jennanddave.com

On Saturday my parents came up to help celebrate Henry's first birthday in style. Somehow, there ended up being a lot of presents.

We piled them all in front of him and watched as he would pick one up, look at it for a while, then put it back down. The kid who will tear into anything he can get his hands on refused to unwrap his presents. Oh, the irony. I should have strategically placed them around the house so that whenever he happened upon one I could say "No" thus increasing the desire to shred them exponentially. It took him all day to open his presents. He inspected and played with each one which meant after opening four or five of them two and a half hours had gone by and it was time for his nap. Also, the excitement of all of the new goodies seemed to be a little overwhelming. There was a lot of lip-pursing and shaking with excitement going on.

When I mentioned to Dave I was wanting to bake Henry a birthday cake, he suggested a chocolate cake with orange-colored frosting in honor of our being in Salem. For whatever reason, I decided it would be easier to bake an orange-colored cake with chocolate icing. Except I couldn't get the batter orange. No matter how much red and yellow food coloring I added, it kept coming out flesh colored, which was pretty gross looking. I decided to forgo the orange and just added a lot of red. So for his first birthday, Henry got a salmon colored cake with chocolate icing.

Originally it said "Happy Birthday Henry". I bought Betty Crocker's spray-on color, which I had illusions of using to artfully write "Henry", conveniently forgetting that I have absolutely no artistic talent whatsoever. I made the H, E, and N too big and had to squeeze the R and Y on. When I stepped back to admire my work it wasn't legible. If I didn't know I had been trying to write "Henry", I wouldn't have had any clue as to what it said. Dave told me he thought it looked great. Wasn't that sweet of him? I scraped the sprayed-on color off and Dave proceeded to make good use of various colored sprinkles to cover up the mess. He did a great job. After dinner we gave Henry a piece of his cake and he tore right into it.

After the cake, Henry was all over the place. The highlight of the evening was watching him play hide and seek with his grandpa. My dad would hide under a blanket on the floor and Henry would come over and lift it off of him. Once, Henry decided he would peep under the blanket instead of lift it off. My dad jumped a bit, startled to see Henry peering at him from under the blanket, which in turn startled Henry. I could've died from all of the cuteness. I'm really loving the fact that Henry is able to see some of his extended family on a more regular basis, and I think he is too. We need to get all of the grandparents to move closer.

Posted by Jenn at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today I decided I'm leaving Dave for Mr. Clean. And do you know why? Because of his magic eraser, which sounds dirty, but actually, it's just the opposite. I bought one on Megan's reccommendation and it's amazing. We got all of these scuff marks on our walls from moving in and from Henry's general state of being, and I was a little freaked out because I didn't want to lose our security deposit because they'd have to repaint. So I broke out the magic eraser today and you know what? All the marks and tiny fingerprints are gone. And the handle on the fridge door is sparkly. And the drip marks on the cabinets from when I spilled something red? All gone. Is it sad that at the age of 30, the magic eraser is now high on my list of things I get excited about?

Posted by Jenn at 03:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today is Henry's 1st birthday. To kick off the celebration, earlier this morning he rubbed an amazingly profoud woogie out of his nose, then cried for fifteen minutes straight. That's my boy!

I uploaded a set of pictures to flickr, sort of a look back at the past year. If I could have, I would have uploaded all 2457 pictures we've taken because he's stunningly adorable in all of them, but I somehow managed to narrow it down to 13.

Henry's still working very hard at his walking. Yesterday he walked most of the way across the living room. It was amazing. A few times he's managed to walk all the way to whatever it was he was heading for. All of this successful walking means there have been many eruptions of loud applause and whooping over the last week. I'm sure the neighbors are sick of us.

Right now one of his most favorite things to do is climb onto my Hello Kitty blanket and then have either me or Dave pull him around the apartment. As soon as he sees it, he crawls over at high speed, screeches to a stop in front of it, slaps it with his hand while saying "Eeee-eee", which we think is supposed to be kitty but who knows. When you spread it out for him, he crawls onto the bottom half and waits to be rocketed around the living room and bedrooms.

He's definitely been testing what's okay to do and what's not okay. He knows he's not supposed to tug on the carpet between the kitchen and hallway (it's coming apart), but he tries to do just that at least 497 times a day. He also likes to tug at the computer wires, climb on the printer, tip over his high chair, pull our clothes out of our wardrobe, stick his fingers in phone sockets, and rip pages out of books.

We go for lots of walks, which Henry loves because it means three things: the possibility that he'll be able to play with my keys; the possibility he'll get to play with my wallet; and the possibility he'll get to swing. Everyday we go through the Commons, a path which happens to lead us directly by a set of swings that's usually packed with kids. If we happen to pass by it without stopping, he cranes his neck for as long as he can to check out what the other kids are doing. If we do stop, once he's in the swing he just can't stop smiling. It's so sweet.

I have a feeling a month from now I'm going to be running after a kid who doesn't stop running. Frankly, I'm afraid.

update: I feel compelled to also mention the following things, only because they're terribly cute: if Henry's in the tub and you say "Splashy, splashy!" he'll splash the water with his hands; if you say "Boingy, boingy" to him regardless of his location, he'll bounce up and down.

Posted by Jenn at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You can hear Dave in the background talking with Verizon, his favorite thing to do.

Posted by Jenn at 09:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Henry's entered a whole new realm of eating behavior, and unfortunately he's dragged me along with him because apparently I'm his mom and I have to go there whether I want to or not.

Henry's always been a pretty good eater. He wasn't fussy about what you gave him, as long as you gave it to him. As soon as the food would come out, his mouth would fly open and we couldn't shovel it in fast enough. The only road block we happened upon was convincing him that food with any kind of texture wasn't going to kill him, but thanks to Dave's perseverance, he's now eating all sorts of chunky foods. As you can tell, we've been spoiled.

The problem began right before we moved to Salem. Henry'd eat a bit, but not the vast quantities that he usually ate. By the time we moved here, he'd eat a few bites and then turn away, his mouth clamped shut. The morning Dave left to go back to Lewisburg for a week and a half, I chopped up some of the chicken sausage and pancakes I was having for breakfast and gave them to Henry. Down the hatch they went. There was much rejoicing. That was quickly followed by much panicking because it was obvious he wanted to feed himself and frankly I'm the most uncreative person you can imagine when it comes to food. I can barely put together a meal for myself, much less try to figure out finger foods for a kid. Plus, Henry's a voracious gagger so I'm vaguely terrified to give him food period. It was a very good time for Dave to leave, from Dave's point of view, but not so much from mine.

The next day I discovered that if I distracted him with a toy, he'd eat as much as I could give him. That's been working for the last few weeks, however, less and less reliably so. I knew when I discovered the toy trick that it's days were numbered, but I figured it would buy me enough time to find out what other people feed their kids and I could go from there. Since then I have discovered the following: Henry loves feeding himself grilled cheese and bread in general; he also loves crackers in bunny, goldfish, or oyster form. He does not love touching vegetables or fruit. Sounds like the makings of a great diet, yes?

Yesterday I was looking through the archives on ask moxie and she suggested letting kids graze. Her idea was putting bits of different foods in an ice cube tray and letting them take what they want. I thought that was a pretty good idea, except Henry's penchant for picking things up and flinging them onto the floor would make for a very happy dog and a very unhappy mom.

I have this sneaking suspicion that what's going on with Henry has less to do with the food, and more to do with something else, not that I have any clue what that something else is. I'm the absolute worst at reading my kid. I am, however, decent at reading other people's kids. It's like how I'm very good at seeing what colors look best on other people, but can't for the life of me tell what looks good on myself. Anyway, today at lunch I put Henry in his chair and tried to give him some food and he absolultey, positively, was no way in hell going to eat. Uh-uh. No way. Forget it. He gave me a look that said "You'd have better luck parting the water in Salem harbor than getting me to open my mouth and eat that stuff you call food". I was devastated because I had cleverly spread vegetables on a piece of bread and cut it up (another idea from moxie), thinking he'd love it because it was his beloved bread. I was wrong. After much fussing, I finally took him out of his chair and plopped him on the floor. He played for a minute then wandered back over to his chair. I don't know why, but I stuck a piece of bread on his seat and lo and behold, he reached up, grabbed it, and shoved it in his mouth. Then I put a few pieces on the seat next to me and he came over and ate a few, then went off and played, then came back and ate a few more. Then I remembered I had taken out some applesauce for him. I said "Henry, would you like some applesauce?" and he crawled over to the bench, stood up, and made like a baby bird. I spoonfed him the entire bowl. Then he ate some more bread with veggies on it, then some crackers, then he was done. Success!

Maybe it's an independence thing? He wants to eat on his own terms? The only downside was having a baby with pea-covered fingers crawling back and forth over a taupe carpet. You can imagine what the aftermath looked like. After lunch there was much scrubbing.

Posted by Jenn at 09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While my mom was here over the weekend, we stopped by one of my favorite stores in Salem. My better-looking half and I used to pop in all the time when we lived here, and after we moved, we'd stop by whenever we were passing through town. As a result, we're friends with the proprietor, who, by the way, has a history of having some of the worst luck you could possibly imagine. Really. Seriously bad luck. Getting-into-an-accident-that-ends-with-you-hanging-upside-down-in-your-car-in-the-middle-of-a-town-square kind of bad luck.

Anyway, getting back to the point, she asked me if I was interested in doing some data entry stuff. She's trying to get her store on a computerized inventory system so she can keep track of sales, among other things. I can name my price and my hours, and I have to admit, I'm feeling very conflicted about it. I would probably be going in after Henry's in bed for the night, which is usually around 8PM. I wouldn't ask for too much money, probably just minimum wage, which, given the hours I would end up being able to work during the week, wouldn't end up being very much. So the question is, why do it? On the one hand, she's had her share of bad luck, and at least if I did this, it would be one less thing she has to worry about. On the other hand, the few hours I get at the end of the day are the only ones during which I really get to do my own thing (my own thing lately being obsessively watching the last season of "Queer as Folk" on DVD and ohmygod what a season it is), because I'm always: cleaning, paying bills, doing laundry, collapsing from sheer exhaustion, during his two naps.

The other thing is, the guilt I feel over possibly not doing this would carry over if I *did* decide to do it in that if she should ever ask me to help out at the store if she was short staff, then I'd be faced with the exact same quandry. See how the indecision works? I'm worrying about scenario's that haven't happened in a job that I haven't accepted. I don't know what to do.

Posted by Jenn at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dave and I have been teaching Henry words using the point and repeat method, which goes something like this:

me (pointing to the ceiling): Look! Henry! Ceiling! Ceeeeeeilinnnnng!! CEILING!
Henry (pulling out binky and looking up): guh-guh-guh-guh!
me (pointing to Flash): Look! Henry! Doggy! Dah-ghee. Dah-ghee. Dah-ghee.
Henry: Eee-eeee!
me: That's right! Doggy!
Henry: Eee-eeee!

Then we both sit back and look at each other, feeling very pleased with ourselves.

Naturally, the first words we tried to teach him were "daddy" and "mommy". One of us would walk into a room to find the other sitting with Henry, lightly poking him in the chest and saying "Hen-ry", and following it up with exhuberant pats to our own chest while saying "daddy" or "mommy". The other day Dave noticed that when you ask him to say mommy or daddy, he'll stop what he's doing and pat his belly. We thought that was really weird until Dave put two and two together and said he thought Henry was just doing what we do every time we say mommy or daddy. Isn't that cool? Now I'm wondering what the next thing we teach our kid to sign should be...

Posted by Jenn at 03:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We have DSL. Finally. And a whole day early. However, Verizon made it difficult until the bitter end. I pulled out the DSL kit, put the installation cd in, got as far as the section on filters, then got stuck. Verizon uses flash illustrations to show you what you need to do and how to do it. We kept getting flash errors, but when we clicked on the settings button to rectify the situation, a blank screen would come up and nothing would happen. This wouldn't be a problem since we knew how to set up the hardware, the problem was you couldn't move beyond the spot on the cd where we had encountered the error. Our options were, according to Verizon literature, to go online to Verizon's help page, or give them a call and, no doubt, wait five thousand hours to speak to an actual person. Fortunately, Dave is some sort of computer genius and managed to circumvent the whole issue by poking around online and doing all sorts of fancy computer stuff. If Paris Hilton had been here, she'd have said "That's hot..."

Now that we have a superfast, extra-awesome internet connection that can only mean one thing: a Henry picture!

On August 4th, Henry starting standing all on his own. A week later he was taking one or two steps. Yesterday he took four whole steps. Is he not the most brilliant baby on the face of the earth?

Posted by Jenn at 08:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We got a call this evening from Verizon saying they wouldn't be able to set us up with DSL until the 15th. It was an automated message, with the option of pressing a button so we could speak to a live person, should we so desire. Dave pressed the button and was then informed that the current wait time was over half an hour.

This new development could mean one of two things:
1. Someone from Verizon read my previous post, got annoyed, and with one click of the button pushed useven further down the "to be hooked up with DSL" list.
2. They want to make sure that we have dial-up for 30 days so they don't have to credit us for a free month.

I have to confess that I'm leaving off a potential third option because I don't want to offend any family members that read this site. Trying to keep it polite over here. It's my sense of southern propriety kicking in. Y'all know.

Posted by Jenn at 07:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In early July, Dave and I took turns calling various utilities so that everything would be turned on when we got to Salem. In order to save money, we were very conscious of trying to keep our monthly bills here down to a minimum. We left the tv behind so we wouldn't be tempted by cable. Since we wouldn't be able to get cable internet without taking out a second mortgage on our house, we decided to go the DSL route. We chose Verizon. That was a big mistake.

Dave called them to have phone service and internet activated on the 21st of July. The 21st came and went. We had phone service but no internet. Dave called on the 22nd to ask what was up. After working his way through electronic menu after menu and then spending an unbelievable (at least for those who haven't had the enjoyable experience of spending hours on hold with Verizon) amount of time on hold, Dave finally talked to an actual person. They had a lengthy conversation during which Dave was asked repeatedly if he was sure he wasn't a woman named Kathy (or Sue or Shirley) because that's the name that was assigned to our account. Finally the representative got everything squared away and told Dave that Verizon's m.o. is to wait for a phone signal before sending someone out to hook up the DSL connection and that it's usually scheduled within 10 days, information that would've been nice to know when we first called; we could've scheduled to have phone service turned on earlier than the 21st. Later that day we got an automated message saying that our DSL was scheduled to be turned on the 4th of August. Dave's head nearly exploded. He called Verizon the next day and said the 4th of August is not within 10 days, and was then told that it is, however, within 10 business days. Verizon apparently has a knack for leaving out useful information in their conversations with customers. He managed to get us moved up to the 2nd, but that was the best they could do. They told us if we wanted to, we could do the one month free dial-up trial so we'd have some kind of access to the internet, but they would need our credit card number so they could charge us the monthly fee; all we would have to do is remember to call and cancel the service before the 30 days are up or else they wouldn't credit the amount back to us. Some free month. Just ahead of the 2nd, Dave got an email saying they were having problems and that they wouldn't be able to get us hooked up until the 11th. At that point I was super-duper-ridiculously annoyed and started calling around to other places. No one would give us a decent rate because we can't commit to a year's worth of service. Comcast told us we could sign up for a year then pay the $200 early termination fee if we wanted, but we wouldn't get a good monthly rate anyway because we wouldn't be buying a cable package with it since we don't have a tv. There seems to be no good route to take around Verizon.

The point of this story is, for those who look forward to Henry pictures, there haven't been any because even though we located a new cable with which to download them from the camera to the computer, it takes four thousand years to upload them to the web. On the 26th I noticed that iTunes has Jetsons episodes for sale. I decided to buy the one where Judy tries to win a date with Jet Screamer and after three hours, only about 5 percent of it had downloaded. If we actually get DSL on the 11th, there will be much dancing and singing and watching of cartoons. Oh yeah, and uploading of pictures.

If you made it this far, thanks for listening (reading?) to me kvetch.

Posted by Jenn at 09:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two weeks ago my grandpa passed away. He'd been in and out of the hospital twice over the past four or five months. It's possible to say that because of the reasons for those trips, perhaps his death wasn't entirely unexpected, that it maybe wasn't a huge surprise. It certainly doesn't make the finality of death any easier.

I've been a lucky girl. I haven't lost anyone at a time when I was of an age to really experience the sorrow of losing a family member or friend; I've either been too young or too far removed from the person to really know anything about what it feels like. My dad called me the Friday morning I was at his mom's house to tell me that Grandpa Ski (my mom's dad) had passed away. When I hung up, my grandmother asked what was going on and I told her that grandpa had died. As soon as the words were out I started crying. And I started feeling foolish which I always do when I cry in front of other people. My grandmother, however, always knows the right things to say, and as Dave told me later, she was probably the best person to be with when I heard the news.

It was a rough drive to Boston, but I was also very happy to be heading both to my parents place, where I was picking up my mom, and to Salem in general. One of the more surreal moments of the drive was realizing that less than 24 hours after his death, I was moving into an apartment in the town he grew up in. That, quite literally, we were only going to be living a few streets down from his childhood home.

When we moved here the first time six years ago, I talked with my grandpa on the phone and he told me about all of the places he used to go when he was a kid and teenager, such as taking his dates dancing down at the Willows. It was really nice to have that connection at the time, to know that even though he was down in Louisiana, we at least had Salem together.

It's so nice that for the next five months that we're here, we still do.

Posted by Jenn at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's frighteningly hot here, as I'm sure it is in your neighborhood. Henry and I kicked it central a/c style yesterday and will be doing the same today since it's supposed to be even hotter. We went for a long walk this morning (by way of Dunkin' Donuts and iced coffee) and ended up at a shady bench next to the House of Seven Gables. The ocean breeze is nice, but, at least today, getting home to the air conditioning was half a notch better. Yesterday was a semi-long day. Keeping an 11-month old entertained all day while stuck inside is a bit of a trial. By mid-afternoon I'd read all of his books to him two or three times over, and while he was still exceedingly entertained by them, I do recall unceremoniously shoving "Pat the Bunny" under the couch so he wouldn't find it.

Dave and Flash are arriving Friday. I'm looking forward to seeing them. Every time I ask Henry if he misses his Daddy, he looks around and waves. It's very sweet. Yesterday he stood on his own for all of ten seconds. He'd done it a couple of other times earlier in the day, but only for a few seconds. He's fine until he realizes he's not holding onto anything. Once he realizes that, he slowly lowers himself to floor and either sits or squats.

I've been taking all sorts of pictures since we got here, but I misplaced the connector thingy you use to download pics from our camera to the computer. I haven't technically seen it since before we packed. I vaguely remember setting it aside somewhere so I wouldn't misplace it, but obviously I've done something profoundly clever with it. Sigh.

Posted by Jenn at 09:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)