Playdate with Mary Beckstead

Last Friday, the Becksteads babysat Hayden so that Paul and I could go on a date.  It was bedtime when we dropped him off, so he missed out on play time with little Mary.  This week was our turn to watch Mary.  Her parents dropped her off around noon, so Hayden got to have a play date!

Turns out, Mary LOVES trains.  Who knew??

Oh a smile!  I think Mary had just smiled, but she doesn't hold the pose long.  You have to be QUICK.

Tried to get a picture of the three of us.  I would have settled for everyone just looking at the camera...but no.

Tried to get a picture of the three of us in the mirror.  Yeah...didn't work so well.

It's funny...until you see another child playing with your toys, your toys just aren't that interesting.  But yesterday, as Hayden saw Mary playing with his blocks and trains, he suddenly took a renewed interest in them.  Anything that Mary had, Hayden had to have.  Toys were stolen, shared, and then stolen again.  

Hayden going in for the toy steal.

I thought that having two almost one-year-olds would be a huge challenge, but it really wasn't!  Instead of Hayden looking to me for entertainment, he had a little buddy there to keep him interested.  I actually got the dishes done thanks to Mary playing with Hayden.  No Hayden trying to crawl into the dishwasher, and no Hayden reaching for the knives in the utensil rack.  Heaven.

At one point I put Mary in Hayden's walker.  She wasn't too sure about it at first, but quickly got used to it.  Her skill surprised me--she was almost immediately able to move it back and forth across the floor.  That took Hayden a few weeks to master!  Smart little girl.  Hayden started showing a lot of interest in the walker when Mary was in it, and he had to play with it too.  Actually it turned out to be pretty cute--Hayden pushed the walker around the condo while Mary played with its toys.

Hayden was being such a little gentleman helping Mary around!  He was so proud of himself.    Mary didn't need the help, but Hayden didn't know that!

Finally caught a partial smile of Mary.

Sparkly toenails.  

Having another girl in the house, I could not resist painting her toes!  I got out my tub of nail polishes to decide which I would use.  I almost went with bright pink...but then scaled it back to just a sparkle polish.  I didn't want her mom to hate me!  I sat Mary in Hayden's high chair and gave her some Cheerios to nibble on while I painted.  I started thinking about when I was little and a friend of the family that was babysitting me took me to get my ears pierced.  She had some guts (I was only four at the time)!  But I'm still thankful to this day that she took me.   So with this thought in mind, I hoped Mary's mom wouldn't flip.  When I was finished, it was pretty adorable!  

The hair grab.

I got Mary down from the high chair and she and Hayden returned back to the living room where the toy bin was.  That's when Hayden did it...he pulled Mary's  hair.  I ran and released Mary from his grip.  She was sooo traumatized!  I held her on my lap for the next 20 minutes or so.  Hayden of course couldn't understand what was wrong, or why mommy was holding another baby and not him.  Poor Mary just laid her head against me!  

Mary's not too happy about it, but Hayden seems to think it's fun!

I hope Mary will look past the hair pulling and play with Hayden again sometime!  He'll work on it.

Our December: Found my camera!

As most of you know, I lost my camera when we had the flood at our new condo.  Today, I found it!  So, I have a few silly pictures of Hayden from our December.

I believe this picture was taken at our Rexburg house just before we moved.   Paul put Hayden in an empty diaper box and  we laughed as we took pictures of him!  I think he was having a good time.

Because we moved so close to Christmas, went through a flood, and most of our decorations were packed away in storage somewhere, our Christmas was pretty low-key.  We spent most of our time with great friends and family and just enjoyed being in Colorado.  

After we moved to Colorado, I decided a would put up a *few* Christmas decorations.    I plugged the lights in to see if they worked, and Hayden IMMEDIATELY crawled over to them.  He entangled himself with the lights and I could not get them away!  

This is one of Hayden's famous close ups!  He will let me take pictures of him, but after a while he wants a turn with the camera.

I love his gorgeous blue eyes (thank you Paul!) and full lips.  

As I mentioned earlier, on the eve of Christmas Eve our condo flooded.  The pipe under the toilet of our bathroom had a huge clog in it (lovely).  Since the we are on the bottom floor, we are the ones that flooded.  Paul and I were home in the living room, but by the time we realized the toilet was overflowing, there was an inch of water in the bathroom, down our hallway, and in the laundry room.  Our bedroom carpet was saturated with water.  I mean, if you stepped on it at all, it was squishy and you would see water gush up from the fibers.  Hayden's carpet wasn't too bad.  Just the entryway was soaked.  So at 5pm we called our manager and he almost thought we were joking.  He sent his handyman (Jared) over to fix everything.  When I talked to Jared, I felt horrible!  After all, it was Christmas Eve Eve and people were trying to spend time with their families.  Jared had been with his friends and family making some sort of beer...idk...they do it every year.  The point is that I was taking him away from his plans.  I felt soooooo bad.

After spending 5 hours with us, Jared had our apartment to the point where he could leave for the night and we wouldn't be totally in ruin.  He installed a new toilet (bonus), got up all of the water, and had fans going to dry out the carpet completely.  I was so grateful to have a working toilet again (I had been traveling to the gas station about 3 blocks away to use the restroom!) that I didn't really care about the mess that had to be created by the cleanup.  Everything in our room had to be cleared out--clothes, our bed/mattress/box spring, EVERYTHING.  And, in a condo that's only 850 sq ft, there's not many other places to put stuff!  Paul and I slept out on the couches a midst the destruction and somehow Paul was able to get to work the next morning. We also slept on the couches for the next 2 or 3 nights because we couldn't sleep in a room with two HUGE industrial fans drying our carpet and buzzing the entire night.  It was quite the holiday weekend!

This is at our condo in Colorado.  Hayden and I were getting ready to visit Mama and Papa Beckstead in Parker.  It was Christmas Eve (a day after the flood) and I was soooo excited to get out of our house for a few hours.  

This picture was from a night that Paul was working late.  The night was winding down and I was trying to get Hayden ready for bed.  He, however, had SOOO much energy! 

Cracking up!  I was tickling him.

More big smiles!  You can see that I was watching My best friend's wedding in the background.

Just some pictures to keep you all in touch.

If you're wondering why I haven't blogged about Christmas yet (or anything else lately for that matter),  it's because I can't find my camera.  Hope it turns up soon so that I can show all of you the pictures that I have of Hayden!

To suffice some grandparents, Paul took some pictures of Hayden with his phone tonight.  They're not the greatest but they'll have to do for now!

This was actually taken in our Rexburg home as we were packing up to leave this December.

Hayden holding his bottle with his feet...he loves to do this.

He looks silly!

Hayden loves looking in the mirror.  Look at his skinny little legs!

Hope you all had a great Friday the 13th!