The other day, Hayley surprised me. I asked her, as I often do, something along the lines of “Who is Daddy’s sweet girl?”
Her reply? “Hayley Anne-Marie!”
I had no idea the kid knew her middle name. She’s full of surprises. When she busts out the last name, too, we’ll know she’s been paying attention. Either that or we’ve been fussing at her too much. Because, as we all know, the only time a parent uses a child’s full name is when they’re in trouble.
My work is having their annual users group meeting this week, and one of the highlights is a dinner for everyone at the CEO’s (very fancy) house. Spouses and children are invited. Holly was originially scheduled to have rehearsal tonight, so I was going to bring Hayley, but it turned out that Holly could come too, so all three of us were there.
The house wasn’t really set up to be entertaining to small children, and there were 30-40 adults there, so I was worried that Hayley would start to get a little freaked out. But we didn’t count on the X-factor - the CEO has a slot machine in his game room. Hayley immediately gravitated toward it, and started playing.
She fed the tokens in, pulled the lever, and hit the buttons to stop the spinning. She was tearing it up, too, winning “money” 9-10 times while she played, and several more “free spins.” A crowd gathered around her to watch after a while, and Hayley would just laugh and laugh as the coins poured out.
She’s got to get that from my Dad or my sister - both of them have great luck at cards and other forms of gambling, while my Mom and I have horrible luck. When my family used to play poker, when Beth and I were little, she and Dad would quickly get all the chips, and Mom and I were forced to borrow chips from them to keep playing. Even now, Beth will go out and play poker with her people and clean them out, coming home with quite a bit of money.
It looks like Hayley has inherited that gene. I wonder if we could get her into Atlantic City by claiming she was a midget? Retirement, here I come!
Thursday morning when Hayley woke up, she did something really sweet. Our neighbor had put her to bed Wednesday night so Wade and Grandma Queen could go to see my play. Wade went in to get her Thursday morning, and then she came to find me. When she saw me, she ran up to hug me, and said, “Mommy! I missed you SO much!” Usually she at least has her daddy put her to bed, but since she didn’t have either mommy or daddy Wednesday night, I think she really missed us.
Hayley and I tend to make regular trips to the town park in the evenings when Holly’s at rehearsal (or, more accurately at this stage, performing). It’s a fun change of scenery, and the town park is really quite nice. There are usually a range of kids at the playground, from kids her age up to the standard allotment of insane 10-year-old boys playing “tag” on the slides.
Hayley doesn’t tend to pay much attention to these other kids, beyond saying “hi” and usually getting ignored in return. But tonight was a little different. The playground was empty when we got there, but some other kids showed up shortly thereafter. One was a little blonde girl who looked around 4. Hayley said “Hi, little kid” to her, and she said hi back. Then they started playing together!
They went around together, playing on the slides, pretending to be in an ice cream parlor in this “doorway” part of the playground, just generally hanging out. Then the little girl took Hayley over to the softball fields and they watched the softball game for a few minutes together. I just stood a ways away, watching them and realizing that my little one was managing to interact with someone outside of her immediate social group.
The other girl had to go home soon after that, but it was a milestone night.
You fix the child’s hair with the clips you have, not the clips you wish you had.
To make it more obvious, here’s the detail shot:
Yes, her hair is being held out of her face by a twist-tie, like you’d find on a loaf of bread.
After promising her that she could do it for a couple of weeks, I took Hayley out to pick blackberries with me tonight. She’d been watching them ripen, but heeded my advice “We can’t pick them until they turn black.”
We went out tonight, and found 7-8 black ones. I’d hold the vine out so she wouldn’t get stuck, and she’d pick the berry and drop it into a little bucket. We took the bucket back inside, and she didn’t want me to put it into the fridge. I told her “You can keep it if you’re going to eat one, otherwise, we have to put the bucket up.”
That must have been a dilemma. On the one hand, she didn’t want to give up her berries. On the other hand, she’s famous for responding to any out-of-the-ordinary foods with “I don’t LIKE that!” So she slowly lifted a berry to her lips and bit off one of the little round parts.
She got a surprised look on her face as she said “I like this! It’s sweet and juicy! Like Dora!”
Apparently in one of her Dora videos, the eponymous senorita picks blueberries and proclaims them “sweet and juicy,” so Hayley was following suit with her own berry. She didn’t finish the (one) berry, but she can rest easy that she both picked some fruit tonight, and ate it on her own.
This morning, Hayley woke up around 6:45, so I got up with her and let Daddy sleep in a bit. We had to wake Daddy up around 7:45 so he could get ready for work. As usual, Hayley wanted to “hide” in our bed. So, Wade got up, and I stayed in bed with Hayley. After a few minutes of hiding and playing, she laid down on top of me with her head on my chest and said, “This is my best friend Mama.” Awwww. This is probably the only time in her life when she’ll think of me that way…once she goes to school, she’ll be best friends with some little girl or boy and Mama will be forgotten. So, I’ll cherish this short-lived time when I have her all to myself.
Hayley’s been going through some nighttime oddities lately. For one, she went through a couple of nights late last week where she’d wake up in the middle of the night, get out of bed, and start jiggling the doorknob and calling for us. That’s notable because she’d never gotten out of bed at night before - if she woke up, she’d sit in bed and talk.
Looks like the mood is about to change. Guess we need to be extra-sure to put the gate up at the top of the stairs at bedtime now.
Her other weirdness is with her books. Part of our bedtime routine is to read a few stories before she brushes her teeth, and the read books usually end up in a pile on the floor by her bed. Well, the past few nights, if we go in to check on her, she’ll quite often have a book in her bed, snuggling with it as she sleeps. She must get out of bed at some point to get it, as she doesn’t have the book when I tuck her in.
There’s liking your literature, then there’s this. It really freaked us out last night, around midnight, when over the baby monitor came a loud “EEEEEEeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeEEEEE!” We didn’t know what was wrong with her until we went in and found out that she was snuggling with her electronic “Scooby Doo” book, the one where you push the buttons for sound effects. Apparently she had the book in bed with her, and rolled over on the “ghost” sound effect.
Hayley amused me the other day. I came into her room in the morning to get her, and I hadn’t put my shirt on yet. She looked at me and said “Daddy fuzzy! Like kitty-cat!”
We had a nice Father’s Day - busy, lots of driving. We were up in Virginia for the weekend, and saw nearly every one of our immediate relatives at some point. But when we got back home, Holly had to run to rehearsal, so Hayley and I went out for a nice father-daughter dinner at the Grease Palace itself, Golden Corral. It was tricky trying to handle two plates and the child at the same time, but we managed, and had a good time, just the two of us.
Last night, after we got home, I was upstairs working when I hear Hayley screaming downstairs. Turns out that she and Holly had been out playing, and when Holly told her it was time to go in, Hayley started saying “I’m NOT going inside,” yelling, kicking, the whole nine yards.
So I took her upstairs and yelled at her for acting like that to Mommy. I yelled at her a little too hard, in retrospect, given the nature of the offense. Poor thing was just boo-hooing after I was done. Holly rocked her until she calmed down, and then I held her and told her that I was sorry. “Daddies make mistakes too, Hayley. I’m sorry I yelled at you so much.”
Being a parent, I think, means admitting to your mistakes too, as much as it means correcting the child’s mistakes. I know I learned something.
Tonight, Holly was back at rehearsal, so it was Hayley and I again. We went out to get some pictures made for Aunt Beth, and then I treated her to some frozen custard at Goodberry’s. It was nice just spending time with her, after she was gone since Wednesday morning.
I told her “I love you, Hayley” when I put her down to sleep, and she said “I love you too, Daddy.”
Parenthood.
“Signs Your Child May Be Watching Too Much TV, #681″ - she starts referring to her father as “Swiper” in public.