorial choices. This doesn’t include earlier this week when he unzipped his pajamas and pulled his legs out of them—quite a sight to see the boy jumping in his crib, pajamas flying, when I walked in his room that day!

Hayden is convinced that this is a hat:
oh, is that a hat now?
They could double as swim trunks. No comment on which is their intended purpose. But Hayden’s expression there reminds me of this guy:
commander keen slug

And today, when he woke up from his nap, Ryan called out for me to see him like this:
hooray for dressing myself
That would be his shirt around his waist.

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Kids/Parenting

Look before you . . . cook

Usually, I’m reasonably good about checking our pockets before running a load of laundry. But today I made a serious miscalculation in my last load of laundry—Hayden’s clothes.

As I was emptying the washing machine, I saw it in the bottom of a drum: a cell phone. I held my breath for a second. But it wasn’t one of our “current” ones; it was an old cell phone that we let Hayden play with. One that, I suddenly remembered, he’d insisted on shoving in the pocket of his jeans.

Not only will I need to be more careful in doing Hayden’s laundry, but I need to get in the habit of checking just about anything before I use it. The last time I made a roast, I removed the stoneware from my slow cooker to find this:

oh dear, melty melty

I was amazed it hadn’t smelled absolutely terrible. It was actually worse than it looks.

And it looks like anything stored below waist-height is pretty much fair game for Hayden’s “storage.”

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Kids/Parenting

The hunt for the perfect name

When we were expecting Hayden, Ryan wanted to wait until Hayden was born before we fully decided on a name to make sure it fit him. But since we didn’t have any other boy names we’d chosen (we’re saving Benjamin for our next son), nothing else seemed more appropriate than Hayden.

We also have girls’ names picked out: Rebecca and Rachel. Ryan has apparently recovered from his earlier reservation, since he’s already okay with calling this baby Rebecca. Meanwhile, I’m still getting used to calling her ‘her.’

But with Hayden we had a pretty obvious middle name choice. With Rebecca, we’re a little stuck on her middle name. Any thoughts?

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Kids/Parenting

The biggest MamaBlogga announcement EVER

(I’m such a geek that I had a hard time not putting ‘EVAR’ in the title. And if you don’t get that joke, you’re a lucky, lucky person.)

I know this is probably going to come as a surprise to . . . well, just about all of you, but today we have the biggest announcement in MamaBlogga history.

It’s a girl!
Baby Girl in profile
Due 31 July 2008

This idea has taken some getting used to. Not the idea of having another child, but the idea of having a daughter. (You’d think I’d waited decades for a girl, LOL.) When I first found out we were having a baby, I thought it might be a girl, but until today I’d kind of changed my opinion.

It’s just that when I think of my child, I think of my son. A boy. So when I imagined my children a few years down the road, it was my sons—playing together, sharing bunk beds, going camping with Daddy. I was actually becoming attached to the image of little Benjamin, though I didn’t have any idea what he might look like. (Yes, we had a name picked out for a boy. We have one picked out for a girl, too.)

So it’s strange not to think of this baby as a boy. Strange to think of my child as my daughter. Strange to think of having a daughter instead of just being one. Strange to make myself call the baby (who is pretty darn active) “her” instead of “it” or, as I’ve defaulted to from time to time, “he.”

Of course we’re excited. I’ve always wanted a girl. Ryan and I actually felt pretty strongly both ways this time—we really wanted a boy, and we really wanted a girl. (But we weren’t hoping for twins.) Let’s hope I can remember all that I thought I knew about having a girl now!

And lest I forget, a couple other friends shared their own happy news lately: An Ordinary Mom is having a boy; Mommy Zabs is having a girl. I was waiting to comment on both until we found out what we were having (didn’t trust myself to keep the “secret” if I commented!). Congratulations, ladies!

This post is now part of the Mothers and Daughters Blog Carnival. Woot.