Hayes is 4!

Hayes celebrated his birthday on the 1st. This is the first year that he was super excited about his birthday. He counted down the day for weeks. Once it was closer to his birthday he would wake me up each morning saying, "Mommy, only four more days until my birthday!" and every morning he had the right number in the countdown. I kept telling him I was going to cancel his birthday so he had to stay three but he wasn't having it.

We usually try to decorate the kids rooms whether with balloons or streamers for their birthdays. This year we just decorated a corner in our upstairs hallways because Hayes comes in to our room every single night and climbs in to our bed. We didn't want any other disturbance during the night.

He was so excited to open his birthday presents. He had been asking for a monorail so I found one on Amazon. He could not wait to play with it!

Lance got it all set up for him before he left for work and Hayes played with it all day. He LOVES the Disney monorail.

A few things about Hayes at age 4:
- Anything before this very moment is "yesterday". He will say, "Remember yesterday when we went to Disney World..." and it will have actually been a year ago or "Remember yesterday when I ..." and it was actually that morning.
-He still can not say his G (guh) and K (kuh) sounds...G sounds like D and K sounds like T. Some times he can say the R sound and sometimes it sounds like a W.
-He loves to play and has an amazing imagination...much more so than either of the other two did.
-He would stay outside all day if I let him.

A story I need to put on here so that I remember...
One afternoon we were all at home doing things around the house. I was making dinner, the boys were playing, Lance was working from home, and Reese was playing in her room. A couple of times Sam walked through the kitchen saying "Where is Hayes?" but I didn't think anything of it. I just figured he was playing some where else or going to the bathroom. After about the third time I looked up at him and asked, "Do you really not know where your brother is?" and he said no. So we started calling Hayes's name. We were going up and down the stairs, in and outside with no response. All four of us were yelling his name. Reese officially starts to panic and is crying and saying "I just don't know where he is!" Lance starts walking the trail from our house to the baseball field calling his name. I am running around the house now that Reese is panicking. I ran up the stairs inside and yelled "Hayes just answer me if you are inside!"...nothing. I go back outside to look some more. This was about twenty minutes of us all starting to freak out. I was about start calling the neighbors when Sam came outside and said he found him. He said Hayes just walked down the stairs inside the house.  I sat Hayes down and asked him where he had been and he said he was hiding under his bed. We had all been in and out of his room but none of us looked under his bed. At first he was just smiling and laughing but I told him to look at his sisters face and see how upset she was that we couldn't find him. Then you could tell he started to feel bad. The next day I asked him, "Hayes, did you hear me when I was screaming your name inside and asking you to answer me?" He said yes he did hear me. I asked, "What were you thinking when you heard me saying that?" and he said, "I was thinking NO!". As some of our friends said, we didn't know whether to hug him or spank him. I just gave him a good lecture and made him apologize to Reese, Sam and Lance and then we had to leave for baseball. That boy has been the source of many heart attacks in this house!