14 Months

Hayes is now 14 months old! He can now say a few more words (up, down, night-night, turtle)and he even put two words together for the first time last night at bedtime as he told Kyle, "bye bye, da-da." He has really started to say "Da" a lot more lately---it's wonderful to see the absolute delight on Hayes' face when he sees Kyle walk into the room and he sighs out a contented, "Dahhhh." Hayes is getting a couple more teeth (molars on the top) and is favoring using his left hand. While he is still obsessed with balls, spoons have become the main focus of his attention. He walks over to the dish drain and whines until you hand him one of his plastic baby spoons, which he'll then carry around for hours. In fact, he's napping with a blue one curled in his little fist right now! (I think we'll probably find 20 spoons hidden in nooks and crannies when we move out of this house.) Oh, and very important---Hayes finally realized how wonderful mashed potatoes are and ate them for dinner several nights in a row (victory for me, but I was a tad upset that Kyle was feeding Hayes all the leftover potatoes that have been exclusively mine in the past...) Last but not least, Hayes has become quite fond of books, especially one in particular, "Goodnight Charleston." He is so cute, turning the pages and studying the pictures by himself (he'd rather us not read this one to him). His favorite page is the last one-- several people are drawn waving and the caption says, "Goodnight Charleston. Thank you for sharing a wonderful day!" Hayes waves back to the people and says, "bye bye," and our hearts just melt watching our beautiful boy.

Hayes turned 14 months old on Memorial Day. We spent the day relaxing and took a trip to our local lake "beach." Hayes explored the beach and played for a bit.

Cold beverage:

"Dad, I can't see where I'm going! What did you do to my hat?"

"I'm a cool surfer dude..."

Cracking himself up...

After he played a bit, we decided to take him in the water. (People who know me well know that I pratically lived in the pool growing up and that being comfortable around and in the water is very important to me. I hope that my children will love the water as much as I do.) Now remember, Hayes had not been swimming since before we left Kansas, so he was a little apprehensive at first. We started really slowly, dipping his hands and feet into the water. He wasn't interested in the least at letting go of us, so we had to take him in to our waist level to get him halfway submerged. It was a little chilly, but after getting used to it, Hayes began to relax and loosened the death grip he had on whichever of us was holding him. Eventually, we were able to swoosh him around and he even let me put him down in the sand in the shallow water. All in all, the water re-introduction was a success---we'll just have to take him back pretty frequently so he doesn't forget! (Unfortunately, we don't have any pics of him actually IN the water and enjoying it since we were all in the water together and had no photographer...)

Our first attempt at putting him down---not thrilled...



Look at the death grip Hayes' legs have on Kyle's knee!

Waving to mommy:

In Connecticut, we share our beaches with ducks, not the seagulls we are accustomed to in SC!

Ready to go home!

"Bye, y'all!"