World's cutest baby

Hayden's cuteness factor increases exponentially, almost every day. Late last night, he was up so we came downstairs. He was hanging out in his bouncy seat and all of a sudden, it's like he realized he had feet. He looked and looked at them, and ended up staring at them for about fifteen minutes. This morning he touched them a little with my help, but wasn't quite sure what they were. It's so funny to watch him discover new things!

Today, we were all upstairs watching tv. Hayden was propped up on a pillow in our bed and we started to make the grocery list. I looked up after a couple minutes, only to see that little man had slumped over to his side and was fast asleep. It was the cutest thing! Not only that, it's the first time he's put himself to sleep on his own. We moved him to the crib where he slept for a little while, so we're making progress!

We picked out his portraits on Saturday. Good thing Jay was there, otherwise I would have ended up spending a fortune. It's not fair, the way they take these terribly adorable pictures of your baby! We wanted about ten of them but ended up narrowing it down to two poses. Jay had to talk me out of the third and it wasn't easy! This time we took his pictures at the studio on post, but we're going to check out the photo studio in our little town to compare prices and packages for next time. Dear Germany, get a "Picture People" why don't you??

Hayden is getting slightly irritated when he's swaddled lately, so I think he's outgrowing it. How will we ever get him to sleep now?? We are getting a second car from a couple that is moving to a new duty station. They were given the car when they got to Germany and are "paying it forward" by just giving it to us. How awesome is that?? It's a 1986 Mercedes and it's automatic. Perfect! This will make life much easier for all of us, and will make losing baby weight a little easier on me! Hayden went to the gym with us today and slept right through all of it, allowing Jay and I to get a good hour-long workout.

Jay's working late a lot here lately to train his soldiers; they have a certification for their job coming up Jan. 31-Feb. 7. That means Hayden and I are on our own for about a week while he's gone, so we're going to try some new sleep strategies. It's hard because Jay has to be up at 5am, so I don't like to let Hayden make a lot of noise in our room or his room (it's just across the hall). So we end up downstairs a lot! Hayden is a little young for most of the "sleep training" I've read about but we're going to do our best! This past week he's gone back to not wanting to sleep as much at night, so we are a tired bunch! We're having some diaper issues that are hopefully nothing to worry about; I'm trying to not freak out so we're waiting until tomorrow to see if it's something that we need to call the doc about.

Right now we're waiting on Hayden's Social Security card to come in so we can file our taxes. We're curious to see what all the excitement is about when you have a child. We hear from our parent-friends that it's a much more exciting refund.