Travelers Championship

Last year for Dave's 40th birthday I took him away to a beautiful B&B in the Berkshires. This weekend also happened to be the US Open. I am not sure if anyone reading this blog follows golf, but last year's US Open was intense and we saw it on in the great room of the B&B. And after that I was hooked. I couldn't take my eyes away from it, and since then, golf and I, especially the US Open, have a bond like no other. Last weekend was the US Open and because of weather, round 4 was on Monday. Dave was off, and therefore, we were stuck to the TV like glue. Hayley actually ate lunch on our bed in her booster (since we don't have a TV on the main level of the house anymore) so we wouldn't have to go away from the TV to feed her. Pathetic, I know, but we all have our moments, and this was one of mine. Anyway, this weekend was the Traveler's Championship, which is part of the PGA tour, and happens to be in Cromwell, which is 15 minutes from our house. So of course we had to go and watch. I had never been, but Dave has gone for many years past. Mom watched Hayley for the day and off we went. The weather was perfect, hot and not a cloud in the sky. They don't allow cameras or cell phones - not at all - but Kodak was offering a free picture on the course, and here it is. So for our memories forever, here is our picture.

(for the record, it was very hot, so I can't say what the issue was here, but Dave got a good laugh when he saw the picture. How embarrassing.)

I Wish I Had A Camera

I wish I had a video camera to capture every moment of my child's life. Every smile and every tear. Every word, every step, every laugh. I have a video camera and a digital camera, but I can never seem to capture all the moments I want. Everyday I am sitting on the floor with Hayley and she makes a silly face or does something absolutely adorable and I think, I wish someone else was here to photograph this awesome moment in time.

For example, today Hayley and I went outside and sat on the lawn together. She began rolling around in the grass and I laid down on my back and she laid down on her back next to me and rolled over and gave me a huge slobbery kiss. What a moment! She makes this adorable face where she makes her mouth into an "o" and most of the time it is to bark back at one of the noisy dogs. The other day she came up to Josie who was laying down and Josie kissed her face and she giggled the cutest giggle! She lays on her back and I tickle her belly and she laughs and laughs and laughs. She points at everything and anything. I don't think she even knows what she is pointing at. I will say "show me" and bring her to where she is pointing and she is so excited that there are things in front of her I am about to let her grab she just doesn't know what to choose. It is hilarious. She loves shoes. She takes her shoes off and tries to put them back on her feet. If my shoes are off, she grabs them and puts them back on my feet. So cute! She loves when Josie plays with her toy. She crawls over to the toy and picks it up and hands it to me with a big smile on her face like she is saying, let's play with Josie, please! She has known how to take things out of containers for awhile, but just recently learned how to put them back in. So now she takes it out and hands the block to you. I put it in my hand and then she takes it back and puts it back into the container. Over and over again. About a week ago she discovered the ziploc baggie drawer in the kitchen. She empties all the bags out of the boxes and puts them back in, etc. Somehow one of the boxes ended up in her playroom, and her little balls fit in the empty box perfectly. This is one of her new favorite things to do. Put the balls in the box, take them back out. That is just a few of my ramblings of this amazing child. I am so lucky! So many times a day I think, oh, I have to blog about this! And of course, as I sit here, I forget so many of those moments. I really look forward to so many more moments like these to come.

Here are just a few of those moments I was able to catch:

Climbing up the stairs

Pulling out all the bags

Woof

Mama, here's my shoe!

I got this series of pictures yesterday and just thought they came out adorable!

And later, she lost her diaper

What do you do all day?

Well, last week was pretty normal and usual for us, and friends or family have said, since you're not working, what exactly do you do all day? Here is a brief pictorial of a day in the life of The Mays:

We climb up the stairs about five or six times

We take a nice long bath right before bed (yes, this should be at the end, my bad)

We stand at the window and wave and shout to the neighbors, the dogs, the birds, whomever we see.

We climb on the radiator to get some height out the window.

We eat - lots and lots of food. And wear it.

Now that you have seen a brief day in the life of The Mays, I can tell you what else is going on.

Hayley is extremely active. She climbs on everything, cruises and crawls all over the house and climbs up the stairs all the time. If it's not raining, we got for a walk in the buggy to get outside for awhile and often will stop at the swing on the way home from our walk and go for a little swing. She is still loving to eat and we are struggling with her letting us feed her, though she can't feed herself with a spoon, hence the yogurt all over the tray in the earlier picture. She says mama, dada, a form of Josie, there it is!, and that's about it. She chases Josie around the house and poor Josie has no idea how much worse it's going to get once she starts walking! Eek! Though it rains almost everyday, we are keeping busy going here and there and making some new friends and some new playdates. We have been frequenting my mother's house, and Hayley loves it there because it's so big and she has so much space to crawl everywhere - not to mention she loves Opus and grabs at his fur and hugs around his neck, so cute!

I hosted Antina's baby shower 2 weeks ago now, and it was prefect weather and we held it outdoors. It was a great time and she got lots of great stuff and I really enjoyed hosting it. Making the food, decorating, so much fun. I did have one mishap in that one third of our balloons blew away while we were putting the others up, and it was so sad to see them all floating in the air, way above our heads, lost forever! We were able to get more in time, but so devastating!

Last Saturday we went to Lena Goldberg's 1st birthday (Christina (Bloch)'s daughter party at their new home in Deep River and had a blast. Hayley was so over tired she was acting totally crazy rolling around in the dirt like a piggy. It was hysterical and she was filthy! My camera wasn't working which was so sad because it was absolutely hilarious! She loved the big beach balls and was biting them and just blabbing away. Lena was asleep so she really was the center of attention and she loved it. Dave gave her a bath that night and he said she had dirt in her rolls, under all her fingernails, in between her toes, in her ears, and who knows where else. She had a lot of fun though, and that was the most important.

Last Sunday Dave had his birthday so after Hayley went to bed we went out to dinner just the two of us to PF Chiang's and it was delicious! He had never been there and I had only been back when I lived in Virginia, so it was such a treat for the both of us. We will surely return.

My grandpa also took another good fall over the weekend and is currently at Yale New Haven because he shattered his elbow, got 9 stitches in his forehead, and possible re-injured his neck. It is so sad to see him getting so older and it has been an emotional couple of days for me thinking about him and Grandma (her birthday was last week and I can't believe she's been gone almost 9 years). I have been so lucky to have my grandparents have been such a huge part of my life for almost 30 years, and I can't imagine what my childhood would have been like with out them. I feel very sad and scared of what is to come in the future, because Grandpa is 93. I just want to spend as much time with him as I can, especially since I'm not working right now. He is such an amazing person and has this ability to make every person in his life feel special and important and cared for. Grandpa, you are awesome. Get well soon.

Life with an 11 month old is an adventure everyday. She is very demanding and active. She has no patience (like her mother) and loves to look at new things and make lots of noise. She whines more these days because she understands the word no and doesn't like it (of course, it's hysterical because she shakes her head when you say no so it's so hard to not laugh). She falls and gets lots of little bumps, but nothing a kiss and a snuggle can't fix. She is fighting her naps these days, which means a new transition is in tow, and I love that she's getting bigger, but I still want her to be my baby forever. I feel like it was yesterday that I held her in the hospital and now we're planning her first birthday party. Time flies. I am so lucky to be home and tell myself that everyday. I wouldn't change my life one iota.

A Couple New Videos

I got some new videos posted on You Tube today. Here they are for your viewing pleasure...

I know they are a bit long, so I hope you have some free time!

A Day Away

Hayley and I both had a day away today. From each other that is. I dropped her off early this morning at my mother's house and she spent the say there and I got some much needed spring cleaning and finished some ongoing projects around the house. She had a great day there, and even napped in the crib there. When I arrived, she was sitting on the floor in the kitchen and she looked up and saw me. She was so excited she began to cry! I picked her up and she hugged me so tight! It was the best feeling in the world. I didn't want to put her down. While it was nice getting stuff done around the house, I did miss her, but I am so glad she got to spend some time with Grandma. Maybe we'll have to do it again sometime, and I won't have to clean and stuff all day...maybe I'll go to the spa!

The New Buggy

I got Hayley a new car, well, it's in fact called a buggy, and she absolutely LOVES it! She points to it from the window and crawls over to it and wants to be in riding all day. Since I got it every morning after nap we go out for a neighborhood stroll and she hangs on to the steering wheel and squeals with delight! It is so darn cute. Yesterday we chased Josie around the yard in the buggy, then followed Dave around the yard while he weed-whacked. It is just the cutest thing ever! Here are some pictures of her in her new buggy.

Hayley loves to do her yoga...If you ask her where her feet are, this is what she does!

Yes, she is climbing the stairs...She is looking at me like, oh no! I got caught!

And this is how she looked when I pulled her down!

Kinda New Video

This video was taken on May 18th, and she crawls much better then this now, but thought I'd post it anyway...

Finally, Yes, an Update!

OK, so yeah, it's been almost a month since my last post. I know. Here's my excuse, well, things got really busy, then once I realized that it had been so long since I last posted, I knew it was gonna be a long post, so I procrastinated as long as possible until I just couldn't procrastinate any longer. 

So much is going on with us. Just in the last 2 weeks, Hayley has become a whole new baby. She is pulling up and cruising around on everything and anything she can! She crawls all over the place, and just yesterday she climbed up the first stair by herself. It is a crazy, but really exciting time for us. I absolutely love watching her learn and those little gears in her head turning. She has a little ride on car from the Leone's that she loves and we push her around the house and she squeals with delight. She cries when we take her off. That of course, brings me to all the new challenges that come with these new things. She whines and cries more from falling, bumping her head, me taking things away. She stands up in her crib at naptime, therefore I have to keep going in and laying her back down. It takes her about a half an hour to finally fall asleep and get herself settled. So far she has knocked over the CD player by grabbing on the cord and pulled over this small table we have next to the glider. I have done everything I can to take everything out of her reach, but she manages to find something! She is also much more demanding and impatient. This, of course, stems from her mother, who has such similar personality traits! But you know what, I love it. I love every second of it. She is just so fun! She laughs out loud at so many things and well, it's just so darn cute!

The weather has been really nice, finally, so we go out almost everyday to a park or something along those lines. We hang at the Leone's because they have a big swingset and she rides in Sammy's car and crawls all over the yard. Last week it was really hot and Sarah brought out the sprinkler and the water table. Hayley loved that table! She was splashing away in there - I'll have to get her one of her own soon I think.

I don't know if I have mentioned this yet, but I have stopped breast feeding. When we got back from Florida, I just couldn't get anymore let downs. So Hayley has been on whole milk for about a month now and she really loves it. She drinks from a cup at all 3 meals and has a bottle at night before bed. I am so thankful this transition ended up going so smoothly. It will be really easy at a year to transition the bottle completely. The pacifier I think will be a different story. 

What else, oh yes, Dave and I went to our first Red Sox game since before I was pregnant. We went with Chelsea and Matt and really had the best time. Mom stayed here with Hayley and she said they had so much fun and she was the perfect angel - of course. I was so hesitant to go, but I know I have to be able to go out sometimes without my child. This was a big step for me and I'm so glad we did it. Hopefully we can get some more tickets along the way and go again. 

Antina's baby shower is this Sunday and I am hosting. I can't believe she is having a baby in a month! Which means Hayley is also going to be a year in a little over a month. Holy cow, time flies! I can't believe it. 

Ok, so here are like a million pictures of our little cutie. 

My mom took her to see Grandma the day we went to the Sox game.

This was when we went out and she played in the water table. I was drying her dress on the deck. She climbed up to the gate to check out what was going on in the kitchen.

She loves to grab the leaves from the lower branches as she swings in her swing outside. 

I caught this at the perfect moment. She climbed up to the window, one of her favorite things to do, and put both feet onto the radiator to give herself just a bit more height. 

Diaperless, she was enjoying the outside so much. Right after I took this picture, she peed and pooped right there.

Mom and I went to Haddam Meadows for a picnic and brought all the dogs. We tied all three of them up together and let them run around everywhere while we enjoyed the peace. Hayley had lots of fun!

Climbing on her highchair.