One Afternoon of Fun

A couple of weeks ago (yes, it's becoming apparent that I'm not a very timely blogger), it was a lovely afternoon when Hayden and I were home together. We decided to go outside to enjoy the day and explore the great outdoors. Since it was such a pretty day, I brought along the camera to document and ended up with some pretty cute pictures.

We started out on the back patio. Hayden spent some time climbing on her picnic table (thanks Aunt Brit and Aunt Megan!). She then moved onto climbing into and out of her child-size patio chair.

We very quickly moved off the patio and into the backyard. Hayden had fun squatting and looking for treasures in the dirt. I think she found some beat-up acorns and a couple rocks - she was quite pleased!
Even with dirt and child-sized furniture, the backyard just wasn't interesting enough, so we headed down the back path, heading towards the ponds to look for ducks. Going down the path (which has a slight slope to it) at speed is great fun to Hayden - not so much to me since I'm slightly terrified she's going to take a tumble and bash up her face. Oh the joy of Mommy worry!
Hayden seemed to have met her match at the top of the stairs - here she looks down at the great descent. But with a steadying hand from Mommy, she actually negotiated them quite well.
We lucked out - there were ducks in the first pond. I like this picture because it captures Hayden responding to my question "Where are the ducks?" She can't quite see them, so she throws her hands up in response "I don't know, where are they?"
Looking at ducks is only exciting for a little bit, especially when they aren't nearly as tame as the ones on Aunt Lori's old pond so they swim away to the other side of the pond. We decided to loop around the pond and see what we could see. Hayden found a lovely little plant that was producing berries. She worked on her pincer grasp while I walked the fine line between taking a neat picture and keeping her child from eating a poisonous substance...

We pointed out the different flowers that we saw - purple and yellow. And the bees and dragonflies, but I don't think you can see that in the picture! :)
Back up on the path, Hayden practiced the magical move all children can do (but very few adults) - squat very, very, very low to the ground. How do they do that?!
Exploring the great outdoors can make a little girl kind of tired - so on the way back, Hayden got some love from her belly and thumb. Ahh, the soothing powers of a self-belly rub.
We finally made it back home and headed around front. Hayden indulged in one of her favorite activities lately - sitting on the stoop. She often points for us to sit down next to her (I think that's why her right hand is pointing). As soon as we sit down, she's up and off to check out something else!
It was quite a lovely afternoon exploring the great outdoors. Feel free to come join us any time! (Though I recommend coming before the snow sets in...) After all, who wouldn't want to spend an afternoon with this smiling face?!

Yay for 90 year olds!

A couple weeks ago, before Hayden started at Daybridge and I started "working", Hayden and I made a trip down to North Carolina in honor of my Granma Jane's 90th birthday. Jason didn't come with us because he needed some time to get work done without any distractions. Why he thinks Hayden and I are distractions, I don't know! I don't find giggles, cuddling and singing silly songs to be all that distracting... hmmm, then again, maybe he's on to something. Maybe that's why it took me so long to finish my dissertation!

The plane ride down was blissfully uneventful. We even had an extra seat next to us on both legs! Hayden really enjoyed wandering around the Philadelphia airport. Climbing on the seats, looking out the window and watching the going-ons, signing airplane ALL THE TIME. Great fun.
After arriving on Thursday, we headed down to Southern Pines for the big event on Saturday. Hayden was all dressed up in her birthday party outfit - her pretty pink dress complete with an birthday cake embroideredon the front! Such a cutie!Granma Jane was quite tickled with her great-granddaughter and tried to give her the house tour. But a one year old has her own ideas about a tour and proceeded to give a self-guided tour of all the "no touch" objects in the house. Nothing was broken, but there was definitely a lot of rearranging as keepsakes got moved to higher vantage points.
After catching up, we all headed over to the dining hall for some grub and for the birthday girl to show off her visitors. Hayden did a great job sitting in the ancient high chair and being showered with attention - smiling and saying "hi" to most people who came over to visit. She especially loved turning around in the chair (there were no working straps) and pointing out the ducks in the print pattern.

And then we got to tour around the community areas while GJ and GR picked up their mail. Hayden loved the opportunity to wander and everybody there LOVED seeing Hayden walking around. Here Grandma provided the security finger for exploring.
During the exploration, Hayden found the Great Pumpkin. Supposedly it came from the chef's garden - it probably weighed more than she did! Maybe we should plan another trip so we can eat pumpkin pie!
All that walking can make a girl tired. And when a little girl is tired, she needs her thumb and her belly. When that little tired girl is wearing a dress, rubbing her belly makes for a very unladylike pose! Good thing she's so cute!

Finally we headed back in the direction of the Sanford villa. Now it's Poppop's turn to stretch his arm with Hayden.

On the way back, Hayden learned a little bit about the vegetation in Southern Pines. That's right, we introduced her to a PINE TREE! She thought it was pretty cool and was excited to learn that pine trees produce LOTS of needles and that you can use their bark like chalk to draw on the sidewalk.
Just before we headed out, we got in a quick four generation photo. Yay Sanford lineage!
Since we were down in Southern Pines, we bopped on over to Whispering Pines to show Hayden the lake where I spent much of my childhood. Hayden was a little more enthusiastic this time than when we dipped her toes in a year ago.
I think she would have gone swimming if I'd let her! You may not be able to tell (check out the ripple patterns) but she's splashing her hands in the water...
We also managed to visit Hayden's OTHER ninety-year old grandmother. (Does Hayden have good genes or what?!) We had a great lunch in their cafe - Hayden loved the fruit that was available but passed on the hamburger we ordered special for her.
Back in Durham, Hayden had a great time exploring her grandparents house. They have so much fun stuff to play with! Like an old school basset hound pull toy, a carpenter's bench, stairs, and a rocking chair.

Hayden did figure out to pull the dog behind her, but she kept turning around to check on him.
Who needs to pull the leash when you can just pick up the silly pooch?!!! Taking a dog for a walk can make you dog-tired! Time for a nap next her new friend.

Stairs, stairs and more stairs. If you turned your back for a minute, there was a good chance that Hayden had headed to the stairs to start to climb.

The child sized rocking chair was another good find at Grandma and Poppop's house. Hayden would go to it and say Raaahhhh to indicate that she wanted to rock!

Target may be selling new "classic" Fisher Price toys but Grandma and Poppop have the REAL thing! Hayden didn't do much hammering or screwing. She mainly liked to carry the tools around. Or she moved the whole bench from the fireplace, to the table, to a chair and back again.
One of the funniest things of the trip was Hayden's obssession with the David Hasseloff magnet on the fridge. She would point to it and say "daddy", over and over and over!
Look ma, no hands! Hayden shows off her fancy drinking technique to the grandparents.


We had a great time on our trip and got to see so many friends and family. Thanks to everyone for taking time out of your busy schedules to hang out with us! You are welcome in State College anytime!

Communication

I've been wanting to write a blog entry about language for a little while now. It has been just fascinating watching Hayden learn how to communicate with us. She has all sorts of methods of letting us know stuff - gestures, sign language, grunts, shrieks, words, etc. Her receptive language (how well she understands what we say, for those of you who aren't developmental dorks like me) has just taken off. We cannot say the word banana without actually being ready to give her a banana, or show her a picture, or she will run to where we keep the bananas and try to climb up to reach them. She can follow simple directions such as "take the cup to Mommy" or "put that in the garbage" quite well. If we say, let's go outside and go for a walk, she'll stop what she's doing, run to the gate and be ready to go. One of the funniest instances is when she wants to get a bite of something and we say, you have to sit down to eat and she plops right down on the floor and looks at us expectantly!

She's getting so good at identifying things, both in the real world and in books. We have a big picture book that has maybe 20 different first words with big pictures on one page - things like duck, crib, cup, flower, boat, etc - and when she's feeling focused, she can point to almost all of them in response to "where is the...." And she's getting pretty good at the body parts game, too -she can identify head, feet, toes, hair, belly and knees with regular accuracy.

Where's your head, Hayden?

As for Hayden telling us what she's thinking, it's really quite incredible what a 14 month old can communicate to you. She has quite the repetoire of baby signs, which she uses daily: dog, cat, duck, elephant, lion, more, cold, eat, drink, music, airplane, siren, swing, baby, hat, car/motorcycle. I think there could be a few others added soon if we keep working at it - book, shoes, hippo (thanks to a visit to the Sanford homestead!), hot, cheese. I think elephant and lion are my two favorite signs - they are usually done with noises too! Her roar is so cute!

Hayden signing elephant...

and lion! (rowwr!)

I'm also amazed that she's made the leap of using the sign "more" from food - we introduced it at meal time - to using it to ask for "more" of all sorts of different things. When we make a silly sound (like a vacuum) or sing a song (head, shoulders, knees and toes) or tickle her, she signs "more" very vigorously! She even signed it to Blizz when she was making her groaning growl noises today! When we were in North Carolina visiting my grandmother (Hayden's great grandmother!) for her 90th birthday, we ended up singing Happy Birthday twice because Hayden signed "more" after we finished it the first time (see below).

Not only does she sign, but she also is starting to "talk" as well. She can say Mama and Daddy, though she still doesn't do it regularly to refer to us. We have two great books called Mama, Mama and Papa, Papa and she has identified both of them by saying those words quite clearly. She says duck (and signs it) whenever we see a rubber duckie in a book. She says "dowww" for down and says up. (Often one right after the other, if we let her play the up/down game on the bed.) She's also started saying wa-wa for water. And during our trip to North Carolina, she started saying a version of dooley (sometimes it's just dee, sometimes it's doo-ee) for my parents' yellow lab, or really, any picture of a yellow lab. She also can woof/arf for a dog, such as the Doggies book by Sandra Boynton. And of course, she can say Uh-Oh with perfect clarity. She uses it both in the right context (something gets dropped) and sometimes just for fun - though usually then it's more of an uh-uh-oh. And she can say hi quite clearly, in a cute little voice, usually with a little wave, and often to perfect strangers who are caught by surprise and can't help but smile and respond!

Hayden checks out her favorite dog noises during her after-dinner book time.

Then of course, there's all the crazy shrieks and yells and grunts and babbles and giggles that she does that can't be captured by a camera. Her giggles and laughter are quite infectious - it's hard to be grumpy when Hayden finds something funny. Sometimes I think she screams just because she can - which usually makes me laugh, even if I don't want her to scream because we're out in public. And I'm not sure if "shhhhhh" is in her vocabulary yet! Luckily I'm not quite ready to shush her yet - we just love to hear her what she has to say!

Doctor Mommy

Hi Everybody! It's me, Hayden! Mommy said I could write a blog entry about our big weekend last weekend when she got a special piece of paper that says she is a doctor of philosophy. So now I call her "Doctor Mommy" when I want to butter her up.

The weekend actually started off on Friday morning for me. I woke up and instead of just having Blizzard greet me, there was another dog that was very licky and fuzzy and blond. Mommy said her name was Dooley and that we met before. I didn't really remember her but I liked her a lot. Especially when she let me climb on top of her!

To show how much I loved her, I gave her a hug while I was sitting on her. And then when she got up, I followed her and sat on her again. This time I might have gotten on the wrong way. OOPS! I even followed her one more time to try again but then Mommy told me I should stop sitting on Dooley. But I might try it again because Mommy was laughing hard when she said it, and I like it when Mommy laughs. On Friday, I went out to lunch with Mommy, Daddy, Grams and Poppop but no Dooley or Blizzard. We got a great seat over looking Allen and College but I was too busy squirming and trying to get down to explore the restaurant to notice. Afterwards we went to the Farmer's Market to buy peaches and tomatoes, and then to Rita's where Grams fed me some raspberry Italian ice. YUMMY!

Then Saturday was the BIG day. Mommy disappeared during my naptime and the next time I saw her, she was far away and wearing this funny outfit. We waited a long time, while listening to lots of names, to see her walk across the stage and shake people's hands. Daddy said that's when she became a Doctor!! It was a little bit boring waiting and listening but luckily Daddy, Grammy, Granddad, Grams and Poppop were around to keep me busy. Finally they played some more music and all the people in funny costumes started walking out. Daddy pointed out Mommy to me and she looked up with a little smile. She must have liked her funny outfit.

When I finally got to see Mommy up close, I thought her outfit was really weird. I didn't want to smile at her or anything. I just stared. There were a lot of people around too; I didn't want to smile at them either, even when they said hi to me.
But that didn't stop Daddy from taking a picture of me and Mommy. Aren't we cute?
THEN they made me try on the silly hat Mommy was wearing. I ripped it right off. It didn't match my pretty pink dress and the tassle tickled my nose!!!There was a LOT of picture taking last weekend. Here's one of me and all my Penn State aunts. (Aunt Brittany, Aunt Megan, Mommy, Aunt Lori and Aunt Lindsay). Some of them have moved away and I will miss seeing them!! They were always so excited to see me!

After the big ceremony, when we were finally done with picture taking, we went back home and set up for the party that Mommy and Daddy were having out our house. I got to just wander around, check things out, and have people smile at me. Can you find me in this picture? I found cool treasures like an old tennis ball! I tried to share my treasure but no one seemed to want it. They were too busy eating chicken and barbecue and cake.
Another treasure I found was called a keg! I liked touching the ice that was around it but Daddy said I wasn't allowed to drink what was in the keg until I am older, like 7! Oh well. Water is my beverage of choice anyways.

It was such a long day that I went to sleep easily, even as the party continued! When I woke up the next morning, all the guests were gone, even Dooley. Only Grammy and Granddad were left. We went to brunch where I ate LOTS of fruit - honeydew, cantaloupe, mango, papaya, etc. And then we came back and played in the yard. Blizzard came outside too and she looked so comfy in the sunshine, I wanted to pet her. She is my favorite dog, even if she doesn't let me sit on her back like Dooley.

And of course, there was some photo ops with Grammy and Granddad. They really like to take pictures with me!

The best part of the weekend was Sunday night when I got to eat ALL the leftovers, like the black bean salsa and pasta salad! I think Clem's barbecue is tasty!! Do you think I have my mouth open wide enough?

The food was SO yummy, I got kind of silly and crazy. I might have rubbed baked beans all over my face and hair. I might have put my cup on top of my head. I might have pulled my shirt up and pointed out my belly. I really can't remember! Hopefully there isn't any documentation... Uh-oh! Looks like they took pictures!! AHHH!

All in all, it was a great weekend. I had lots of fun with all my visiting family and friends. Congratulations Dr. Mommy!!! Daddy and I think you're superwoman! Why else do you think I've started walking around like a superhero? I'm trying to be just like you!