Is Hayden A Long Lost Relative of Pavlov's Dog?

Our boy appears to have developed some pre-programmed responses to certain things.  He's been around for a little over 3 years now - some habits are bound to form here and there, but some of these things are just ridiculous.

Daddy plays soccer a couple of times a week.  Every time Daddy puts on shorts, Hayden says "Daddy playing soccer!".  And then, when Dog barks in that 'HEYSOMEONEISAPPROACHINGMYHOUSE' sort of way - no matter what's going on or who might be sitting or standing in the room - Hayden will say 'OH! Daddy's Home!!'.  One time he shouted that Daddy was home while he was sitting on (actually, he was jumping on) Daddy's chest.  Perhaps being a front-line news reporter or a career as a forensic detective isn't in his future.

Another funny/odd/interesting/embarrassing thing Hayden does is his programmed response when he hears Mom or Dad burp.  There will be the customary guttural noise which will be immediately followed by '(parent) burped!  Disgusting!!'

His teachers have heard him say 'disgusting' before, but they interpreted it as 'that's nasty' - which is equally funny.

Other things that are important to know in the Hayden Lexicon:

• The garden where mom volunteers is always known as 'Mommy Work'
• One of his fake uncles is always known as 'Touchdown'
• Like a little redneck boy, when he finishes a cup of milk, he has a tendency to throw the empty.
• At bedtime, 'my arm' actually means 'your arm'...as in, "Father, would you mind terribly if I asked you to extend your arm so that I may use it as a pillow?  Thanks ever so much."  Hayden only says 'my arm', though.
• Also at bedtime, if he's not completely (and we mean COMPLETELY) asleep and you try to sneak out of the room, he's likely to beat the pillow like a marine who isn't pulling his weight.  This means you need to lie back down and do it now, because Hayden wants to snuggle.

We may add more here in the future, but so far it's been very interesting to discover the minutia that Hayden latches onto and adapts to his own lifestyle.

Our Boy Is NOT A Robot

While Hayden looks very much like his father, he does share some traits with his mother.  Examples of this can be seen in his 'hide-and-seek' prowess (ask him where he is and he'll tell you...even though he's supposed to be hiding), he defaults to running into a corner when playing 'chase' or 'tag', and in his tendency to cry at sappy parts of movies.

We've watched several Disney Classic, Pixar and DreamWorks movies and in those that we *know* something bad might happen, we're very careful with our little guy.

Our good friends' son couldn't watch the first 5 minutes of Monsters, Inc. because the opening scene is too scary.  Our little guy just laughs and screams as if he, himself scared a little boy and then tripped and landed on a pile of jacks.  It's quite funny, and a little nerve-wracking at the same time.

Last week we watched 'Beauty and the Beast' for the first time.  The 'bad guy', Gaston, storms into The Beast's castle and shoots him with an arrow, then continues to fight with him.  Hayden began to get teary-eyed and sat in Mom's lap.  And then, when Gaston finally gets what's coming to him, Hayden burst out with a huge YAY!! and applauded the fact that the 'bad guy' didn't win.

We also watched 'How To Train Your Dragon' and although we hadn't seen it before, we knew the basic formula of the movie and explained to Hayden that the main character isn't going to die in the first 17 minutes of the movie...it just doesn't make any sense (unless it's a bit more of an artsy movie and the entire film is a flashback).  We also explained that the dragon is hurt, and the boy is going to help the dragon get better and that they're friends...that this is a NICE dragon.

Hayden liked this idea quite a bit.  And he began to interact with the characters in that way for the rest of the movie.  At the end, the main character and the dragon have a very close call and for a minute Hayden was distraught...tears were welling up because he didn't know what was going to happen to the dragon and the boy.

When it was finally revealed that the main character did NOT die, Hayden was very excited and let out another YAY!! to rival the 'Beauty and the Beast' yay.

It makes us very happy to see Hayden get emotionally involved in these stories.  He genuinely cares about what's happening to others and wants to help and make sure they're alright.

We love our little guy.

YAY!!

I WANT ALL!

At school, Hayden's teachers and speech therapists write up little charts and send them home with the hearing/speaking goals they have targeted and achieved.  One of the sections of these forms is reserved for what they call 'Spontaneous Language'.

Another way to put it would be 'Miscellaneous Ramblings', but some of them are really quite funny and we'd love to know what's going through his head just before these blurt out.

One of these is in the title of this post.  He was in speech therapy with Kristin and I think they were discussing the differences between 'one' and 'some'.  In a serious breech of etiquette, Hayden decided to cut right to the chase and said 'I want all!'.  Apparently it took Kristin a minute or two to stop laughing because it was so unexpected.

At any rate, here are several examples from the last couple of months with absolutely no context to help make sense of them (since we didn't have any...they're just things that were written down on the forms).

* The snake is swimming.
* Bug is outside.
* That a ghost and spider.
* I want fish.
* I need blue.
* I pick this one.
* I stuck.
* The ghost is on.
* I calling daddy.
* Daddy, mommy and Hayden eat popcorn.
* That mommy holding a baby.
* I eating animal.
* Incredible is flying. (probably talking about Mr. Incredible)
* It so yummy.
* Mommy and daddy and Hayden football team.
* Look at my shoe!
* Daddy and Hayden swimming.
* Cow flying mooooooooo.
* Pumpkin eat my popcorn!
* I not eating cookie.  It's yucky!
* My mom a woman.
* Jump over rock.
* I want three eyes.
* Don't eat that boy, it's yucky!

That last one we actually do know about - we were watching 'How To Train Your Dragon' and at one point there's a dragon that looks like he might eat the main character.  Long story short, that dragon's breath stayed minty fresh because he listened to Hayden's advice.

TIME OUT FOR YOU!

Following an example Hayden's teacher uses for discipline at school, we printed off an outline of a little hand filled in with red ink.  This is taped on the back door at Hayden's shoulder height.

This is the spot for Time Outs.

We tried sending him to his room, but there's too much to do back there - time outs weren't much of a discouragement for bad behavior.  We also tried sitting him on a chair, but he can sit on a chair for days without being particularly bothered.

Finally we saw this sign in his new classroom and our collective lightbulb went on in our brains.

Since we've put it up, Hayden's only had one real time out.  It lasted 2 minutes (until an egg timer went off) and he's never been back.

Mom, however, has been ordered to time out repeatedly.  Mom play-punches Dad's arm, steals food off of Dad's (and Hayden's) plates, as well as being a general miscreant.  Hayden will not tolerate this (as well he shouldn't), so off Mom must go to Time Out.

At first we thought he was kidding, but then he got this very serious look on his face and said 'Mom - TIME OUT!'  Mom said she was sorry for whatever transgression pushed Hayden too far, but The Judge's sentence was final - TIME OUT!

She wasn't there long because Hayden is a benevolent magistrate, but now we're living day to day walking on eggshells never knowing what might set him off and land us a 2-minute minor or even a 5-minute major (those are references to a sport called 'Hockey').

We're not thrilled about being put in 'The Sin Bin', but he's learning about actions and consequences, using new language, putting pieces of mental puzzles together and that makes us very happy.

We love our little tyrant.

Who's Watching the Watches?

Dad has a watch.  Mom has several.  They usually just sit in a dish or in a drawer, but recently Dad changed his routine and wore his watch one day.

Hayden noticed immediately.  He wanted to know what it was and why he didn't have one and could he have *that* one that was on Dad's wrist because, after all, it most likely belonged to Hayden anyway and Dad was just borrowing it and Hayden thought he made himself perfectly clear by invoking the claim of MINE!

It turns out that it's a pretty nice watch and Dad didn't want to lose it - especially to a 3-year old.  So rather than deal with an incident of escalating magnitude each time we left the house, Dad decided to plunk down some money and buy Hayden his own happiness in the form of a watch.

 

This watch, as you can see, has Woody from Toy Story and all the numbers from 1 through 12.  We're not yet to a point where we're telling time, but we're definitely counting and Hayden's VERY happy with it.  He shows it to everybody who sits still long enough.  

And others who don't.

Hayden Is Cool. And In Other News, Dinosaurs Like Popcorn

While we were sitting at dinner tonight, Hayden was eating his food...and some of Mom's...and he stopped at one point and said "Hayden is cool!"

Mom and Dad had just been telling him what a good job he did for this or that when he dropped that little nugget of news on us.  If, at age 3, he's already telling us he's cool we must fear for our future as parents.

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The other day, Grandma and Grandpa (the Wisconsin ones) sent Hayden a little prize in the mail.  A flashlight shaped like Rex - the dinosaur from Toy Story.  It looks like this:

We recently discovered that Hayden is a certifiable popcorn junkie and tonight when he was cramming his ration down his gullet, he stopped for a moment and picked up his new battery-powered friend...and then his voice changed (but only for the dinosaur's lines).

Dinosaur: Hayden, may I have some popcorn please?
Hayden: Here you go!
Dinosaur: (om nom nom)...Thank you, Hayden!
Hayden: You're welcome, Dinosaur!

Hayden was pretending to feed the dinosaur popcorn - even going so far has having Rex chew on it for a bit before saying 'thank you'.  This kind of abstract pretend play is apparently some kind of a big deal for little kids.

We don't know all the technical terms about what kind of neurons (or neuroses) this type of play triggers, but Mom and Dad were very excited to see it.

Our son is so cool!

REHSIUGNITXE ERIF Backwards is WALL-E

Hayden has finally gotten all the letters of the alphabet.  He's known them for a while, but only by sight.  He hasn't been able to re-create the sounds because he couldn't hear them.

Today we went swimming - one of Hayden's favorite things to do.  We had the pool to ourselves for at least 30 minutes.  It was great!

After we go swimming, Hayden likes to walk around the exercise center and watch what other people are doing.  Racquetball and Basketball are his favorites.  Today after we finished with swimming, we walked around and we passed a fire extinguisher access panel in the wall.  Hayden's been associating fire extinguishers with the Pixar movie WALL-E for a while now, but again only pointing and saying WALL-E because he couldn't hear all the components of the words.

Today he spelled FIRE EXTINGUISHER letter by letter...backwards (from bottom to top) enunciating each letter almost perfectly - including the S, X and F which are particularly difficult for him.  It was awesome!  After getting through all the letters, he pointed and yelled (no kidding...YELLED) WALL-E!!!

It turned some heads, but he was so very proud of himself for doing it there wasn't going to be any way of containing his enthusiasm.

It would be great if we didn't have to deal with hearing issues with Hayden, but it seems to be prolonging the stream of new experiences that we get to share with him and from that standpoint, it's actually a gift rather than a hindrance.