Miss Hailey

Well I thought it was about time that I post an update on Miss Hailey, and all the wonderful (and some not so wonderful) things she can do now. It's a beautiful day today, so we went on a morning walk after breakfast. This is how she insists on riding in her stroller...and I don't make her sit because it's just not worth the meltdown...



And this is her riding her new tricycle my mom got her for her birthday...she's a daredevil...



And this is her Sanjaya hair she woke up with one morning(by the way, SO glad he's finally gone from Idol!).....love it...



Alright, now that I've got the pictures out of the way...first of all, her vocabulary is rapidly expanding, and it's so cute. Here are all the words she can now say:

mama
dada (sometimes shortened to da)
uh oh
ite (for bite)
more
mine (oh she loves this one)
ball
bird
boon (for balloon)
hi (which she says to everyone and every animal, all the time, with a huge smile on her face)
hot tea (I got her a plastic mug for Easter and told her it was hot tea, so she goes around trying to find her "hot tea" and sips on it and then says "aaah" like it was good)
papa (much to the delight of her papa's...she's melting their hearts)
Guga (what she calls my mom)
paci
dye dye (bye bye)

She's also barking at any dog she sees, be it on tv, in real life, in a book....she says "ar! ar!" in the cutest little voice...she sounds just like a little dog barking, it's too cute!

She has grown into a little kid all of a sudden...she's a toddler now, through and through. She's mimicing a lot of what I do. When I yawn, she fake yawns. If you try to give her something she doesn't want, she'll shake her head no. If you ask her "Hailey, do you want another fry?" she'll shake her head no if she doesn't want one. She's understanding most of what we say. I tell her to go get her shoes, and she does. And then she tries to put them on, and gets frustrated when she can't. We have to spell out words like "O U T" so she doesn't get mad thinking we're going outside when we're not. Or "W A L K."

Hailey loves wearing shoes. She loves shopping for shoes, and trying them on. She's a shoe girl. She also likes putting clothes on herself, and taking them off. If I'm folding clothes she'll come over and sort through the pile til she finds an item of clothing that catches her eye. Then she puts it on her head and crawls up and down the front hallway, like she's modeling it. She does this every time! The other night she modeled a pair of my polka dot underwear, on her head. Last night she modeled a pair of my pj pants for my in-laws...on her head. One night last week she modeled one of her little dresses, over her head and face(thankfully it's pretty sheer so she could still see where she was going!) She also loves shopping for clothing. Adult clothing, baby clothing, anything as long as she's shopping. Walmart and the mall are 2 of her favorite places. In Walmart she's usually not content to sit in the seat and hold my list anymore. Oh no. She has to stand in the basket(yes I know there are signs on the cart saying not to do this...frankly I don't care...I did it as a kid, and she will too) and she rearranges the groceries for me. If I'm not paying attention and get her too close to a shelf, she'll also do a little shopping of her own. One day she thought we needed 2 boxes of Cascade. I had to explain to her we don't use the powdered version. That was a good enough explanation for her evidently because she tried to put them back on the shelf.

Hailey loves to shake her booty. She'll stand up and hold onto something and bounce up and down, shaking her booty. We tell her "shake your booty, shake your booty" and she just stops and grins. She loves dancing to music. She bobs her head and shakes back and forth. It's too cute.

Hailey climbs on EVERYTHING. And I mean everything. Her infant swing is a trapeze to her. She loves climbing up onto the couch, then up onto the window sill, where she stands and watches the kids play outside. My mom told me she'll be one of those kids that one of these days I'll find on top of the fridge, and have no idea how she got up there. YAY.

She's working on her walking. She loves to walk around holding our hands now, where she never used to have any interest in doing that before. She's taking 5 or 6 steps on her own now before plopping back down. She's also doing a lot better using her push toy...now if she runs into something like a wall, she can pick it up and turn it and keep going.

She's going through a no-veggie phase right now. Which is odd because that's all she used to want to eat! She still LOVES her fruit and yogurt and grains and cheese, etc...but even if I try to hide a carrot in her mashed potatoes, she'll find it and spit it out. There's no fooling her.

Every day when we get home Hailey grabs my keys from me and points them at the mail box. She wants to do it all on her own, and gets very angry if I try to help her...she'll throw the keys on the ground. After we finally get the mail, she'll point the keys at the front door. Again, wanting to do it herself. She's so independent in everything she does. If I try to hold onto her to make sure she doesn't fall off something, she grabs my arm and throws it away from her. Or she'll hit me. Everybody's worried at what a temper she has already. She comes by that honestly, with my family, but no one expected her to develop one so soon. She can be so sweet and dainty, and everybody tends to love her and gush over her...but she can also throw some mean fits, and she'll haul off and hit a person if they're annoying her. Ok come to think of it, she's basically me made over. I tend to be really sweet and nice and likeable but if you piss me off or get on my bad side oh Lord watch out. Or if I'm hungry, I get pretty mean when I'm hungry...and so does H. Well at least I know how to deal with her, being that way myself! :o)

That topic brings me to another development...temper tantrums. Or fits, or meltdowns, whatever you want to call them. I'm talking laying flat on her belly on the floor, kicking her legs and screaming and crying like we're murdering her. All because I took a pair of nail clippers away from her. Luckily this only happens a couple times a week. And I'm fine with it. But if we're in public, other people tend to look at you like you have a horrible kid. Which makes me run my mouth a bit sometimes, unless I'm having a really good day and then I just smile.

Another new development...Hailey will not brush her teeth. She won't let me in her mouth. Not even to feel for new teeth. She hates it, gags like crazy and hits me and cries. How am I supposed to keep her teeth clean?? She used to LOVE brushing her teeth. Not anymore... which reminds me of something else...she GRINDS her teeth. I cannot stand that sound, it gives me the willies. How do I get her to stop? I usually pop her pacifier in her mouth. Will she get used to her new top teeth and just stop eventually?

One thing I love...she naps in her crib now! I can rock her for a few minutes, lay her in her crib, and she rolls over and goes to sleep. And she sleeps so well in there! She never used to nap well on the weekend. Not anymore. She LOVES her crib. At night when I head towards her room to put her to bed she gets really excited and waves at her crib. We're reducing her bedtime bottle...she'd down to about 1 or 2 oz. Then I rock her for a bit, tell her our night night routine that I tell her every night, and I lay her in her crib and she falls asleep. She is living proof that rocking your kids or giving them bedtime bottles at night etc. does not always have the horrible effects everyone says. She feels secure at night, goes to bed very easily, does not need to be asleep before I put her in her crib...and she doesn't need a bottle at night either, even though we always nursed or bottled her to sleep before. It's so nice! Her bedtime has always been so stress free. No crying, no fuss. And it only takes about 10 to 15 minutes for the whole process. So nice...

Well I can't think of much else right now. That's pretty much Hailey in a nutshell. I'm sure I could go on about her for hours, detailing every little thing she does, but I won't bore you with that. I just hadn't bragged on my baby much lately, and since she's a year and a week old now I figured it was about time :o) She's wonderfully wonderful and we love her to pieces!