Haileyisms

Hailey is now 22 months. We have a birthday coming up! A part of me can’t believe she’s almost two, the other part of me feels like she’s been two for a while already.

Hailey found her old car seat, while we were moving in, and crawled inside.

She is starting to talk up a storm with me. She repeats the words I teach her, and often surprises me with the words I didn’t know she knew.

We’re starting to hear more and more two word and even three word sentences. It’s a lot of “I (blank).” “I sit.” “I swing.” “I slide.” At the library the other day she told me “I read books”. I naturally responded to her before realizing she spoke her first sentence!

One day while we were unpacking Hailey walked up to Kyle and said “Hey baby!”. Kyle looked at her like, “what did you just say?”. And then she said it again, “Hey baby!” He brought Hailey in to me and she said it again. Totally not a fluke. Later that night my mom figured out where she learned that from. In one of her books the first page says “Hey baby!”. Now we hear “Hey baby!” daily. The maintenance man was at our apartment yesterday and she gave him a few “Hey baby!”’s as well.

Hailey doesn’t ever say yes. She responds affirmatively to anything with “k”. Me: “Do you want (blank)?” H: “K.” Me: “Are you all done?” H: “K.”. This made me notice how much I respond with “k”.

Hailey loves to sing “The Wheels on the Bus” and “Popcorn Popping”. We cycle through those two songs daily. The best is when she starts singing them herself. In fact, I didn’t even know Hailey knew “Popcorn Popping” until one Sunday evening at dinner at Kyle’s parents house. She spontaneously burst into song, complete with hand motions. I guess she is learning something in nursery.

We’ve started having Hailey say the prayer at dinner and in the evenings occasionally. She starts the prayer all by herself, gets to her first “thank you” and then I help her out. When we close the prayer Hailey is so funny. Everytime I tell her to say “in the name…” she always says “Hailey” (she pronounces it “hay-yee”) instead. It always puts a smile on my face.

One day Hailey was holding her toy bunny, with the bunny’s head laying on her shoulder. Kyle said something to Hailey and she looked up at him, put her finger to her mouth, and said “shh… sleeping.”

Just by watching us and learning by example, Hailey has learned to cough into her arm. I think it’s so cute when she does it. She also says “’Scuse you” afterwards. If she burps, she laughs and says “’Scuse you”. If she is trying to pass by she says “’Scuse you”. It’s never “Excuse me”, it’s always someone else. Ha, ha. Actually, I think she says that because that must be what we say to her.

There is a playground just down the street from our apartment. Hailey and I love to go spend an hour there once or twice a week. This playground has a few different bridges that bounce and flex that Hailey loves to run across. Hailey was playing on one of these bridges when she saw a little girl about her age who wanted to go across, but was too scared. The little girl’s mother was trying to coax her across. Hailey walked up to the little girl, said “Help”, grabbed her hand and walked her across. Then they walked back the other way. At the end she gave her a hug. I couldn’t believe it! She did that all on her own.