August Update
We haven’t written about Hayley in over a month, so Wade said I needed to update her blog…well, we’ve been a bit busy lately. If you’ve read Wade’s blog at all, you’ll know that we’ve been packing, moving, cleaning and now unpacking for most of this month.
A few months ago, Hayley seemed resistant to move into our new house. She kept saying she wanted to stay in our old house, which she called “Hayley’s house” for a “long time.” But I think as she saw our new house being built, she grew more excited about it. I think she was also a bit confused toward the end of our time at the old house because we’d come to the new house for a while during the day, but not stay here and she was curious about why. Finally, we got all our furniture moved in and set up and were able to stay in the new house permanently. She quickly learned the new floorplan, and after two weeks, she now calls this “Hayley’s house.”
We have a lot of children in our new neighborhood, which is very different from our last one and also a good thing for Hayley. She has met several kids around her age during Wade’s and her after-dinner walks through the subdivision. She likes playing with the other kids, but also likes playing in our backyard and going down to the pond behind our house.
We had promised to get Hayley a pet when we moved into the new house. We didn’t intend to do it right away, but Wade said she’d been so good about the big move that she deserved something special. So we went to Safe Haven for Cats in Raleigh and looked for a kitty. At first I was determined to get a kitten, but after seeing how wild the kittens were, we chose an older, milder cat. He can be playful, but mostly he likes to be petted or likes to sleep. We named him Rod Brind’amour, in honor of the Captain of the Carolina Hurricanes. Rod is a grey kitty with green eyes. He’s actually very good with Hayley, who seems hell-bent on tormenting him at times. We’ve had to reprimand her on several occasions. But Rod has yet to scratch her. He just meows angrily when she irritates him. I hope she will be better about being nice to him with time, but then we’ll have to worry about little Kate trying to pull his tail…My only complaint about him is that he tries to drink out of the toilets, so we have to be diligent about putting down the toilet lids.
There is a skating rink in Wake Forest about ten minutes from our hosue, so we decided to sign Hayley up for lessons again. Her first class was today. She did very well, not seeming to have forgotten all she had learned before, even though it’s been more than a month since she last skated. She did have a little bit of trouble, though, because I switched her to hockey skates and since they are different from figure skates, she seemed to fall down more today. She can get up fine on her own, but all the falling seemed to frustrate her and she even cried a little at one point. But she stayed out there the whole time and, for the most part, listened to the teacher. This session is 8 weeks long; at that point, we’ll see how ready she is for actual hockey classes…
Tomorrow Hayley has her first real trip to the dentist. Wish us luck…