Just Hayes

We have so many things to say about our brilliant little boy! He has learned so much and made so many developments lately. To start with, he can jump off the ground with two feet (not sure if we posted that before), repeats almost every word we say, and loves to help "cook." Kyle has taught him that you stir with a spoon and flip with a spatula. He will hold one in each hand and say "tir" and "fip." It is too cute! The best part of this new found love of "cooking" is that we had a generous neighbor offer us some of the toys her kids had outgrown. One of the items was this vintage Little Tykes kitchen (circa 1985?). Hayes has really enjoyed playing with the fake food, skillets, phone, plates, etc. My question is: how do kids learn to pretend???? I'm flabbergasted by his ability to pretend!

Here are my boys cooking:

The biggest hit of the hand-me-down toys has been the collection of horses that a sweet 13 year old girl gave up. Hayes has had a blast playing with the horses---feeding them carrots, giving them water from little buckets (see below), making them run, and putting them to bed, telling them "night, night" and pulling a blanket over them.


Hayes put these oven mitts on all by himself--and was quite dangerous with them!


In other Hayes related news, he has started referring to himself as "Hay-sie." He also is putting together very rudimentary 3 and 4 word phrases, like "Mama read the books"--isn't that amazing?!?! On the not so amazing front, Hayes has learned the words "mine" and "my." Now we're in for trouble!

Hayes kissing Anya:


Being a turkey:

Trying to stand on his head (we did not teach him this---we're guessing he learned it at daycare):

We had never explicitly showed Hayes how to use the can opener, but he sure knew how it was supposed to work!

Whenever I ask Hayes if he's my baby or my big boy, he says, "baby." However, we're noticing every day how much more grown up and independent he's becoming. He loves to sit on the stools and eat snack or look through magazines like mama and dada.

Pointing at the dust in the air:

Since Hayes has really been digging horses lately, we took him to UConn last weekend where they were having a horse auction. Hayes got to hear real, live neighing and snorting. He was a little apprehensive at first but then seemed to really enjoy it.

Hayes has been moved up to the 2 year old room at daycare. He had been visiting the two's every couple days or so and they said he behaved really well and seemed to fit in with the older kids. They do more structured circle time than the toddler room where Hayes was. "Circle time" is where they sing songs, do flashcards, and read stories. They tell us it's Hayes' absolute favorite time of day! He's really learning a lot---he surprised us by knowing some of his numbers. One day, I was counting something out loud and said, "one, two" and Hayes said, "three." I almost fainted! When we practice with him, sometimes he'll say the next number and sometimes he'll repeat the number we say. It's a start, right?

Another bonus of the two year old room is that they begin working on potty training. We had very mildly started at home---just by introducing the potty and letting him play with it. We put him on it almost every night while his bath is running. About one third of the time, he pees in the potty! I know it's completely coincidental that he has to pee while he's sitting there hearing the water running, but it's still a milestone nonetheless! And it makes the intro to potty training very low stress. Anyways, they put him on the potty at daycare about once a day and he's had success there a couple times, too! I'm sure this is just the beginning of a very long, uphill battle, but it gives me a glimmer of hope that he'll get there one day!

I know you're probably all gagging on all my boasting of how smart Hayes is. The thing is, I'm sure he's just like every other kid out there and I'm just like every other parent. Your baby is just this little inert being for so long and once they start walking and talking, they constantly amaze you with what they soaked up during their inert days and the amount that they learn every single day on the move. As a parent, I am completely blown away by how much he can do and has learned in his short little life so far!

Even though Hayes repeats every word we say, he sometimes ad-libs a bit. In this video, Kyle was showing Hayes a raccoon on the paper he was holding. Hayes kept saying, "ra-ca-toon." I'm not sure how much you can hear on the video, but watch it if you want!