bear behind

Hayley's bear (symbol) behind 

over green

Hayley's feet over green 

a sucky moment

Some of my best times with Hayley are when I have put the camera down and I’m just with her in the moment. Case in point: last night; I had just finished taking a bunch of great shots and video of Hayley happily talking and hiccupping, when I noticed her getting her “tired look”. Then she started to rub her eyes and I knew she could use a nap. So I carried her up to her room, carefully place her in her crib and she started crying. This is not uncommon, she usually will cry about 10 minutes fighting sleep, before she drifts off. For some reason, though, I just started to softly stroke her cheek with my finger, and suddenly she stopped and looked at herself in her bear mirror. Then she looked at me, grabbed my hand, put my finger in her mouth and sucked on it. While she sucked she continued to just stare at me and I stared back. Occasionally we would smile at each other. Often, she would play with my hand. She sucked and sucked for sometime and it was this amazing quiet moment between us that is hard to describe. It felt like everything had just slowed down. The sun was going down and I had not put the light on in her room, so the room had this soft shadowy feel and it just felt like the whole world could drift away and I would stay there with my daughter sucking my finger forever. But of course reality sets in. Well more like my aches and pains set in. My back was starting to hurt from the hunch over position I was in, and my nose was getting increasing stuffy and potentially drippy. Reluctantly, I slipped my finger from her mouth, gently kissed her and quietly left the room. I would like to say the Hayley drifted off to sleep, but she didn’t. She was quiet for a few minutes, but then she started to cry. She never did nap.

missing milestone

Hayley rolls over! 

On Friday April 29th when I picked up Hayley from the nanny, the nanny asked “Is she rolling over?” “Not really.” I replied. For some time Hayley had managed to roll to her side, even sleep on her side on occasion, but just never completed the “roll over”. “Well, she did today.” the nanny said casually. ‘What?!” I replied. “Like completely roll over, because she can roll to her side…” “Yep completely” she confirmed. I knew being a working mom I would miss some of Hayley’s milestones, but this was the first one, and I felt sad about it. So the next day my husband and I were hanging out with Hayley just after feeding her, and we said we should try to see if she would roll over for us, but we decided to wait until she had digested her food a bit more. About a half hour later, I was still hanging out with Hayley on the couch and my husband went upstairs to shower. I knew that I should wait for my husband, but I was growing impatient and I was really curious if she actually was rolling over. I was in denial about missing a milestone. So I placed Hayley on her stomach and went to get my camera a few feet away, when she ROLLED OVER. I almost missed it again! I barely got it recorded with the camera. I just got the tail end of the roll over when she was still kinda rocking from the action. When I screamed ‘She rolled over!” My husband came running down. “Why didn’t you wait for me to be here?!” I felt bad. He was right I should have waited. I just didn’t think she would do it so fast. I don’t think she did it on purpose. It looked more like she was all out of balance and she couldn’t help but roll over. The worse part is she hasn’t done it since then and my husband still hasn’t seen her roll over. We keep trying. Last night we put her on her stomach, and I guess she was just tired because she just sort of collapsed on her hands. It was sad and cute all at once. We picked her up of course, and just held her. She’ll grow up soon enough. We should just enjoy the moments as they come.