I love this game!

I call it Then and Now.

Then (2009):

And Now:

Happy Halloween. And Go Rangers.

Happy Homecoming! GOOOOO Rangers!!!

What a weekend!! This past weekend was Baylor Homecoming -- always a big event for us. We headed down to Waco on Friday afternoon. We wanted to get there early so Hayden could see the bears. Also, because we wanted to watch the TEXAS RANGERS.

Oh my GOSH. We are SO excited about the Rangers' trip to the World Series. I have only been following the Rangers since we moved to DFW 5 1/2 years ago, but Clark has been a fan his entire life. It so wonderful to see this team have success. The Rangers are undefeated in the post season when Hayden wears his Kinsler shirt, so it may get worn out this week....

Hayden is teaching Anna about bears here. As you can tell, she is giving him her full attention. Hayden was so sweet to Anna this weekend. When she wasn't around he'd yell, "ANNA!" When she was near, he'd try to give her kisses. So cute.

Saturday was a big day. First, the homecoming parade:

Hayden was ready to get the day started (yes, those are Baylor pajamas).

Mom and Hayden are ready to go!

Anna shows off her cute tutu, Hayden looks interested.

Clark and Hayden eagerly await the beginning of the parade.

A quick family pic!

I really thought Hayden would love the balloons in the parade, but I was wrong. He HATED this bear. I wish I got a picture of his face as this bear came up the street, because it was hilarious. Side note: Am I a bad parent for laughing at his terror? Because I couldn't take a picture because I was laughing too hard. Hayden's face looked like a cartoon of "I'm scared." So funny. As the balloon got over head, I expected him to cry but he just yelled at the balloon. Good stuff! Hayden did enjoy the marching bad though.

After the parade, Clark and I trekked across campus for our family picture in front of Judge Baylor. You may remember last year's epic fail:

This year, we had better luck:

Of course, the AChiO who was generous enough to take our pic cut off Judge Baylor's head. Next year we'll do better!

The game was a success -- in that the Baylor Bears were victorious and are now bowl eligible. Congratulations Hayden you had to wait 20 months what I've waited for since 1999. Good for you. Baylor is also ranked #25 in the BCS. Are you kidding me?! I was 12 the last time Baylor was ranked! The game was a fail in other respects...a 2 hour lightening delay and a huge down pour. A game that should have ended around 5:30 or 6 ended around 7:30ish. Needless to say we didn't last that long. Hayden did great during the monsoon (we were protected under a pavillion in the end zone). However, I think we saw maybe 4 downs of football, collectively. After the weather came through it was chilly and still sprinkling. I spent a lot of my time hanging out with Hayden in the family room/bathroom. Hayden still found a way to celebrate though:

I thought we did a great job of just "going with the flow" as much as possible on a trip with a toddler and an infant. There were no embarrassing meltdowns or seriously stressful moments. Special thanks to Jay and Judy James and to Blenda and Rick Helms for offering so many helping hands. Of course they wanted to help out with their sweet granddaughter, Anna but they were especially sweet to help out with our little monster too. The weekend would not have been a success without them! Plus, Hayden loves the attention.

Life with a 19 Month Old AKA WWE Smackdown

Why is living with a 19 month old (almost 20 month old) akin to being a part of a WWE Smackdown? Because everything is a constant battle. High rewards, I tell you, but maximum effort has to put out. With each new month, I'm amazed by how much this kid learns. He says so much! New words include (but are not limited to) "apple" (which also means pumpkin, strangely enough) "I poop" (generally used completely inappropriately) "pee pee" (note the emphasis on potty talk) and as of today "Ocar" (for Oscar the Grouch). When he wakes up in the morning, he immediately asks for Dora, which is frustrating, because what does Dora do for him? Does Dora make his breakfast and bring him milk? I'm not bitter or anything. However, I digress.

Because Hayden is becoming somewhat self sufficient (yay for using a fork or spoon to eat!), he now gets extremely frustrated when you won't let him do things for himself. Like change his diaper. I swear, changing this kid's diaper is an epic battle. There is screaming and much gnashing of teeth involved. He rolls around and tries to throw himself off the changing table. He tries to grab what's IN his diaper, and then gets extremely agitated when you tell him "no." Seriously, changing this kid's diaper is taking years off my life. So, I tried to come up with a diversion. One is a Dallas Cowboy Star key chain that he likes to hold. He asks for the "Star" and that usually keeps him happy. Until he throws it on the floor. He also likes to hold his Little Noses Saline drops. Which he promptly tries to stick up his nose. It's funny that he knows where is goes, but at the same time I feel like a trip to ER is coming because he's going to jam it too far up there!

Naps are also World War III level battles. Good lord. I had to call Clark for back up today, because it was taking waaaaay too long to nap.

Hayden is so pumped that we're still talking baseball in October. First, he just loves to say "bayball" so this it's an added bonus that the Rangers are still playing baseball. I keep telling him to pay attention, because there's a chance Hayden will be in middle school before this happens again. Hayden will be wearing his Ian Kinsler shirt tomorrow to school (it's lucky) and will be cheering of Cliff Lee tomorrow until his bedtime.

This weekend we head to Waco for Hayden's second Baylor Homecoming. We're so excited! In the meantime, enjoy this picture of Hayden loving on Sophie. :)

Labor Day!

Happy Labor Day weekend! We are so excited that we have this long weekend together as a family. It's not often that we have a long weekend that Clark has the whole weekend off!

Of course this weekend is extra exciting because it's the start of college football! We LOVE college football at our house and we're excited to share it with Hayden. Of course Hayden is still calling football "bayball" but we're working on it.

We started the long weekend off with a trip to the doctor. Hayden weighs 25.4lbs (25%) and is 33 1/2" tall (75%). As I said, he's tall and skinny. I'm sure all of you were waiting with bated breath for those stats. Hayden is growing perfectly and she seemed impressed with his speech "especially for a boy." I don't know if that's insulting or not. He got one shot so we're all up to date until he's 4! Yay -- well not counting flu shots and finger pricks. Oh well.

On Saturday, Hayden stayed with his favorite babysitter, Jenny while Mom and Dad went to the Baylor game! We had so much fun.

Ken Starr (yes, that one) is Baylor's new president. I wasn't entirely sure what I thought about the choice, but I sure like how involved he is in Baylor Athletics. Here he is running out onto the field with the Baylor Line:

Clark was excited because our seats were so close to his 2 favorite people:

and

Baylor was victorious, RGIII didn't get hurt and we had a great time. All is right in Meador house.

Today we slept in (8:15, oh yeah!) and went to ride the mini train. The mini train is a 40 minute ride, and Hayden loved every second of it.

Don't mind Mom's double chin:

"Dog! Dog! Dog" as well as furiously signing "dog"

Wow!

Tomorrow we're hoping to have another adventure at the zoo. We haven't been in a while and the weather is tolerable -- so we'll see!

My Boy is 18 Months Old!

I know I say this at least once every blog post, but seriously...where did my baby go?!? I don't have any official stats on height and weight yet (H goes to the doc on Friday). I can tell you that he's tall and skinny. His hair is getting more and more blonde every day. Apparently, Clark's hair did the same thing when he was little.

Here's Hayden a year ago:

Time flies, huh?

Hayden is saying SO much now. Clark and I counted and we think he's around 20+ words. He doesn't say every word consistently. New to list: "night night" "Dora" (insert eye roll here) and "Elmo" ("melmo"). He also loves to make animal noises. He says, "ah ah ah" for a monkey sounds and roars when he sees a lion, tiger or a bear. He's successfully eating with a spoon or fork even though at restaurants we're eating with our hands still. Hayden loves to color and loves Mama to read Pajama Time, Snuggle Puppy and Barnyard Dance. Hayden also looooooves to watch "bayball" with Daddy.

Of course this age has a lot of challenges. Hayden loves to test his limits and thinks "no" is funny. He's prone to tantrums at the grocery store. We've tried time out a couple of times, but you can tell he just isn't sure what we're talking about. Truth be told, I see a lot of time outs in Hayden's future. :)

It finally cooled off enough for Hayden to play outside in the evening...

How can you not love this face?

One of the sweetest things Hayden does is pucker up for a kiss and says, "mwuah!" Of course one of Hayden's favorite things in this world are his dogs. Here , Hayden is combining these two things to receive puppy kisses:

I think Hayden's face says it all.

We Did It! We Did It! We Did It, Yeah!

Yeah we did it! I apologize for the Dora quote...but we've done it -- without the assistance of a talking backpack or a bossy map. We finished the entire Harry Potter series! I apologize to everyone who now has that obnoxious Dora song in their head!

I started reading Harry Potter to Hayden when he around 6 or 7 weeks old. So it took us around 17 months to accomplish this. Of course, it wasn't without tears (on my part). I love these books so much and it was such a wonderful gift to share them with Hayden. My absolute favorite time of day was snuggling with Hayden at bed time and reading a chapter (or 2).

We've started the Chronicles of Narnia which is a great series, but pales in comparison to Harry. I wanted to be hardcore and start the Lord of the Rings, but I think that's a little much...even for me! Frodo will have to wait until Hayden is a little older. My precious!

A Common Childhood Trauma

The ice cream headache. Clark and I have only recently discovered the new trend of self serve frozen yogurt stores. How we missed this, I don't know considering I think there's one of these stores on every corner in Ft. Worth. Hayden loves it because the sample cups are just his size. In this picture he's experiencing a banana yogurt induced ice cream headache. You could tell he was suffering but he just couldn't part with the yogurt! Love it.

Hayden has also gotten in a fight at school. Over a book. I'm half proud, half embarrassed. I can say he was the victim not the defendant.

You can see the scratch he received in the fight in this picture. Kind of. This picture is more significant because it immortalizes a very important day in every boy's life: his first trip to George's. I was in Waco for a seminar for work last week and Clark and Hayden visited me on Thursday. I think Clark only came because he was hoping to catch a glimpse of RGIII at practice. No such luck. They also visited the Mayborn Museum. The Mayborn has one of the best children's museums...

Hayden had to show his Baylor spirit while in Waco of course.

When I got home on Friday, I discovered Hayden doing this:

Not sure if you can tell, but the bear (Sic Em) is wearing a Baylor t-shirt. Obviously. He pushed his bear around for a good 15 minutes. It was so cute. You may also notice the blue bunny that he's storing underneath the push toy. Why? Because you never know when he'll need to stop and do this:

My child does not suck his thumb or use a pacifier (not through any amazing parenting on my part, he just doesn't). What he does do is chew on his "lovies." Or anything that feels like his lovie.

Hayden has 7 of these (an elephant, a monkey, an owl, a dinosaur, a bunny, a lion and a tiger). We have to keep them in a heavy rotation because, as you can imagine, after a night of chewing on them...well, they stink. It's the grossest thing, but I don't know how to stop it. Hopefully by Kindergarten, Hayden will realize people will talk about him if he's still chewing on a lovie during the night! In one week Hayden will be 18 months old. I can't believe my little baby is so big now!