Dedicated to the man on the mountain taken out by Amanda

Has it really been 19 days since our last post? Wow, where does the time go. Well...where to start...work has been really crazy...so has Amanda...and Hayden...oh Hayden. The little man has definitely been finding his voice lately. It is amazing how much he is trying to communicate. It all started with him pointing at things and grunting. His vocabulary consists of mama, dada, nanana (banana), buh buh (bye bye), daga (dog), izzy (kitty), num num (any food), nigh nigh (nite nite), blah blah blah and other sounds he decides to make at any given time. The other night he actually told me "nigh nigh-dada". I just said goodnight and walked out. Didn't hit me till I left the room that he made a pseudo-sentence.

He knows that if he reclines the recliner and pulls down on the back, he can get at the cat. Hayden also figured out that he can push his ottoman around to climb up on things. Now we really have to watch out for him crawling up on the recliner and rocking it. Also have to watch out for him jumping from his ottoman to anything near him. Still hasn't tried climbing out of the crib yet though; which is good.

Today for Amanda's birthday we let him have some ice cream cake. Lets just say he did laps around the living room, into the kitchen while shaking his head and saying dadadada..blah blah...etc. I tried to get it on video but as soon as I took the camera out he stopped.

Amanda and I did the skiing thing 2 weeks ago. She told us last year when we tried snowboarding that she would be tearing up the mountain if she was on ski's. So we rented skis and drove to the mountains. We got all dressed up and went to put on our ski's. Two seconds later Amanda was on the ground. OK, figured maybe she was a little rusty, so I helped her get up and a second later...she was on the ground again. Seriously this was without even actually moving anywhere. She forgot to mention that it has been over 10 years since she went skiing. We took it slow and eventually she had enough courage to try a little more challenging hill. Bad idea. Some poor guy standing on the hill was unfortunate enough to get taken out by my beautiful wife. Man I wish I had the camera on her. I was standing towards the top of the hill watching the entire thing happen. I laughed. Hard.

This past weekend we drove down to Portland and checked out some boutiques...bought nothing. Seriously..120 for a guys dress shirt you can see through?

OK, well hopefully life slows down a bit and we have a chance to blog a little more often. If not please forgive us. Hope everyone enjoyed Fat Tuesday!!!

The Ollmann Clan Update

I am sorry it took so long to update. Even though I have been at my mom's last week, I came back a day early because both Hayden and I missed being away. Hayden is more interesting then ever now. The last few days at my mom's Hayden thought the dog needed to be fed some tuna. If you look at the flickr pictures I uploaded you can see a bunch of tuna cans in the dog kennel. I am not sure why but Hayden thought those belonged there. He also learned how to use the bike tire pump and thought it was great because he could make noise when he pushed the lever down (also see flickr pictures). I also got some great videos of Hayden dancing and doing something new. His new thing is he has to put the spoon back for you or he won't allow you to feed him. It is too cute. He won't feed himself yet, but he is getting closer. If we put something on the spoon he tries to put it in his mouth, but other than that he hasn't yet accomplished the task of feeding himself with a spoon, fingers are just easier.

We can't believe how much Hayden is beginning to communicate. Well using his pointer finger rather than words, but hey at least he can convey a little to what he wants. He still gets frustrated when he can't communicate, but it is getting better. His two new words are "daga" or doggie and "itts" or kitty. I only know this because he only says this when he is pointing at a dog or our cat.

Some big news regarding Hayden is, in the last 4 nights he has slept through 2 of those nights and woke up once in the other 2. When I got back from my mom's house, Jon and I decided that I would stop nursing him before bed, since that was the only nursing left to do away with. Well it seems to be working and thank goodness too, I thought I was going to be a walking zombie all through Hayden's childhood. I should have stop nursing sooner!

Well I know everyone reads this site just to hear about Hayden, but I do have some good news about another family member. Jon passed his test, and is now an official Nursing Home Administrator, well at least when he gets his certificate in 3 to 4 weeks. We are all doing good, and glad to be home. We miss everyone and hope everyone has had a good week! Check out the new videos and pictures!