One more thing

I almost forgot. One other fun thing about the visit was that Hayden got to show off her new shirt we had bought for her in Florida. Mom, Dad, Lacey, and JT had never seen it before and they were pretty excited by it. What do you think?!

It's gonna be a time of big changes, come the end of September!!!

Sometimes I do know what I'm doing...

So one of the highlights for me in Tville, besides the joy of spending time with family and the warm, sunny weather, was the fact that I had a moment of brilliance in parenting. Given my background in preschool teaching and child development, I always kind of feel like I'm supposed to know the answer. This "pressure" to know it all can really get to me at times, because one of the things I've learned since being a parent is that there are way too many times that I really have no clue what to do. (she's crying in her crib - should we get her? ride it out?; she doesn't like X for dinner - do we offer something else? let her go hungry?; she wants to keep playing outside, but it's freezing and I have to make dinner - do I piss her off? or let her keep exploring?) But in Tville, I really did have a moment of brilliance.

Pop-pop had gone outside to wash the cars, and we thought the kids might like being outside and having a little water play. However, once we tried that, Jay did play with the watering can but he kept shaking it, splashing water everywhere, which made Hayden fall back in retreat. And neither one of them was particularly interested in getting sprayed with the hose. I remembered how we use to let Hayden play in a tupperware of water last summer and asked Lacey about a big bucket. As I headed inside to ask, I saw her coolers and the light bulb went off! "Can we fill up the coolers with water?" Indeed we could! And we found another large tub to fill as well. Thus we ended up with two large containers of water and, in another flash of brilliance, one left empty. As soon as I put the empty one next to the full containers, the kids immediately started transferring water into the empty container - I didn't even have to model it!

The result - at least a half hour of concentrated water play where the toddlers were super happy and the adults got to relax. It was perfect! Check out the pictures and video clip below for the set up. Thanks goes to grandma for providing the orange measuring cups! Perfect for scooping!





I just love how the video shows how busy they were. Jay especially kept up the water transfer for a very long time. Hayden got a bit bored and went looking for other things to put in the water. She liked tossing in a soccer ball and having it splash everyone.

After water play was over and the kids had been dried off and cleaned up, we continued to hang outside and learned that coolers can be fun, even without being filled with water, or beverages.


These pictures don't even quite capture how funny it was. First, they both tried to get into the blue cooler, but Hayden got mad because Jay was sitting on her legs. Then Jay tried the little cooler, but he just didn't fit. And when he'd try to sit down in it, he'd get stuck and then get frustrated and almost tip it over trying to get out. The song (adapted of course) "fat guy in a little cooler"comes to mind. :)

So anyway, they just really had a great time with the coolers. I can only claim the water play as my idea, the kids figured out the part about sitting in the coolers. And just for the record, I don't really have all that many great ideas. My idea to make mini-burgers for the kids failed - neither one ate any of the meat. Oh well. I guess that's what parenting is all about - trial and error - especially with the first one! At least we all have fun with the trying!

Spring Break in Tville

Instead of going someplace during PSU's actual spring break, we decided to wait a week to head down to visit my sister in south Georgia, since flights were cheaper then. That meant we got to ring in spring in a wonderfully warm and sunny locale, rather than cool and often gloomy State College. We had a terrific trip, even with the 4 legs it took to get there (drive to Hburg, fly from Hburg to ATL, fly from ATL to Valdosta, drive from Valdosta to Tville). We traveled a good 12 hours but Hayden was a great traveler and we all arrived tired, but in good spirits.

This was the first time we had ever been to Tville so we got to see the town, see Lacey and JT's 'new' house, and just really enjoy time with family. It was the fourth month in a row that we'd gotten Hayden and Jay together - not sure if we'll continue that streak but it's been fun seeing them interact so much! And, as an extra bonus, Mom and Dad (Grandma and Poppop) drove down to join in the fun too. The only thing that was disappointing to Hayden was the fact that even though we were going on a plane, there was no "Sharaw-Bad" to join us. For those of you who haven't spent time with Hayden lately, "Sharaw-Bad" is our friends, Sarah and Brad, who traveled with us to Orlando. And I think they are permanently linked to airplanes in Hayden's mind. Just the other day, we saw an airplane flying "up in the sky" and after identifying the plane, she immediately shrieked, "Sharaw-Bad!" Alas, they were not on the plane, but it's hard to explain that to a 20 month old. :)

So of course we took lots of pictures during the course of our visit. We did get to do lots of fun things - see baby goats, try some fresh, local cheese, visit downtown Tville, see the Harrison grandparents and enjoy some special Texas barbecue, play croquet, introduce H and J to t-ball, go to an awesome playground, try fried pickles and local grass-fed beef, and simply enjoy the nice warm weather by being outside A LOT. I'll try to just include the highlights (with appropriate comments/labels) below.

Hayden posing for a picture in the Hburg airport. She's slowly getting the hang of posing, but I have NO clue why she put her hands out in front of her like that. So funny sometimes!

Goats! Lacey took us to a local goat farm and we got to pet the baby goats! Jay was pretty interested - notice he practically has his finger up the goat's nose. The picture with Hayden shows the closest she got to the goats, she preferred to watch them from a distance. After visiting the farm, we stopped by their market and got to sample some tasty cheeses!

For dinner Friday night, we went into Tville to explore a bit and eat at Lacey and JT's favorite local pizza place. Delicious food AND we got to sit outside (for dinner!). Sitting outside was a very good choice because the kids got into a screaming contest. All good natured, but VERY loud. I tried to capture Jay's performance on video, but of course he turned it off once I pulled out the camera. However, I think this photo captures the enthusiasm of his scream delivery!

We did spend A LOT of time outside, which was AWESOME. Lacey and JT have a fantastic backyard (Jason was VERY jealous). Here Hayden plays peek-a-boo on their slide.

As I mentioned, we introduced the kids to t-ball. Both did manage to connect bat to ball, but it was hard to predict which way the ball might fly off the tee. Hayden preferred fielding the balls but Jay might have a future if he can learn to connect with the ball on the forward swing.

The two munchkins pose with daddy/Uncle "T".

And here they are with Aunt Lacey. Don't you just love the sunshine glinting off their hair?! Such lovely weather we had!

The kids weren't the only ones "playing" outside. The adults all got to play croquet! We had a pretty good time, whacking the ball and enjoying adult beverages. Hayden and Jay were mildly interested, sometimes swooping in to steal a mallet or the ball (Babies were considered fair play!). This picture shows the two as hoodlums - Hayden had stolen a mallet and Jay had stolen Hayden's water cup. Maybe Hayden was going to use the mallet to ensure the return of her cup? I don't know. I don't remember any violence!

Here Hayden acts as a "hinder" for Pop-pop before he wins the game. (He won twice!)

Given Hayden's recent love of cornbread, we made some for our lunch of barbecue. Here Jay does his best interpretation of the cornbread chuckle!

Pop-Pop, Grandma and the grandkids! Smile!

Just one example of the silliness of the visit...
"what?! Do these shoes make my feet look big??"

Another fun time of the visit was the discovery of the air mattress in the living room that Lacey and JT were sleeping on after graciously giving up their bed. Hayden and Jay had a fantastic time bouncing around and giggling like crazy. Notice how Hayden has her hand ON Jay, like she's ready to wrestle! She better watch out, I think he's in another weight class from her!

One morning we walked up to this wonderful park. We first took the kids to the little kid play equipment, but Hayden was not interested. She headed off to the BIG playset!

At the playground, both kids pretty much did their own thing, in completely different areas. We did manage to gather them together for ONE time down the double slide.

Proof of how amazing the weather is in Tville in spring. Those are AZALEAS behind us! In mid-March! They were everywhere, in all colors, and were BEAUTIFUL!!!

"Carolina girls! The best in the world!" Hayden sports her outfit that does double-duty of cheering on the Tarheels AND being perfect for water play. There will be a blog entry just about the water play! Stay tuned!

The two kids, just before Jay headed off to school and Hayden started the trek back to State College.

Yay for cousins!

the teeney-weeney

Hello again! This entry is a bit belated, but it's been a busy month. We celebrated my birthday at the beginning (a wonderful weekend full of little special things - thanks everybody!) and then we moved right into Penn State's spring break. We didn't really have any plans to go anywhere (that was coming a week later) but we did enjoy how nice and quiet State College is without all the undergrads around! We didn't do anything too special either- there was still work, and school, and chores, and the daily grind, but we DID manage to get out for a fun lunch at a local restaurant that we had never been to before. A cute little place with the whole 50s diner theme - quite tasty. One of their signature items is the "teeny-weeny" - a miniature ice cream sundae. We just had to try them and when the waitress only brought two, I graciously let Hayden eat mine. :) (okay, I might have snuck the cherry, and I might have scooped out the couple bites of hot fudge, but she got the rest...)

Anyway, Hayden's introduction to a teeny-weeny was captured on camera (of course!). There's not much to it (toddler meets ice cream, they fall in love) but the pictures are really cute. Jason even took a video but it's just Hayden very carefully scooping ice cream into her mouth so I'll keep that one to ourselves. I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as Hayden enjoyed her teeny-weeny!

What a cool looking treat mom - is this how I dig in?
(turns out, the ice cream was pretty hard and she couldn't quite get a scoop...)

Sometimes you need a Daddy-hand to help get you started...

Okay, so mom stole the cherry, maybe I can try and taste it on my own.

Such concentration!!!
Now I'm getting the hang of it - this stuff is GOOD!

Do you think she has her mouth open wide enough?!!!!
When she was a baby, how wide her mouth was told how us much she liked a new food. I'm going to guess that she REALLY likes her teeny-weeny.

Working hard to scrap out the last little bits...
YUM!

It's all relative...

...at least when you're talking about the weather. By that I mean, we've been having some "warmer" weather lately and we've been able to take some fun outside pictures. Now, when I say warmer, I'm not talking Durham, NC warmer (70s) or South Georgia warmer (80s). As much as I would love to be reaching those kinds of temperatures, I have resigned myself to the fact that we are settled in State College, PA and those temperatures come around in June. If we're lucky. So by warmer, I mean above freezing. YAHOO!! Actually, it was actually even warmer than that. (Though I will admit we have used the words, mild, balmy and nice weather, to describe a day when it is not windy and is not below 32 degrees Farenheit. What can I say? We set our standards low.)

Anyway, we have had a couple of nice days lately, that were on the warmer side, even if you can't tell because Hayden is still bundled up in a coat and hat. If you're worried about the lack of distinction, the things you CAN'T see that say it is in fact warmer are 1)she only has one layer on under the coat, 2)she does not have leg warmers under her pants, 3)I am not feeling intense Mommy guilt for the fact that she is not wearing gloves and 4) we are actually going outside to play. So yes, it was warmer weather. That being said, here's the pics!

Here we are, about to head outside (FINALLY!) to the park. Or as Hayden says the "part." I'm not sure who was more eager, Hayden or Blizzard.

It's good that it was fairly warm and sunny, because our walk up to the park was REALLY slow. That might have been because Hayden insisted on holding Blizzard's leash herself, by herself. And so we ambled. I swear we were passed by the same woman THREE times as we slowly made our way up the street.


Hayden climbing the steps of the climber. Look how great she can do it on her own!


And speaking of gross motor skill development, she figured out how to go THROUGH this little hole at the bottom. At first she wanted my hand as she made the step through, but pretty soon she figured out how to do it on her own.

After we had played a bit, it was time for snack. As we were sitting on the sidewalk (only dry place), some boys on scooters were coming up the path. Hayden was just fascinated by them. I love how she's leaning over on one hand here, trying to peer around me to see what the boys are doing.


Okay, so now we're on a different day, when the weather really was warm - 60s! We introduced Hayden to the game of basketball. However, we might have been a little bit late in our introduction, or perhaps our introduction of another sport skewed her interest. Every time she grabbed the ball (which was often), she had no interest in trying to dribble it. Instead she'd go "kick, kick!" and try to drop it to kick it. Maybe she'll be a star soccer player instead?
We had a great time at the park enjoying the weather. We did basketball, football, swinging, climbing, sliding, all sort of activities. Then, of course, it was time for snack. Hayden wanted to come sit next to me on these little stepping stones (some of them move!) and Jason thought it was a cute picture. But getting me to keep my eyes open and Hayden to have her hand down proved to be too much of a challenge, so this is what you get. Notice the short sleeves!!! And after all our playing, I was wishing I'd worn shorts, or at least flip flops!

Okay, final picture, because it's just so darn cute. It's from the first day I talked about (notice the hat has made a reappearance). She's really just SUCH a cutie pie these days. And a sweetie pie - which you can get her to say - "seetie pie, seetie pie" - from a totally biased perspective, it's SO CUTE, just like Hayden!

Cornbread Chuckles

This is a little bit of a random story, but I think the accompanying video is entertaining.

The other night, in honor of Mardi Gras, I made red beans and rice, and cornbread for dinner. Surprisingly, both were a huge hit with Hayden and she really ate them up. Jason and I enjoyed dinner as well. We still ended up with lots of cornbread leftover, so it was on the menu for the following evening as well.

After a long day with both Jason and me working out of the house, and Hayden at school, we all gathered in the kitchen to put together dinner. We opted for breakfast burritos, with scrambled eggs and cornbread for Hayden. Jason got to work on the eggs/sausage, while I got some stuff for Hayden- her milk, some pear slices - while she was securely fastened in her high chair. She had already pointed out the corbread tupperware container sitting on the counter. I turned to walk towards the cornbread and opened it up and Hayden let out this ENORMOUS chuckle/laugh thing indicating that she was beyond thrilled to be having cornbread again. It was HILARIOUS! And she did more laughing when we gave her the scrambled eggs. Which she gobbled up, at least 2 eggs worth, and asked for more. Apparently this girl likes her food so much it makes her laugh. Will she think the veggie muffins are as funny tonight?

Things to note on the video - We did have to prompt her to laugh 2 of the three times. The first laugh described above was about 3 times longer and louder, just so you can start to picture it. And I'd like to point out that despite it being over a week since I first got sick, my voice is still deep and congested sounding! Erg! But the mucus monster has moved out and I'm feeling much better. And if you're wondering, yes, cornbread is a pretty messy dinner option. :)




See, sometimes I do post about things other than visitors or trips!!

Orlando - sunshine and sick don't mix

Okay, so you already read about our Orlando trip when we got to spend time with Aunt Lacey, Uncle JT and Jay. This blog will tell about the rest of the trip, both the very beginning and the second half.

We got to travel with our friends Sarah and Brad, since Sarah works with Jason and orchestrated the successful conference submission that allowed us all to go. Hayden was SO excited about traveling with them. Requests for "Sa-raw and Bad" were rampant the whole weekend. She always wanted to know where they were and was excited when we met up.

We were lucky enough to fly out of State College, and had a fairly uneventful trip. The longest wait was for our rental car. Thank goodness Hayden found a little friend to follow around with while we waited. After having left State College around 11 am, we finally made it to our hotel in Orlando around 6:30 pm. We made the decision to go out to eat and after several false starts (finding a place to eat at a "hip" little shopping plaza on Friday evening was not easy), we found a very child-welcoming, and uncrowded Hoolihan's. Hayden had a great time playing with a glass of water, and tasting lemons.
I got everyone to pose for a first group photo to celebrate our arrival. and then Hayden posed with a very silly grin on her own. We had arrived, there was no snow in sight. Life was good.
Next, as you have already read, the Harrisons arrived and again, life was good. Toddlers played, we ate tapas and did some shopping, pools were played in. Then the Harrisons left and things slowly went down hill. Okay, that might be an exaggeration, after all, we were in FLORIDA, it was SUNNY and WARM. But such things are no good if your sweet little toddler is taken down by illness. It wasn't completely out of the blue, her nose had started running, but soon after nap after the Harrisons had left, she just was not herself. Even when we went out to dinner with Carrie, a good friend from college who lives an hour away and came to visit, Hayden didn't quite rally, as you can see in this picture.

That's kind of what she looked like for the rest of the trip, unless she had recently had a dose of Motrin. Thank goodness we brought some medicine with us! We did still manage to have a nice meal with Carrie and catch up. Hard to believe we'll see her again in May at our 10 year college reunion! So old!

Monday and Tuesday ended up being much lower key days. Hayden and I spent a good deal of time in the room while Jason was conferencing. Or we'd snuggle in a lounge chair by the pool. We couldn't really convince her to do swimming; she just wanted to snuggle with Jason on the side. We did take a long walk one morning where I was able to take pictures of the upside down building that just completely captured my attention.
We did manage to make it to the steak house that Brad had been dying to go to. Quite a place, that steak house. White tablecloths, big hunks of meat, fancy wine - not the best for a toddler, but I think Brad enjoyed his meal! Hayden ate pretty much nothing and refused to sit in the high chair the whole meal. I was quite disappointed that the huge hunk of chocolate cake we could order was laced with Grand Marnier. Who wants orange flavoring with chocolate?!! NOT ME!!! The highlight of the meal was Jason's bacon addition to his house salad. The picture may not do it justice, but this was one incredible hunk of bacon - it cost more than most house salads do on their own, but he said it was worth it!Our final night in Orlando, feeling several days worth of heavy (expensive) eating, we just headed to a mall for a simple chain restaurant. Dinner was fine and Hayden rallied enough to have fun exploring the mall. She just had to give the little dog outside of a special doggie treat store a big hug and was fascinated (as were all the adults) by the indoor surfing venue where you could pay to surf while everyone watched. She also thought the dog/bench combo in Old Navy was too much fun to pass up.
All in all, we managed to have a great trip to Orlando, despite Hayden's illness. She did great on the airplanes and is turning out to be a pretty good traveler. We've learned to always pack some medicine - just in case - and know the importance of being flexible. I'll leave you with two pictures of Hayden from our trip. One is before Hayden got sick, one is while she is sick. Can you guess which is which?

PS After we returned, we got a feel for how tough Hayden was for making it through the trip while feeling yucky. Within a day of our return, both Jason and I had caught whatever Hayden had and boy did we feel awful!! So she must have been feeling REALLY rotten. What a trooper! Luckily we're both starting to feel better. Hope everyone else is feeling okay as we wait for spring to arrive!