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.

Our Child Can Be Bought

Many parents, I'm sure, have found it essential to be able to bribe children in order to help guarantee said child will behave for a few minutes longer or will perform a chore or whatever.

One of the more popular bribes, based on our extensive research on the topic, is something sweet.  Cookies, cake, ice cream, etc.  Well, not with out little monster.  From day one, he's refused to eat sweets...except for one time when we were able to get him to eat a fudgesicle.  That was one filthy little experiment.

For some reason or another, he seems to think that chocolate *anything* is dirty.  He's probably scarred for life.

Well, at his new school his teacher had a project where they decorated a drawing with marshmallows and because this art project was not done on his teacher's first day, each child was given a MASSIVE pile for decorating...she assumed (quite correctly) that there would be some marshmallows that wouldn't make it past the final phase of quality control and they would have to be eaten by children.

Until he saw how much the other kids were enjoying these little wads of puffed sugar, Hayden wanted nothing to do with them.  Now he's a junkie with a serious habit.  We're sure that before too long he'll graduate to the hard stuff - gummi bears - but for now we're content to have anything we can use as a carrot on the end of a stick. 

Something other than an actual carrot, that is.

Piggies, Pumpkins and Ponies

We took advantage of the University having a home football game and headed to the local pumpkin patch with our friends Jesse, Michael and their mom Liza.  The weather was good and we thought we could get some good pictures taken.

Everyone had a good time, but here are the highlights:

Fed goats.  We got 75 cents worth of what looked very much like dog food, but it was labeled GOAT FOOD so I'm sure it was fine.  The kids had a lot of fun trying to get the goats to pay attention to them.  These goats were trained to detect small children, so the boys didn't have much trouble getting the goats to look their way.

Rode a pony.  These guys have a pretty good scam going at the pumpkin patch.  They have 8 miniature ponies walking around in a circle all day long.  You fork over 4 tokens (the non-legal tender equivalent of $4) and they let you ride a pony for 5 minutes or so.  Hayden was SUPER patient and waited his turn in line after asking very nicely if it would be ok to ride the pony.  He was a little champ and didn't complain at all when the ride was over - he just took it all at face value and put the memories in his pocket and we moved on to the next activity.

Picked pumpkins with his friends.  Hayden really seems to enjoy spending time with Jesse and Michael.  They took turns pulling the wagon all the way out to the pumpkin patch from the main building (more than 1/4 mile) and they had a great time running around the pumpkins in the dirt.

It's become a bit of a tradition for us to head out there every year and although it's kinda campy and has that feel of an antique store mixed with a carnival, it's a good bit of fun for an hour or two and we're happy to do it as long as we have a wonderful little pony rider, goat feeder and pumpkin picker to take out there.

Breakfast for Dinner - Take Two

We're smack-dab in the middle of teaching Hayden right from left.  And we're desperately trying to do it without the use of tattoos.

The other day, Dad was running behind schedule for the end-of-the-day pickup from school, so he bypassed Mom's office and went straight for the boy.  That went smooth enough, but when Mom eventually did get in the car, Hayden had decided he wanted to go to Perkins for dinner.  He wanted eggs and sausage and pancakes.

It was a good idea, and it was Tuesday.  That has nothing to do with anything, but Mom and Dad were drawing a blank for dinner ideas, so Perkins it was!!

We got to the restaurant and Hayden had to go potty.  So he did.  He just didn't tell anyone he was doing it and he wasn't wearing a diaper.  We had to take Mr. Tinklepants home which meant we had to scrap the Perkins Project...or so we thought!

The next day, pulling out of the parking lot at school, Hayden played the role of backseat driver.  Right, Daddy!  Right, Daddy! Straight, Daddy!  RIGHT THERE!! (He also knows STOP and Turn around, Daddy!).

We ended up right back where we were 24 hours earlier (Perkins), but this time we went straight to the bathroom to avoid any repeat performances.

Dad let Hayden direct traffic once before and after driving around town for about 20 minutes, Hayden finally ended up directing us down the street where the swimming pool is.

He's a crafty little bugger.

So Hayden finally got his eggs, his sausage, his pancakes, some melon and some milk.  He had a great time and Mom and Dad got to talk a bit about some future plans for the boy's schooling.  We laughed a bunch and we all enjoyed it very much.

I don't know how often we'll be able/willing to let Hayden guide us around from A to B...especially when *his* B is different than *our* B...but it sure is fun every once in a while to let Hayden choose where we go and what we do.