jennanddave.com

A few months ago, after seeing a few links pop up on facebook and other people's blogs, curiosity got the better of me and I finally signed up for pinterest. I'll go ahead and warn you, the transition from "What's the point?" to full-blown pinterest addict is swift and almost violent. I know; it happened to me. It's fun looking at all of the inspiring (or not) things people find on the internet.

Since you can repin other people's pins, some things take on a life of their own. One of the kid crafts that spread like wild-fire, hopping from board to board, were glitter jars. Their purported purpose was to be used as time-out jars: sit your kid in the corner, shake the jar, and tell them they can come off of time-out when all of the glitter has resettled to the bottom. The idea is watching the glitter settle is meditative, like watching fish swim, and when your ornery three-year old rejoins the fun, he/she will have a whole new outlook on life. Some people don't believe in time-out, but they do believe in the jars, so while these glitter jars have taken on less negative titles and names, the hoped-for end result is the same: calmer kids.

A couple of weeks ago, Dave left us for the weekend to fly down to the Fort Worth/Dallas area for a conference on leadership. (Poor Dave. It was, apparently, as boring as it sounds.) I had a whole weekend to fill, which was a fairly daunting prospect because once the weekend hits, I get to kick back a bit because I have a full-time partner in parenting crime by my side, which I totally appreciate and enjoy and look forward to. I remembered the glitter jar craft and thought Henry and Holly might get a kick out of it. They really enjoyed putting them together. (Here are the directions we used.) Holly put the blue food coloring in hers all by herself, which explains how dark it is, but which works really well with the different shades of blue glitter, and Henry's is entirely his own creation. It was inspired by tornadoes. Or volcanoes. Or maybe both.

Since then, they haven't play with them much. I, however, think they're awesome. I shake them all the time. They're on the shelf above our sink so I can watch them while I'm doing dishes. Actually, this might explain why Henry and Holly never play with them; I've moved them completely out of their reach. Hmmmm...

Posted by Jenn at 01:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

- Hanging by the pool. At least for the first week of Henry's summer vacation. Then it got cold and sometimes rainy so we moved back inside.

- Strawberry picking, followed by strawberry jam making and canning, followed by strawberry-jam-on-toast eating.

- We went to Dave's parents' house for Father's Day. Dave made his dad a seafood boil. I dove into it like it was Mother's Day. My man's a seafood boil master.

- Henry and I got Dave a bulk box of Jiffy Pop popcorn because he loves it and it's mysteriously difficult to get in this here neck of the woods. I thought he'd either love it or laugh and set it aside. He was speechless with glee. Then he "stirred the pot". I was happy.

- As of the first official day of Henry's summer vacation, we got back to a slightly more civilized schedule: 8:30-9PM bedtime, followed by 8:30-9AM wakeup. Momma's happy. Daddy's late for work every day.

- Fabric shopping, thanks to the aforementioned cold/rainy weather, followed by sewing. The score so far: Holly: four dresses, one pair of Minnie Mouse summer jammies. Henry: two pairs of pants. Jenn: nothing. Dave: who's Dave?

- Eating raspberries from the bushes that Dave got me for Mother's Day two years ago. We planted them right next to our driveway which means every time we go anywhere in the car, Holly and I make a prolonged pitstop to fuel up both coming and going. Over the last three days I managed to gather enough to make a batch of raspberry preserves. They'll be a most welcome taste of summer when we're in the throes of winter.

- Hanging out with friends that we don't get to see as much of during the rest of the year.

- Losing a tooth. Henry lost his first tooth last Thursday while eating a hot dog. We didn't even know it was loose. When Henry spit it out Dave thought the tooth was pasta. Then he figured out what it was and flipped out. Pictures were taken. Four days later I noticed his other front tooth was loose. It came out last night. Henry now has neither of his front teeth. Saying it's super cute is a major understatement.

- Parades! Fireworks! Candy! Marshmallows! Fireflys! Music in the Park! Cicadas! Grilling! Bees!

- It's all good...

Posted by Jenn at 02:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

About 40 minutes ago I helped Henry get on his bus and head off for his last day of school. I'm not sure how we got here so quickly. Didn't he just get on for his first day? Today is a half day, so in a few short hours Holly and I will be heading back to the bus stop to bring him home for the summer.

We spent Saturday afternoon picking strawberries for strawberry jam and, unbeknownst to us at the time, amazing strawberry muffins made by Dave. Saying they were good would be an understatement. The man has a knack. I told him I'm hanging up my muffin-baking apron.

Henry brought in a jar of strawberry jam for his teacher. He loves her. She seems to really understand him and his Henry-ness. We're so thankful she was his teacher this year.

I have spent the last 24 hours Tylenol free. The first four days post-tonsillectomy were all right. I was in pain, but I had pain killers and chicken noodle soup and oatmeal to carry me through. Day five hit and I started getting bummed out. By that point I had been on a regular regimen of over-the-counter Tylenol for a few days , but some of the scabs starting coming off and I found myself needing the heavier stuff again. It was disheartening. But! Things are looking up again. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Thank goodness for a winter spent nursing three or four truly awful sore throats. They prepared me for the pain of recovery, but also helped remind me that the post-op pain is finite and hopefully the last of the worst I'll ever experience.

Posted by Jenn at 08:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Henry came home from school last week and giddily told me about all of the hilarious things the kids at his table, "circle table", were talking about that day:

henry (giggling): We talked about farts, babies, baby farts...
me: Really.
henry: Yep!
me: Sounds to me like you're sitting at a table full of boys.
henry (while vehemently poking himself in the chest): Yeah! And I'M a BOY!!!

Currently in the throes of recovering from Thursday's tonsillectomy. So far, so good...

Posted by Jenn at 03:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

...all the way back to Easter? We had a great Easter. After school on the Thursday before, we got in the car and made our way down to Dave's parents in Virginia. Friday was rainy and a bit chilly, but that didn't stop Henry and Holly from splashing in puddles and getting so thoroughly dirty they had to go straight into a bath. In fact, Holly was disrobed in the garage, leaving behind a pile of sand where once she stood. Saturday and Sunday were both warm and sunny. The air smelled like heaven. I don't know what was in bloom over that weekend, but I wish I could have bottled it. While Holly was napping on Saturday, the rest of us settled down for a serious session of dyeing eggs. I'd started prepping Henry a few weeks earlier that this year the Easter Bunny would be hiding real eggs as opposed to candy-filled plastic ones. I was expecting a protest, but he didn't seem to care one way or the other. Perhaps the colossal amount of candy he gets during the course of the year thanks to the various holidays is enough to satisfy even his sweet tooth. The older Henry gets, the more devious the egg hiding can be, which I absolutely love doing. The irony is, Henry hunts eggs by standing in one spot and surveying the scenery, eventually asking for hints. Holly, on the other hand, tears around the yard looking everywhere at once. Their two different hunting styles meant that Holly actually managed to hold her own against Henry, despite the age difference.

After the egg hunt and Easter baskets, we spent the rest of the day eating: pancakes and bacon, then moving on to deviled eggs and hot cross buns, then ending the day with ham, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, salad, corn, and wine. Holly had a fever by the time dinner rolled around, but you wouldn't have known it from the amazing quantity of food she ate.

We were all very sad on Monday when we got back in the car and headed home. The weather was so gorgeous and we had such a great and relaxing time that it felt like summer vacation had already started. I was ready for the beach. Tuesday was a bit of a rude wake-up call.

Next up, a summary of this past weekends trip to my Grandma Ethel's for her birthday, complete with fireworks and a surprise visitor!

Posted by Jenn at 06:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Henry has taken a shine to ice skating. We tried to take him a couple of years ago, but he wasn't going to have anything to do with standing on two thin pieces of metal attached to boots, especially when you had to wear them on ice. Did you know ice is slippery? And that you can fall? And that falling hurts? He was, however, highly interested in the concession stand, which was totally fine with me because I was pregnant with Holly and had just passed the morning sickness phase of things. So Henry and I sat on the bleachers with our hot dogs, nachos, and blue Slush Puppies and happily watched Dave go around and around and around...

While chatting with friends at the bus stop one morning, it came out that a certain other Kindergartener not only loved ice skating, but was taking lessons, and maybe we should all go skating together some weekend. Henry heartily agreed, but as the day drew closer and closer, he realized what "going ice skating" actually involved, and he sobered up on the concept a bit. Finally on the day of, he declared he didn't want to go. We told him he didn't have to skate if he didn't want to, but that we were still going to go anyway. He heaved a great sigh as if there couldn't be more bothersome parents on the face of the Earth, then said he'd try ice skating after all, a statement which was met with raised eyebrows on the part of both me and Dave, after which there was a mad rush to get everyone into the car and to the rink before a certain someone changed his mind.

He didn't change his mind. Instead, he had a blast. The afternoon was full of skating, punctuated by trips to the concession stand to refuel. The sight of Dave and Henry slowly going around the rink, with Henry's skates scuffling at such a high rate of motion they're a blur, is truly something to behold, as is the permanent, toothy grin and fervent, proud waving whenever the young man passes by where Holly and I are sitting. With one exception, we've gone every weekend since. It's a good way to pass a Sunday afternoon.

Posted by Jenn at 01:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last week on Thursday I signed Henry up for a circle of music class that meets Monday nights. Then on Friday he came home and after much thought and consideration told me he'd like to take a "Silly Science" class that meets after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So, just like that, three out of our five school-week evenings have become a little nuts. I don't handle nuts very well, but while I've been tearing my hair out trying to teach Henry manners and to be respectful of adults and to not be so gosh-darned obsessive/compulsive, he's been teaching me to go with the flow. More like forcing me, but whatever. So here we go again.

He's very excited about this science class because they're going to be learning about magnetism and electricity. He's REALLY looking forward to learning about electricity. The last time we went to my parents house, he rearranged extension cords when no one was looking. His obsession with our future Christmas light display has grown to include how all of the lights are going to be connected to the garage outlet via a complex web of splitters and cords. All of his drawings of what our house is going to look like now include big black wires all leading down to power strips. It's very weird. He gets it from Dave. Sadly, yesterday's class was all about magnetism, and he glumly informed me that they must have run out of time because they didn't talk about electricity at all. After being reassured that there would be classes coming up that will be devoted exclusively to electricity, just as yesterdays was devoted to magnets, he perked right up and told me all of the cool stuff they did. He's looking forward to going again, so I'd say it's a rousing success. You just never know how these things are going to go.

Posted by Jenn at 01:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The current state of things, in the always inspiring list format (Featuring a colon! And dashes!):

- Last night Henry opted not to have a book read to him before bed. Instead he focused on very diligently writing out Valentine's for his classmates. The first one he wrote out was to his teacher. The second one was to a girl who, at the end of last school year, he said looks just like Tinkerbell. Take from that what you will.

- Whenever Holly sees a picture of a man with gray hair, she says "Paw-paw!". When she sees a boy with brown hair, she says "Hen-y!" When she sees a boy with light blond hair, she says "We-oh!"

- Last night while Henry was working on his Valentines, I worked on a sweater I'm making for myself. It's pretty bulky yarn so it works up fast. Later, around 10:30, I realized I had misread the pattern directions and had to rip out about five inches, leaving only the inch of ribbing I did for the neck (it's a top-down pattern). This was demoralizing. I'm six rows away from being back where I was, except this time with added paranoia!

- Henry is signed up for an after-school science class that doesn't get out until 4:45. I don't have a problem with this. Really. I'm fine.

My baby!

Posted by Jenn at 02:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We had a great trip up to Boston, although we did leave our mark, as we usually do. Sunday night my mom came down with the stomach bug that we had had the weekend before. Whatever that bug is, it sure hangs around for a long time, laying in wait to jump on board the next unsuspecting victim. Fortunately, Saturday and Sunday were filled with lots of resting, relaxing, and eating.

Last week I knitted a pair of socks for Holly. Or maybe it was the week before. Time has no meaning. Anyway, while I was working on them, I asked Henry if he wanted me to make him a pair, to which he replied, rather adamantly, that no, he did not want a pair of socks. Then one day Holly was slipping and sliding all over the house in her new socks, when Henry pops up at my side and says he's changed his mind. I think he needed to see the finished product to make sure that they were indeed a pair of socks, and not just a lead-in to dreaded hugs and kisses or something along those lines. I'm only guessing; I have no idea what goes through that kid's mind. So I cast on a sock and diligently worked on it whenever I had a chance. It finally came off the needles on Saturday morning right after breakfast, and don't you know he whipped off his socks and put on the one that I had made him? He spent the rest of the day running around the house with only one sock on. It was very cute and sweet and gave me the warm fuzzies, until around 3 o'clock in the afternoon when he zipped up next to where I was zoning out watching TV, got right up next to my ear, and started chanting "Sock, sock, sock, sock, sock, sock, sock," etc., etc., ad infinitum until finally I asked him if he was suggesting that I get working on the other one. He said yes, he was hinting something along those lines, so I cast on the other sock. I didn't think I would finish it all that quickly, but there was a lot of down-time the rest of the afternoon, and after the kids were in bed, we watched "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World", so I got a lot of knitting done. In fact, I got a whole sock's worth of knitting done. Let's hear it for sort-of thick yarn and little kiddo feet. The next morning Henry put both of his socks on and didn't take them off until last night. They were the most satisfying thing I've ever made, mostly because of how much they were immediately appreciated.

The rest of the time in Boston was spent covertly passing the stomach bug on to my mom, making pomander balls, cutting up paper snowflakes, eating chinese food, talking about making cookies, going for a walk, staying in pajamas all day, drinking hot chocolate, listening to music, drinking wine, making nachos, and keeping Holly out of trouble. The other big development is that Holly has christened my dad "Paw-paw". It's adorable.

Henry wasn't happy we were only there for two days. He thinks four would have been nicer. I do, too.

Posted by Jenn at 01:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You want some unsolicited advice? Don't read any version of those "There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A/Some _______" books the day after you've had the stomach flu. It's not pleasant. Henry picked out "There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves!" last night as his bedtime book and it was tough-going, especially since it came so quickly on the heels of my first real meal since Friday night. Clearly, the child hates me.

Last night Holly was hacking and coughing up a storm and had a runny nose, and this morning she woke up with more of the same. Poor girl. She's been too uncomfortable to nap today, so she's been whimpering and coughing and generally sounding sad.

Dave sent an email about forty minutes ago saying he's starting to feel funky and that he might be home a bit early today. Poor guy. I hope it's not what it most likely is.

Henry and I, thankfully, are feeling all right. We've been playing and running errands, making a doll for Holly, as well as baking up a batch of chocolate chip cookies. It's been a quiet day of convalescing. Or getting sicker. Depending on which one of the four of us you are.

Posted by Jenn at 03:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Saturday, at 1:16AM, Henry came into our room and told us he had just thrown up and that he hadn't made it to the bathroom. We stumbled out of bed and made our way upstairs. He had indeed gotten sick to his stomach all over his bed and bedroom floor. He had also gotten his towel from the bathroom and had tried to clean it up. It was very sweet. About twenty minutes later we had changed his sheets, started a wash, and had gotten Henry settled back into bed. Dave was in the upstairs bathroom inspecting Henry's myriad blankets to see which had escaped the onslaught when suddenly I was making a beeline for the bathroom. I was up for the rest of the night. Dave stayed with Henry for about an hour, keeping him company and changing out the trash bags that were next to his bed as they were used until Henry finally went to sleep. Around seven or eight, Henry joined me on the couch and Dave woke up and went upstairs to discover that Holly had also gotten sick during the night, she had just never bothered to make a fuss about it. Thus Dave's Saturday was born, taking care of a totally gross family, mopping up, doing laundry, and madly washing his hands, all while living in fear that he was going to get the bug as well. The kids were great yesterday, tossing cookies while carrying on with their playing like nothing at all in the world was wrong. Gatorade and Pedialyte were consumed, as well as toast, Rice Krispies, and chicken noodle soup. I stayed in bed and napped most of the day, finally emerging around noon? or one? or two? at which point Henry and I crashed on the couch and watched "The Princess Diaries" while Holly took a nap. Finally around 5 I asked Dave if he minded if I took a little nap. I held my breath, prayed it wouldn't make me sick, and downed a Tylenol for a raging headache and aching muscles. I didn't wake up again until 7 this morning.

The kids were begging for sausages for breakfast today. I'd say they're feeling better. So far Dave is doing well. Fingers are crossed that he's going to escape unscathed, although it still hardly seems probable. He was amazing yesterday. He was more than amazing. Stupendous? Fantastic? Astounding? "World's Best Dad/Husband"? Without a doubt.

Also, I can only imagine what the water bill is going to be this month.

Posted by Jenn at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We invited some friends over for dinner last Saturday night. The night before, while we were happily digesting a meal of leftovers, Dave asked "So, what should we have for dinner tomorrow night?" I have no idea what came over him that he would pose such a question in the presence of a picky and stubborn five-year-old. The menu Henry quickly put together consisted of: chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, toast, and snow. We managed to convince Henry that homemade cheese buns would be a better option for guests than just toast, and fortunately there was hardly any snow on the ground so it was fairly easy to derail that particular train. So, we conceded the nuggets and the mac and cheese.

That evening I set about looking for a suitable chicken nugget recipe that wouldn't be so exotic that Henry wouldn't eat it, but that would still be somewhat acceptable to the over ten set. Enter this recipe. This recipe is pretty darned good. I only made one major change, which was that instead of dredging them through melted butter, I soaked the chicken in buttermilk for an hour and a half before coating and baking them. Henry loved them. So did I. So much so that I made them again tonight.

I also made a honey mustard sauce for dipping them in, mainly for my own personal edification because I love honey mustard sauce, especially with french fries. Anyway, the basic recipe was 1/4 cup of mayonnaise, 1 T mustard, 1 t honey, and a splash of key lime juice. (Or lemon juice. Key lime just happens to be all I have.) All of the amounts are approximate; I happily did a lot of taste-testing along the way.

Posted by Jenn at 08:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last night at dinner, the following two conversations took place:

me: So, did you go out for recess today?
henry: Yep.
me: Did you run around a lot to stay warm?
henry: Yep. I ran across the bridge!
me: You ran across the bridge?
henry: Uh-huh...I ran across the bridge to get to the other slide.
me: Dave, please tell me you heard that.

henry: Mom, did you know that there are two kidneys inside people's bodies?
me: I did know that!
henry: how did you know?!?
me: I learned it in school!
henry: ME TOO!
dave (hoisting up his knee): Hey Henry, you know what this is? It's called an "adult knee"!
henry (hoisting up his knee): And this is called a "kid kn-" *long pause* "kid knee"?
dave and me: hahahhahhahhahha!
dave: Make sure you tell that one to your teacher!

Posted by Jenn at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A couple of months ago I came across these instructions for a peasant style dress for toddlers. I immediately fell in love with it and wanted to make one for Holly. The only problem was, my understanding of why you do things a certain way to have specific results are completely lacking, and while I can follow a detailed pattern if it's accompanied by detailed photos, if it doesn't, I'm completely lost. So all of the bits in the instructions having to do with, say measurements and sizing, were about five miles over my head. So I bookmarked the page and asked my mom if she'd help me out some time.

Enter a few days after Christmas. The week before we left for Boston, I headed out to a local and amazing fabric store I wish I'd known about five years ago in search of fabric. I came home, laundered it, then sprang it on my mom the day before we were going to leave to come home. She read the instructions, understood them because she's smart and talented, and we got to work. She explained the sizing, the measuring, the putting together, and the general "why" of it all. While she pinned and ironed, I worked the sewing machine, while Henry either sat next to me or sat under the table and worked the sewing machine pedal. In a couple of hours, Holly was toddling around in a brand-spanking new dress.

For this go-around, after much discussion we decided not to add the elastic, mainly because we thought it would be a bit irritating to Holly to have rubbing against her skin all day long. Next time I make one, my mom suggesting I wrap the elastic in casing before I sew it in so it's a bit softer.

I don't think anyone is more proud of being a part of putting the dress together than Henry. Holly came down in it a couple of days ago and Dave said "What a pretty dress, Holly!" Henry came over to check it out and when he saw what she was wearing, he said "That's the dress Mom, Grammy, and I made!"

Posted by Jenn at 02:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Henry's diet leaves much to be desired. Still. Last year I decided that I was going to, at the very least, make real food versions of the stuff he likes. Instead of instant Maple Syrup and Brown Sugar oatmeal, I'd make it for him from scratch with old-fashioned oats, real maple syrup, and brown sugar. Instead of Campbell's tomato soup, I'd make him real tomato soup. (For the record, even though Dave and I loved it, that one didn't go over so well, and Henry now refuses to eat any kind of tomato soup.) You get the general idea.

In October we joined a winter CSA. I love it. I'm much more a "winter" than a "summer" when it comes to vegetables. We've been using up everything we get (except for beets, blech) which is practically unheard of for us. One of the vegetables that's been frequently popping up is parsnips. Did you know parsnips aren't a member of the onion family? Because I didn't until I actually saw one. For my entire life up until October I assumed parsnip was some kind of onion simply because it sounded like the name of something that would be some kind of onion. Don't even ask me what I thought a leek was. Anyway, I asked a friend what she was doing with them and she said she was mashing them up with carrots and that it was really good. Operating as I do with the personal opinion that carrots are truly disgusting, I put them in mashed potatoes instead, and gosh-darned if they weren't the best mashed potatoes I've ever made. I haven't made them any other way since then. And you know what? Henry happily ate them because he couldn't tell there was a root vegetable lurking in his innocuous looking side dish. Dave and I have shared many a fist bump over this particular triumph.

Remember that part up there where I mentioned that carrots are disgusting, because they are? Well, we've also been getting a lot of carrots in our CSA and they've been piling up. I usually slice them up and put them in soup because they taste a lot less carroty when they've been bobbing around in chicken stock for a few hours, but there's only so far you can go with that on a weekly basis. On Saturday while perusing allrecipes.com for something, anything that uses up a significant quantity of carrots without actually tasting like carrot I came across this recipe for Golden Carrot Buns. A few of the commenters mentioned the fact that these buns do not, in fact, taste like carrot despite the large amount the recipe requires, and that was good enough for me. Sunday I made them, had Dave taste-test them while I prepared myself for disappointment, but then he said they were good, that they didn't taste like carrot at all. I tried one, and he was right. Then, the ultimate test, Henry nibbled one, declared he liked it, then gobbled it down. Of course he has no idea there are vast quantities of carrot in them, but he's on a need to know basis, and he doesn't need to know.

Posted by Jenn at 09:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Remember New Year's Eve? A few night's ago? That would be the night when I was ready to go to bed by 10 but Henry was determined to make it to midnight and really experience what it's like to start the new year off with a bang. How did he manage to stay awake that whole time? Why, by talking, of course! Non-stop. It was partly my fault. At 9PM we watched the movie "Deck the Halls" which is about a guy who decorates the heck out of his house with lights, and the neighbor who can't stand him. It's a cute movie. Knowing Henry's love of outdoor holiday illumination I thought he'd get a kick out of it. To say he was inspired would be putting it mildly. Once the movie was over, he talked until 11:30 about what we should do with our house and what music we should synchronize the lights to, etc. etc, ad infinitum until we finally told him he needed to rest his voice because he'd talked himself into coughing fits. Half an hour later we rang in the New Year, hustled Henry off to bed, and then went to sleep ourselves.

The next morning Henry was up around 7, thus proving that staying up late does not a late morning guarantee.

Yesterday morning, however, Henry slept until 9:30, and he would have gone longer if I hadn't stuck my head in his room to make sure he was still alive. I took a nice leisurely shower, got down the Christmas boxes, cleaned up a bit, got Holly out of bed, we had a nice, quiet breakfast, and played for a bit, all before Henry even cracked an eyelid. Too bad Dave had to get up at 5AM for a day trip to Ohio. He would've really enjoyed the morning, too.

Henry and I took down most of the Christmas decorations during Holly's morning nap yesterday. I was stuffing the last string of garland back into its tube when I happened to notice Henry watching most dejectedly. I asked him if he was sad the holidays were over and he nodded his head glumly. I have to say, I'm sad they're over, too, but I'm looking forward to seeing what's coming in the new year, just the same.

Posted by Jenn at 03:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This morning Henry left for school for the last time this year. When he gets home he'll be stepping off of the bus and stepping right into our car for the long ride to Grammy and Grandpa's. While I was packing our suitcases this morning, I couldn't help reflecting on the last Christmas we spent at my parents' house. I was in the throes of first trimester morning sickness, which hit me seemingly seconds after I found out I was pregnant. At the time I remember wondering how much of it was psychological because it seemed too coincidental how quickly it came on. I spent most of that Christmas vacillating between napping in our room and sitting on the couch wrapped in a blanket, willing the nausea to go away. So, despite having been given the gift of Henry and Holly's cold, I'm looking forward to doing it up right this time around.

The next few days will be filled with cookie- and ornament-making, Christmas light peeping, train rides, and general merry-making, so if I don't get a chance to get back on before the holiday, let me just say now that I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!

Posted by Jenn at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's been a pretty quiet Sunday. Actually, the last week in general has been pretty quiet, although I'm so tired by the time the kids' bedtime rolls around, it feels like physical proof that we've been getting up to quite a lot. This time of year always yields impressively large to-do lists that seem like they'll never get done until I realize that holiday list items generally get crossed off all at the same time. I like that, a flurry of activity that comes to a sudden end all at once, usually the minute we climb into the car to travel to wherever we happen to be spending Christmas.

My parents' Christmas tree fell over earlier this week. They're not sure how it happened, although conspiracy theories abound. A lot of glass ornaments that my mom has been collecting over the last thirty-five years broke and so they've had to regroup, tree-trimming-wise. My mom told me she's going to enlist Henry's help in making some glittery paper snow-flakes and some paper chains. I mentioned to him this morning what had happened to Grammy and Grandpa's tree, and what his Grammy had in mind, and he immediately went over to ours and picked out a cinnamon ornament and said he'd like to make a bunch of those for them, too. He can see the tree in his mind, and it's glorious. Later in the afternoon he started expressing concern that our tree might fall over too. Dave reassured him but I think he remains a bit skeptical. I wouldn't trust Dave either.

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

I just vacuumed the house and then mopped the worst bits. These aren't very Saturday night-y activities, or at least they wouldn't be if I hadn't yanked the cork out of the wine bottle at 5 this afternoon. Everything's looking a bit rosy, even a little housework, especially housework that helps clear the way for other activities, such as sewing bean bags for the game we're making Henry for Christmas, which is what I had planned on doing after vacuuming but which I have officially put off until tomorrow night in favor of snuggling up to chips and dip and a little tv. Hey, I'm tired. I vacuumed. And mopped. A little.

Anyway, on to some firsts. Holly had her first hair cut today. She wasn't thrilled. She didn't fully grasp the idea of looking in the mirror to see what was going on, and so she kept turning her head around to try and get a glimpse of the scissor action. It didn't work out very well for her, other than she got a cute little haircut and a Christmas cookie to help her feel better. Hmmm, so I guess it did work out pretty well for her. We are now the proud owners of an envelope full of Holly's baby hair. My baby. Excuse me while I go have another little sip of wine.

The other first was we watched the San Francisco Ballet's Nutcracker this evening. We started out watching it on PBS. Henry was pretty into it. He asked lots of questions about everything that was going on. When the first act ended, we watched a few ads, learned about the inspiration for the productions sets, and just as Kristi Yamaguchi was about to talk about the costumes, they cut to ads showcasing construction stuff, then aired an episode of "This Old House". Now I'm just as much a fan of Tom Silva as the next person, but that was very badly done, PBS. Fortunately, we were able to rent the same version on Amazon's Video-On-Demand. Act II is not to be missed. Henry's favorite was the russian dancers. 30 seconds into their dance he said "Now this is the Nutcracker." I grew up watching the 1977 Baryshnikov version, so I'll always be partial to that one, but it was a lot of fun to watch it with Henry.

Posted by Jenn at 08:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A few months ago I ordered six play silks (plus a free silk scarf since it was my first order from that particular store) thinking that Henry and I could dye them for Holly as his Christmas present to her. This past Monday night it was very clear that Henry was coming down with a cold. I heard him coughing a few times during the night, and when he woke up in the morning, he looked pretty done in, so we kept him home. The best way to describe how he was feeling would be: too sick to go to school, but not too sick to not drive me nuts". He was bouncing off the walls, so before Dave went to work later in the morning, I asked him to pick up the usual sick kid necessities at the store, plus three packs of every flavor of Kool-Aid that they had. While Holly was napping, we got to work.

The instructions I used were a combination of these at the Artful Parent and these at Make Baby Stuff. Henry and I soaked the playsilks in hot water with two cups of vinegar mixed in while we got our first two dye baths going. For the baths I used large white soup bowls because they were large enough to hold all of the liquid, but deep enough to keep the silk submerged. For each bath we mixed two cups of water with 1/2 cup of vinegar, then added either three packets of Kool-Aid, or food coloring, depending on which color we were going for.

Henry mushing the silk down into the blue bath.

Once the playsilk was fully submerged, I covered the bowl with plastic wrap and we microwaved them for two minutes. We uncovered them, mushed them around a bit, covered them back up, then microwaved them for another two minutes, after which most of the dye was taken up in the silk. We carefully poured the liquid out because it was really hot, then rinsed out the silk and hung it up to dry. Henry was enamoured with the green one:

It was the first one that came out of a dye bath and I think we were both amazed by how beautiful the color came out, and, at least on my part, that the whole process worked at all (I'm a fatalist, what can I say?).

What we used to get the colors: Cherry flavor for the red, food coloring for the orange*, Lemonade for yellow, Lemon Lime for green, Blue Raspberry for blue, food coloring for purple, and Pink Lemonade for pink. One set of the instructions I linked to above recommends you use gloves for this. I would second that notion. I didn't bother and I had some pretty scary looking fingers for a few days.

Henry took great pleasure in wrapping up his gift to his sister yesterday after school. Although I think she'll really like them, if Holly turns out to be disinterested in the playsilks, Henry will definitely put them to good use.

* Our store didn't have Orange or Grape flavored Kool-Aid so I used McCormack Neon food coloring. I used the amount of drops indicated on the back of the box for icing a whole cake.

Posted by Jenn at 07:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Saturday morning, after breakfast, we headed out to our tree farm of choice to procure the Perfect Christmas Tree. The place where we go is in an area that's not very sheltered by anything that would cut down the force of the wind, and while we start off as a happy go-lucky family, we usually end the excursion as popsicles. This year we were determined to be warm, so over the course of five minutes we bundled up the kids to within an inch of their lives, then spent the next twenty minutes trying to locate our own snowpants, scarves, boots, and various other winter wardrobe paraphernalia while the kids slowly melted away in our living room. When we finally arrived at the tree farm, the weather was stunningly beautiful and nary a cold breeze blew across our exposed noses, and while it normally takes us an hour and a half of trudging through bitter, and cold, and snowy in order to find our tree, this year we found it five minutes after we got to the place. It was so fast, we decided to look around at other trees, but after a very quick two minutes, during which Dave and I came to our senses, we decided not to tempt fate and high-tailed it back to The One, which Dave had very carefully marked with a pile of rocks.

Henry could hardly wait to decorate it. He was literally chomping at the bit. We got the tree set up, then broke briefly (and agonizingly, depending on which of us you were) for lunch, after which Henry and I put the lights up. After the lights, Dave took a nap, I rested on the couch, and Henry very graciously let us. When he couldn't take it anymore and managed to rouse us, Dave and Holly went out to procure food for our traditional tree decorating meal (mini-wieners, cheese, crackers, sparkling apple cider) and Henry and I got started on the ornaments. By the time dinner made it into the house, we were almost done. This was the first year that Henry seemed to be really curious about the ornaments and where they came from and what they were. We had a good time. Dave, for his part, was extremely pleased he came in after it was mostly done. (My Dad is now officially jealous of Dave.)

A few weeks ago Henry and I went to our town's tree-lighting ceremony. Carols are sung, "The Night Before Christmas" is read by a Professor from the University, and the town's enormous tree is lit. It made quite the impression on the young man. So much of an impression that we now have a tree lighting ceremony every day. Sometimes twice. I get to read the poem and Henry gets to plug in the tree. It's very serious business. At this rate, I'm going to have "The Night Before Christmas" fully memorized by the night before Christmas. Perhaps sooner.

Posted by Jenn at 04:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This evening I was finishing up Henry's bath when Dave, who had just left the house to take the dog out for a walk, came rushing back in, charged up the stairs and told me Henry needed to "get out and get dressed, fast...FAST!!!" So Henry pulled the plug, got out, and just as he was finishing drying himself off, Dave came back up and between the two of us we got him dressed and jacketed in under 15 seconds. I told him now he knows what it feels like to be a Disney princess, even if we aren't bluebirds, and he giggled and said "Wow! You guys are fast!" just as Dave pulled his hood up over his head, picked him up, and carried him down the stairs.

Dave discovered that the house on the next block that has had lots of tantalizingly unlit Christmas lights up for the past few weeks not only finally had them going, but had them synchronized to music. Henry's dream is to someday do that to our house, and it's something he talks about all the time. Just this morning after hearing a five minute monologue on what we're still going to need and how many more lights we're going to have to buy and how it's probably going to cost "like, $140!" I turned to Dave and told him he created a monster when he showed him that first video on youtube ages and ages ago. Since we've only seen such a thing online, seeing it in real life is akin to...well...gosh...I don't even know...all I can come up with is making out with 1960's era Paul McCartney and even that doesn't seem quite right.

When they came back in a few minutes later, Dave said they caught the tail end of the last song, and when Dave told Henry that he was sorry, but they had missed it, one of the guys (supposedly it's a bunch of University football players) who lives in the house overheard him and asked if they'd come down just to see it and when Dave said yeah, he yelled up at the house to play "Carol of the Bells" for Henry. And he was in heaven.

Posted by Jenn at 07:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

They really put kids on the fast track in Kindergarten. Henry's learning things that I know I didn't learn myself until much later. He knows what a trapezoid is, and it is now his favorite shape. He's working out addition and subtraction, which I'm not sure they're officially teaching yet, but they have been actively laying a heavy foundation that has led to him internalizing all sorts of math...well...stuff, the natural conclusion of which, for him, has been addition and subtraction. Then there's "language arts". Ahhh, language arts. He's being stubborn about confessing what words he knows. He refuses to read anything that hasn't officially been taught to him from the list of high frequency words his teacher is working their way through. This many weeks into the year, though, the list of words he knows has become rather long, and it's only a matter of time before he doesn't remember which words he's been taught and which he's taught to himself. Once that happens, I'll do a big happy dance and Henry will be blazing through the books we read at night. In the meantime, one of the things he likes to do is practice writing sentences on my computer. At school they've been working on punctuation marks a bit, and he's been taking a few out for a test drive. This past weekend, this is what he came up with:

They remind me of a philosophizing Hemingway. Short and sweet, slightly existential. He was very pleased with the end result. (For the record, four of the words he typed out in those sentences are words he would refuse to read in a book.)

Yesterday when I was helping out with the gingerbread houses, one of the other mom's told me that her daughter came home from school a few weeks ago and was talking about Henry. She said he's a little loopy, that sometimes when they're walking to another activity, for instance gym or art, Henry will forget where they're going and start wandering off in another direction and the class has to call him back and remind him where they're headed. When I told Dave that story, we both agreed that it epitomizes Henry. That's my boy.

Posted by Jenn at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

henry: Oh man! That house's Christmas lights aren't turned on.
me: I know! I'm *so* bummed!
henry: And I'm *so* toot!
me: You're so toot?
henry: Yeah, and we're not supposed to say those words because they're bathroom words.
me: Bathroom words?
henry: Yup. "Bum" and "toot" are bathroom words.
me: How right you are. My apologies.

Posted by Jenn at 04:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After Henry got home from school this afternoon we pulled out the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving DVD. He really likes the episode on it called "The Mayflower Voyagers" which features the characters traveling on the Mayflower (which Henry calls the Mainflower) and then follows them through their first winter and dealings with the Native Americans. He watched it over and over again last year, but didn't have much to say about it. This afternoon he was obviously paying close attention because he had many questions, mostly pertaining to the boat. Toward the end he suddenly popped up from the couch and asked "Are they in Indiana?" I told him "No, they're in Massachusetts, why?" "Because there are Indians there. I thought that meant they were in Indiana." The deductive reasoning is strong in that boy.

Posted by Jenn at 04:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

About three weeks ago, Henry started going through a hitting stage. Sometimes he has trouble finding the words to express his anger or his sadness, so he would ball up his fist and give us a thump on the arm or on our side instead. He didn't do it hard, and we understood where it was coming from, but we wanted to make sure that he got the point that this was not acceptable behavior. So, instead of time-outs, we told him we would take his drum set away for one whole day every time he hit one of us. The next we put the rule into effect and naturally, he didn't see that drum set for three days. He's a quick study though, and he got the point.

About a week later, Henry, Holly, and I were playing in the living room and something happened that resulted in me breaking one of our rules. Henry told me with great glee that I had been naughty and that I wasn't allowed to play my ukulele for one whole day. Then he looked at me expectantly, waiting for my reaction, but I told him he was right. He shot off the couch grabbed my case and while I was distracted by playing with Holly, he hid my ukulele.

Yet another week later I realized he had never given my uke back to me. I went searching high and low all over the house, on two separate occasions, and couldn't find it. I mentioned it to him when he came home from school and he informed me I could have it the next day. It once again slipped our minds until this evening when the three of us were in his room having "music lessons"*. I asked him where it was and he told me to wait there, that he would get it for me. Once again I was distracted by Holly, playing, dinner, bathtime, life in general, and it slipped my mind until I just sat down on the couch and noticed that it was back in its rightful position in the living room.

We live in a small house. There are only so many places he could have put it. Where was he hiding it? It's driving me a little nuts.

* "music lessons" consist of listening to the Monster Mash, Ghostbusters, Somebody's Watching Me, and This Is Halloween. I've now heard these four songs more times than I care to think about.

Posted by Jenn at 08:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today we: slept in, had pancakes, watched TV, raked tons of leaves, replaced a doorknob, played in the backyard, collapsed on the couch, napped, read, went to the park, drove by some awesome Christmas lights at one of the frats, and ordered in pizza for dinner. It was a glorious day.

Hope yours was just as great.

Posted by Jenn at 06:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A few days ago my friend captured this classic shot of Henry:

The first time I saw it, I thought that it vaguely reminded me of something, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Later while I was uploading it to Flickr, it hit me:

Our firstborn is a Wes Anderson character. Except without the slow motion shots.

Posted by Jenn at 02:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The parent/teacher meeting went well yesterday. We were on the fence last Spring about whether or not to send him to Kindergarten this year because of his age. Actually, let me clarify. We weren't on the fence about it until we talked to his preschool teachers, all of whom hoisted us right up onto that fence which is where we sat haphazardly until Kindergarten registration last April. There's a group of people in our town (probably in every town) who strongly believes in holding their kids back from Kindergarten until they're six. For some it's a decision that's based on their kid's readiness, for others, it's a sports decision, for still others, it's a boy versus girl question (boys being behind emotionally as compared to girls). We thought this group was a majority until we were set straight at the registration last spring. Although Henry was probably going to be the youngest in his class, he would be one of a handful of kids who would also be turning five over the summer. After hearing that, we felt much better about sending him because we thought that he was ready academically, despite being very much four-and-then-five emotionally, and that if he was in pre-school one more year, we'd be dealing with behavior problems stemming from boredom. His teacher yesterday said he's meeting the expectations they have for Kindergartners which really hammered home once again that we made the right decision. Henry thrives on the structure. When he knows what's coming, day in and day out, and what the expectations are and that he has no choice, it allows him to really come out of his shell. Being stuffed in the proverbial box seems to set him free. Oh, the irony. He also really loves all of the new things they're showing him. He thinks everything is awesome and amazing, including his teacher, which is a sentiment I can now fully appreciate having chatted with her yesterday. He really lucked out in the teacher department. Hopefully he'll maintain that excitement for many years to come.

On a side note, I wore my heels. I towered. Then I folded myself down into a little Kindergartener-sized chair for the meeting and spent the whole twenty minutes whacking my chin on my kneecaps. Lesson learned. I think I need to stick to glowering.

Posted by Jenn at 01:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Today we have our first official parent/teacher meeting with Henry's kindergarten teacher. I'm looking forward to hearing what she has to say, but feeling anxious at the same time, mostly because I find teacher's unnerving. Even kindergarten teachers. Actually, even preschool teachers. There, I said it. Unfortunately Dave feels the same way, so I'm sure we both look like deer in headlights. Or we look very, very guilty, like we just got caught putting tacks on the teachers seat. I deal with the whole thing by dressing up and putting on heels so that I tower over everybody. At the open house at Henry's school a couple of weeks ago a friend of mine pulled me aside and told me to knock it off with heels, it's makes people feel shorter than they are. That just illustrated to me that it's working. Intellectual intimidation, probably not so much, physical intimidation, can do.

Posted by Jenn at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

More like the entire weekend redux, soon to be reduced to dashes. I just took down our Halloween decorations and it took a ridiculous amount of time. We've also managed to accumulate enough spooky flotsam that a second storage box is now required. Dave'll be thrilled.

On to happier topics! Halloween! The weekend! Was great! To note:

- Saturday morning, the town had its annual costume contest and Halloween parade. Last year Holly slept through it, this year she was in attendance. Henry was Batman again (Which was a relief, because after he told me he wanted to be a "one-man band with real instruments", my first question to Dave was "Can you solder?" Best to leave that whole scene to our imaginations.) and Holly was a witch. A really, really cute witch. Lots of candy was received.

- Saturday morning/afternoon we went up to the University's alumni weekend luncheon. One of Dave's colleagues showed up in drag. It was brilliant.

- Saturday afternoon, Dave and Henry went to the football game while Holly and I came home to take either take a nap or watch "Sleepy Hollow", depending on which one of us we were. Did that make sense?

- Saturday evening, dinner with friends. Great food, great conversation, great kids, cute babies, what else does a person need in life?

Yesterday we started the day off with pancakes, then a quick trip to Walmart for some last minute trick-or-treating supplies (candles for our pathway). We spent the rest of the day napping, raking leaves, doing the crossword, getting treat bags ready for trick-or-treaters, skyping with Grammy and Grandpa. We carved pumpkins while having dinner, then the first group of kids came around and we were off! Henry loved handing out candy. I convinced him to put on his costume and at least go to our neighbors houses which he happily did, but after the fourth house he was anxious to head back home. We spent the rest of the evening eating candy, watching "The Great Pumpkin", and answering the door. It was so relaxing and pleasant. I hope next year is just as good.

Posted by Jenn at 01:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The other night after lights out, Henry and I were laying in his bed when he asked why people, who generally spend a good portion of their day vertical, sleep horizontally. (Guess what concepts they've been studying in school?) I said something along the lines of it being more comfortable, then I asked him what he thought about sleeping vertically and would he like to try it sometime. He said no, but then informed me that cows sleep vertically, unless they're shaped like garages, then they sleep horizontally. He was very adamant about the garage-shaped cow sleeping horizontally. Over the course of the conversation it became clear that he's deriving some of his cow facts from the movie Cars, which has cow-like tractors, as well as WordWorld. I briefly panicked that this was the only exposure to cows that he has had, but then quickly came to my senses.

Back to the garage-shaped cow. What's he talking about? I'm stumped.

Posted by Jenn at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last week on Tuesday Henry's school had their Kindergarten Open House. I used to love open house night when I was a kid. There was something so cool about going to school after hours; you feel more like you own it, as opposed to it owning you.

Henry was very excited about showing us around the building. First we went to his gym, which doubles as the cafeteria. We briefly met his gym teacher, but were deftly rerouted by Henry to his classroom, where we received the grand tour of pretty much everything. We saw his cubby, his desk, the lego table, the playstove (Where Henry decided we would have an impromptu cooking session. Upon opening the oven and seeing two dolls in there, he said "Who's cooking babies? We don't want to do that!"), the monthly calendar, and, because he's his daddy's kid, we twice visited the classroom's electronic whiteboard. Then he led the way to his music room, after which we were instructed to close our eyes and hold his hands so that he could lead us down seemingly endless halls to his art room and finally the library, where, after almost fifty minutes of mounting excitement, he and some of his friends serendipitously converged. It was like watching the Big Bang (The theory, not the show): the excitement of the night won out and they all started acting nuts. It took some effort to extricate the young man before the library was reduced to rubble, but we managed. When we left one of his friends was stomping around on a small dais in the Kindergarten area and another was commando-crawling across the carpet to his less-than-thrilled mom.

I think my favorite part of the evening was when, in the music room, he ran into one of his pre-school buddies, who said "HENRY! HIGH FIVE!!!" after which he started walking around in circles singing "UH-UH, TCH! UH-UH TCH! We will, We will ROCK YOU!" Henry lit up and started playing the drums on his chest and beat-boxing along. It was hilarious. His teacher doesn't know it, but she's happy that they aren't in the same class together.

Posted by Jenn at 01:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I seem to have taken a bit of a hiatus from the blog. It's probably my subconscious prepping me for next month's NaBloPoMo craziness. Purge my brain, clear my thoughts, assuming there was anything there to begin with.

When last I wrote, my parents were arriving within a few hours, and my mom had plans to surprise the young man at the bus stop. She did, and although it took him from the time he jumped from the last step of the bus onto the sidewalk to the time he got to me to realize I was not there alone, he was indeed very surprised. After a range of reactions which ultimately culminated in a resonant "THHBBBTTT!" for lack of any better way to express himself, he played it off like he knew all along. When we got home, he saw his Grandpa and said, as non-chalantly as a five year old can play it off, "Oh, you're here, too," and with that, the weekend was off with a bang.

Saturday was by far our busiest day. We had a leisurely breakfast, after which we headed out to a local Octoberfest. Dave has been dreaming every night of the Disney Biergarten beer and buffet since we got back home, so he was anxious to heft another stein, as was my dad. The beer was good, although it stands to reason it would have been better had it been accompanied by the sight of my uncle sporting lederhosen while playing the alp horn. There was a bounce house, a horse and buggy ride, apple crisp, and battered mushrooms, so the rest of us were equally happy. We returned home for a brief respite before heading over to the University's football game. Holly and I hung back for part of it so she could sleep off the morning a bit. We arrived just after half-time and celebrated the last two quarters with Twizzlers, popcorn, goldfish, a smoothie, and raucous waving of plastic hand-clackers. By the time the game ended, four of us were wrecked and staggered home, while my Dad and Dave headed over to the soccer game. Their energy was bewildering. There must have been some magic in that Octoberfest beer.

The rest of the visit we spent laying low. The weather turned to a chilly, drizzly mess Sunday night and stayed that way for the rest of the week. It forced us inside where it was cozy, and we spent Monday and Tuesday relaxing. Henry was thrilled both days to see his Grammy waiting for him at the bus stop when he came home. It was very sweet. I'm not even going to mention the amazing dinners they cooked while they were here, because it just makes me glum, especially knowing what we're going to have for dinner tonight. Needless to say, it was hard to see them off on Wednesday morning.

Posted by Jenn at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

henry: I made another fountain. I made it a little bit diwagonal.
me: It's great! You made it a little diagonal?
henry: Uh, I said "diWAGonal".
me: Ah. Oh course.

Dave's been fighting a wicked cold since Sunday or Monday and now Henry is home from school today. He woke up with a fever and a sore throat. I gave him a juice box this morning for a blast of vitamin C and about fifteen minutes after he finished it, I caught Holly sucking on the straw, trying to get the dregs out. Her days are now officially numbered. It was bound to happen. There's been a cold making the rounds since school started and for the last three weeks I've been waiting for the shoe to drop because Henry is usually the first to catch whatever it is that's going around. All things considered, I'm pretty impressed he made it this long.

Posted by Jenn at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last Thursday there were a few rumblings from Camp Henry that he didn't like having to be at school all day. Friday morning there were many tears at the bus stop, but he did get on the bus when it arrived with nary a protest. Yesterday he saved his tears for after he got on the bus. After he sat he looked out the window at me and his whole face crumpled. It broke my heart. It also broke the hearts of a couple of the other parents who saw it happen. Today he did the same thing, except it wasn't a complete crumple. Tomorrow hopefully he'll feel even better.

There's no question he doesn't like spending the whole day at school. We ask him if anything else is going on, and he says no, everything else is fine except for the fact that he has to be there ALL DAY! His favorite times are: snack time, music time, computer time, and quiet time. A sure sign he's not thrilled is that quiet time made it onto the list.

Watching him process his angst has caused me to delve into the past and rehash all of the things that I've had to buck up and work through that I hadn't particularly wanted to. Unfortunately, what could be a cathartic activity resulting in major personal growth has boiled down to me obsessing over every grudge I've managed to hold onto over the past 34 years of my life. I'm a big-time grudge holder, so I'm going back to things that happened in high school, and in one case, 8th grade. It's not something I'm particularly proud of, but it is what it is. The end result of sifting through all of the ways people, mostly passing strangers relative to my life, have said or done unthinking and hurtful things is I've been wandering around with an attitude that's got a slight bent towards anger. I've got to do something about that, but mostly I'm running with it, swimming around for a while, and when I come out on the other side, it'll all be roses. Until next time.

Posted by Jenn at 04:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Kindergarten: so far, so good. Henry doesn't complain about not wanting to go, he happily boards the school bus, loves sporting his blue backpack (Which was his second choice; first choice was an utterly flamboyant Tinkerbell backpack that had actual green, glittery wings protruding from the back. He's got a thing for the 'bell.), eats all of his lunch and most of his snack, comes home tired, plays for a while, refuses to eat dinner, plays some more, then goes to bed.

Dave and I have also been handling it pretty well. We haven't had any emotional meltdowns over our baby going to school, mostly because he seems so ready for it. We do have conversations over who gets to go pick him up at the bus stop and who gets to stay home while Holly naps. Very civil, "No, no, I insist, *you* go!" types of conversations; whoever wins gleefully heads out the door.

What I was most concerned about was being able to get our act together in the morning. We're not used to getting up at 6:30AM. Dave and I figured out what each of us should be doing in order to get to the bus on time: Dave gets the kids up and dressed while I get breakfast together and make Henry's lunch. Mostly it's been going well, although I will confess that after blearily boiling some oatmeal this morning, I spiked Henry's bowl with cumin instead of cinnamon. Nothing like the smell of armpit to snap you to attention. Henry's loving getting back to his bento box lunches. He doesn't really eat much of a variety of foods, so everyday he gets sandwiches cut into shapes, sliced apple, and milk. For snack I send him in with some kind of carb and a Babybel cheese wheel.

It's been nice getting to spend some uninterrupted time with Holly. It's reinforced what I've always suspected: she's a sweet little cutie-pie. I have a feeling that next week I'll be telling you that she's learned to walk. Dave put it best last night: for her walking isn't a question of ability, it's more a question of her deciding to go ahead and do it.

Posted by Jenn at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I made my annual trek to the obstetrician today. It was fun! Dave watched Henry and I took Holly with me so she could get a clear idea of what she has to look forward to. I dropped Henry off at the University so he could hang with his dad who had to hang at a poster session that was conveniently going on at the exact same time as my appointment. When Holly and I caught up with them, we found them sitting by the windows, Henry with a Sprite in his hand and a plate of chips in his lap. Dave also told me he had already eaten two cookies. On the walk back to the car, I said "So, you had two cookies, huh? Lucky!" to which he responded "I *really* wanted another one..." "Really? You wanted THREE cookies?!?!" "No! I wanted four, actually!"

Posted by Jenn at 04:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yesterday Holly and I headed out bright and early to drop the car off for a checkup. Dave and I talked briefly about what I should say and we agreed on: oil change, check the brakes because they chirp like a little birdie, general check-up to make sure everything's in good working condition. Nothing like giving a mechanic carte blanche to find something wrong with your car to make you nervous. We hadn't heard anything by 2PM, which we assumed was probably bad news. At 3, Dave called and told me it was ready to be picked up. They changed the oil, looked at the brakes, declared they're in excellent condition, and the rest of the car's not so bad either. So it cost us all of $40. We were expecting at least a $400 bill. I later asked Dave if he feels relieved that our car seems fine, or even more worried that they didn't find anything wrong. The answer: more worried. I totally get that.

Meanwhile, today was devoted to eyes, specifically mine and Henry's. I decided to go ahead and try contact lenses. I've been wanting to for many years, and that's about how long it takes me to get my act together to make something happen. This morning was my appointment to learn how to put them in. The right eye went great, the left eye was a bit tougher. Let me say, it was not a great day to wear mascara. Or eyeliner. It was very odd to be able to see clearly without the frames of my glasses delineating the start of the blur. In fact, when I got home and glanced in the mirror in my bedroom, I had a brief "THAT'S what I look like!" moment. I haven't seen myself clearly without glasses on from a distance greater than two feet in at least six years. It was a little weird. Meanwhile, Henry and I returned later in the afternoon so he could be fitted with reading glasses. His eye doctor said he has 20/20 vision, but his eyes have trouble shifting from far away to close-up. She had a feeling he'd outgrow it, but since he's going to school, it wouldn't be terrible for him to have some reading glasses to help ease the ocular transition. They're blue. With propellers. He's stunningly adorable in them. After all of that excitement, I got a call from Lenscrafters saying my new sunglasses had come in, so we headed to the mall to pick them up. They're great, mostly because unlike the pair that have miraculously lasted the last seven years, the coating isn't peeling off and I can actually see through them.

Next week I get to head back to the eye doctor to let them know if the contacts are a go. If this morning is any indication, I'll now need one hour and a half hours of primping time before I leave the house: half an hour to shower and get myself cute, one hour to put the contacts in.

How was that for a navel-gazing post?

Posted by Jenn at 09:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I went and had my stitches checked out this morning, per the ER doc's suggestion, just to make sure I was healing and not throwing a cocktail party for any infections. My doctor said it looked good, laughed when I told her how it happened, then laughed even more when I told her it was a serrated knife. She said because of the location and the resulting threat of the wound reopening (ewwwwwww) I get to continue to gross people out with my Sally impression for another week and a half. But! I got the okay to go ahead and get back to hanging out poolside, so all is not lost!

Meanwhile, Henry has caught himself a little summertime cold. Yesterday we went to the local amusement park to see these guys (the drummer's unbelievable), and by the time we left, Henry was a complete wreck. He shoved aside a little girl who was trying to help her baby brother into a boat ride. It was the last ride of the evening because we were fresh out of tickets, which really destroyed him when I hauled him off the ride before it even started and gave him quite the little talking too. The hardest lessons to get across to the four year old set are the ones that conflict with their general feeling that they are the center of the universe. His response to my talk with him, between gasping sobs, was "Why were they trying to get on the blue boat? That's the one *I* wanted to ride!" By the time we got home, his nose was running like a faucet and he was absolutely exhausted. On the walk from the car to the front door, Henry yelled "OH NO! *mumble mumble mumble* A BEE *mumble* ME!!!!" *SOB SOB SOB* Based on his reaction, I assumed he had been stung, and after some clarification, he hysterically informed us that a bee had bumped into him. I felt badly for him. Also? I was biting my lip, trying not to laugh. It was a rough evening for Henry. Today he's sick and grumpy and full of energy, yet needing to rest, which is always a frustrating combination. I'm counting the minutes until Dave gets home.

Posted by Jenn at 02:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Yesterday evening we went to the circus. Dave and I, unbeknownst to each other, picked up free admission tickets for the kids from a local coffee shop, set them aside, them completely forgot about them. I recall thinking that I should mark it on the calendar, however, that's apparently as far as I got.

Yesterday after lunch, Dave called me up and said "So, I was at the coffee shop and I picked up a free admission ticket for a circus that's coming to town." I said I had as well, and that I had marked the date on the calendar. To which Dave replied "It's tonight!" Only Dave and I can plan an outing weeks in advance and still manage to have it be completely spontaneous.

The circus was small, billed as "Old-fashioned". When we got into the tent and saw how small the ring was, and what the bleacher seating consisted of, Dave was worried about what we'd gotten ourselves into whereas I was all "This is going to be awesome." It was awesome, too. There was a trapeze artist, a balancing act, clowns (Henry's favorite), a woman who hula'd 50 hoops at once, a camel called
"Lawrence of Arabia" (which Henry and Dave went for a ride on during the intermission), goats. I'm forgetting some of the acts, but the whole show was a blast. It was also stinking hot. The four of us sucked down many sno-cones, just to stay cool. One of us also had cotton candy and popcorn. And another one of us had a hot dog. I'm not sure how he passed up the corn dogs. Henry came home sporting an amazing pink cotton candy mustache.

Posted by Jenn at 09:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

...was one of those times that I'm fairly certain Henry will remember in some nebulous-but-pleasantly-happy, "those were the days", kind of way for the rest of his life. We packed a picnic dinner, headed to a local state park, where we ate, listened to a great band, and hung out with friends. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, not too warm and not chilly. By the time we got home, Henry and Holly were up two and half hours past their bedtime and yet somehow managing to maintain pleasant demeanors. To top the night off completely, Henry was thrilled to see fireflies drifting around in the backyard and eventually raced around to the front to see if they were there, too. They were.

Posted by Jenn at 03:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

...after going back and forth for what we should do for Father's Day, Henry said "My brain just hatched a plan!" Where does he get this stuff?

Also, check this out, just in case you were wondering what it was like to be inside Dave's head. Or if you ever wondered what you'd have to deal with if you were married to him.

Posted by Jenn at 08:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

...in three days:

Wednesday: Holly, well-baby checkup, healthy!
Thursday: Henry, bronchitis, ear infection!
Friday: Jenn, sinus infection!

Meanwhile, Dave remains healthy...

Posted by Jenn at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Since February I've been dancing around a sneaking suspicion that Henry has allergies. I myself am allergic to, among other things, dust, specifically three different kinds per the skin test I endured many moons ago, so I'm not only familiar with the tell-tale signs, but I also have major sympathy for him. I, too, give the allergy salute. I, too, have constant post-nasal drip. I, too, have itchy, watery eyes. The one thing I have that he probably doesn't have yet are big purple polyps in my nose, the kind which make every doctor who dares peer up my nostrils actually pause and say "Wow. Look at that!"

His symptoms have become worse the last week or so until finally last night I decided to declare an all out war. The problem with old houses is they make dust at a break-neck pace. It's also worse upstairs in the former attic area. Add to that the fact that the only time I'm able to really get anything done around the house is when Holly is napping, means I really don't clean his (or her) room as often as I should because I don't want to wake up the young lady. Nonetheless, I've come up with a battle plan:

1. I cranked up the thermostat on our water heater and have been washing Henry's pillows, sheets, blankets, and comforter in extra hot water to kill off the dust mites.
2. Our chest freezer is currently housing a couple of Henry's favorite stuffed animals in order to freeze and kill off the dust mites.
3. I picked up some anti-allergen pillow covers at the store today. I think the mattress wrap we picked up for Henry when we were potty training him is the same company as the pillow covers, because I remember thinking "Why not just get the allergen-free one since it's also water-proof, just to be on the safe side?"
4. I'll be calling someone in to have our ducts cleaned again. We did it a few years ago, it's probably time.
5. There's a spray you can get for items, such as curtains, you're not able to wash as frequently as you would like.
6. New filters for our heat pump.
7. Air purifier for upstairs and one for downstairs.
8. Get rid of living room rug, which is impossible to really get clean without using a product that has hazardous substances (aka "bu#llsh!t cr@p" depending on your personal preference), in favor of bare wood floor.

I feel like Henry's symptoms get worse when he climbs into bed at night. Hopefully all of these things will help give him some relief.

Posted by Jenn at 02:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Henry and Holly both came down with colds over the weekend. Henry was a pill on Saturday and was dragging his feet on Sunday. Monday morning he woke up with all of the obvious cold symptoms. He doesn't often get fevers when he gets sick, so instead of wanting to spend lots of time on the couch convalescing under a blanket, he generally runs around, a mixture of equal parts amped up and miserable, and then seemingly dedicates his day to seeing how quickly he can drive me absolutely insane. My sympathy for him has usually been driven out of me by the time noon rolls around. His exhaustion also brings into extra-super-sharp focus all of the qualities of four year olds that make me nuts: stubbornness, argumentativeness, unwillingness to nap despite desperately needing to. He managed to wear himself out so completely over the course of Monday that yesterday he was much more low-key. He also developed his usual cough, which is entirely our fault. We give him a low-dose steroid via his nebulizer once a day during cold/flu season. We stopped after his last cold, which was in March, even though every year he always gets one last cold in April. So Monday night was a comedy in which Henry would hack and cough and wake Holly up, or Holly would wake up and cry which would wake up Henry who would start hacking and coughing. It happened a few times, but all things considered, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I really thought we'd be pulling an all-nighter. Meanwhile, you wouldn't really know Holly was sick if it weren't for the ickiness emanating from her general nostril area. I have a theory that kids are stoic when they're sick until they discover they can really work the system, then they spend the rest of their lives refining their ability to manipulate other people's sympathies. Or maybe that was just me?

What have I been doing to keep my sanity during all of this (besides griping to Dave)? Knitting little chicks, of course!

Future flock.

They're part of a bigger project that my local yarn shop is putting together. The nice thing about this pattern is you can use any random scraps of yarn you have leftover in your stash from other projects. Tomorrow night we're going to be hot gluing beaks and needle felting eyes on a whole flock of them, which I'm greatly looking forward to.

Posted by Jenn at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I went into the bathroom this evening to get Henry's bathwater going. When I walked in, he was standing in the tub, in his birthday suit, patiently waiting for me to get the show on the road.

Henry: There was a spider in my bathtub.
me: A spider?!?!
Henry: Yep. But I smooshed him.
me: You smooshed him?
Henry: Yep. With my foot.

We both look down at his bare feet.

me: Is it still on the bottom of your foot?
Henry (busily contorting himself to try to look at the bottom of his foot): Uhhhh...probably.
me: Oh! Good job...?

Boys. This morning I got three spiders in that bathroom in the span of two minutes. One of them crawled out of a towel while I was carrying the laundry basket down to the basement, which is what kickstarted the massacre in the first place. We're so not phased by spiders anymore that we've just been letting them wander around for weeks. It only took me two minutes because I already knew where they all were hanging out. It's probably unfair to allow them to carry on with a false sense of well-being. I should be more respectful. They, however, should know better than to take up residence in our towels.

On another note, there have been public and private requests for a video of Holly crawling. I have one, I just haven't downloaded it yet. Can you stand the suspense?

Posted by Jenn at 07:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today was an interesting day. Late this morning the town had its annual Easter egg hunt, which is held at a local park and hosted by University students. The kids all line up around a green that has Easter eggs strewn all over it, a whistle is blown, there's mayhem for approximately 30 seconds, and then, just like that, it's over. At the last minute Henry decided to ditch the birth-four year old hunt and head over to the one geared towards older kids. Henry trucked it down the field, got lost in a mob of scrambling kids, and emerged triumphant with exactly one egg. He was excited until he opened it and discovered a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, which he promptly unloaded onto his dad because *blech*. Afterwards he let off some steam at the park with one of his best buds, Elsa, then we headed back to our house with some friends where we had lunch, dyed eggs, and I got to hold a two-month old while trying not to bewail how quickly Holly is growing. She's growing so fast!!! Wah!!!

Henry didn't have much lunch, and he seemed sort of sad. After our friends left, we sat on the swing in our backyard while I read him a book. First he sat across from me. Then he came over to my side of the swing. Then he scooched a little closer. A little closer. Then he climbed onto my lap. Then he curled up and rested his head against my stomach and tried to go to sleep. We relocated to his bedroom and rested for a bit, then headed downstairs to our bedroom with Holly when she woke up. Dave was in bed when we came down, so we all hung out for a while. At one point we noticed Henry had fallen asleep, so we tiptoed out. About an hour later he emerged, sat on the couch for some SpongeBob, then got up, hightailed it to the bathroom, and was sick to his stomach. He had a temperature of 100.5. Once I got Holly to bed, I joined him on the couch where we spent an hour and a half cooling off, watching iCarly, sipping Gatorade, munching crackers, getting into our jammies, and making one more trip to the bathroom. That last one seemed to do the trick. After that he was in better spirits and was keeping food down. I'm chalking it up to heat, exhaustion, and probably a little dehydration. On the one hand, I'm very sad that he was sick, on the other hand, it was GREAT snuggling with him on the swing and on the couch. I really take advantage of those times because in general he doesn't really like big shows of physical affection. Or little shows. Or vignettes, really. If it weren't for the threat of the Easter Bunny passing our house by (Is that even how it works?), he probably would have stayed on the couch all night. I love that boy.

Posted by Jenn at 09:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

...is when their friends come over to play, you don't have to hang out with them the whole time, they just sort of go off and do their own thing. It's nice.

Posted by Jenn at 04:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

H² have caught colds. Henry was all set to go to school today, but then I noticed lots of sneezing and snuffling. Sure enough, about an hour and a half before drop-off, he stood in the living room and said "Today is a bad day." When I asked why he said "Because it's still winter and I'm sick." So I kept him home. He's not so sick that he's miserable, so I'm trying my best to keep him entertained so he stays out of trouble. It's "J" week at pre-k so for the sake of consistency we've made paper plate jellyfish with ribbon tentacles, right now he's matching numbers of dots to their numerals, and later he'll practice writing his "J"'s. Just so everyone knows, I'm not cut out to be a teacher, certainly not to my own kid. I'm cut out for lounging in bed with a book and a plate of cheese and crackers. The "work" is not only keeping Henry honest, but me as well.

Meanwhile, Holly developed a runny nose a few days ago which I chalked up to teething because her top front teeth are working their way down. However, yesterday it became clear it's actually a cold. It's not too bad so far. Hopefully this is the worst of it.

Posted by Jenn at 01:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Henry: I would like to watch some TV, please.
me: Okay. Wait a minute, I don't think so. You watched a lot of TV this morning.
Henry: No I didn't.
me: What do you mean "No you didn't." You watched an episode of SpongeBob while you were doing your fish medicine (aka his nebulizer) and then later on you watched Wall-E. I think that's enough TV for one day.
Henry: *thinking* I would like to watch a *real* lot of TV today, please.

I gave him credit for trying and for being polite, then had him practice writing his H's. I'm such a mom.

Posted by Jenn at 07:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

...bronchitis. The doctor spent a long time listening to Henry breath, checked his ears/nose/tonsils, then went back and listened to his lungs again, then said he thought most likely it's bronchitis. He asked what we had been doing for his cough, and we told him albuterol, which is what we're supposed to give him as a rescue medication when his asthma flares up, and pulmicort, which is a very low dose steroid that we give him twice a day every day during cold/flu season so that when he does get sick, he doesn't develop asthma. Twice this year we've used the albuterol for Henry when he's developed a wheezy-sounding cough, and both times I've felt like it wasn't doing anything for him. Our instructions are to get it going when he starts wheezing, except those are surprisingly ambiguous instructions when it comes to reality. So whenever he develops a cough, we think it must be his asthma from the way it sounds, we crank up the albuterol, then when we have a doctor check him out, they say it's not and that it's not necessary to keep using the albuterol. It's very frustrating.

Anyway, we left with a prescription for antibiotics (his first in over a year, which I mention only because that's how long it's been since he's had an ear infection: hooray!), a recommendation for Robitussin CF, and a better attitude about doctors in general because someone didn't get a "pinch" (aka. shot). I told Dave I didn't really want to give him the cough suppressant/expectorant, mainly because I don't take the stuff myself, and it seemed like we were loading up his system with a lot of medicines. Dave felt like we should, so we did. Henry had a huge coughing fit about forty minutes after taking it, got a lot of junk out of his lungs, and then settled down for a very quiet, restful night of sleep, during which I don't think he woke up once coughing.

Today we're snowed in, with another 4-6 inches expected. It's going to be a quiet day. Tomorrow I expect he'll be heading off to preschool in the afternoon. He's very anxious to get back. He's been bemoaning the fact that he's missing "V" week. Tomorrow he'll be participating in his very first Valentine's Day card exchange. We spent part of Sunday making them, which was a lot of fun. I think I may be more excited about the exchange than he is, because I used to LOVE opening up my Valentine's Day mailbox and seeing all of the cards from my classmates. Good times, good times...

Posted by Jenn at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

...the young man has pneumonia. We have a Dr's appointment this evening at 5, and I'll be a bit surprised if they don't order chest x-rays. Then again, what do I know? Henry has a low-grade fever and a hideous cough which doesn't seem to be asthma-related. The cough went away for a brief period this morning, but is now back with a vengeance. I was tossing around the idea of giving the cough another day to see what would happen, but after listening to him hacking almost non-stop when we first woke up this morning, then seeing that we've got 8-12" of snow on the way tonight and tomorrow, we decided it would be best to get out to the pediatrician now while it's not a nightmare. After his cough dissipated a bit later in the morning, I called Dave and asked him what he thought about canceling the appointment, but he suggested we go ahead and keep it anyway. The last time we had that exact conversation for the exact same reason was last Spring when, in the end, it turned out Henry had strep throat. So, err on the side of caution it is.

Posted by Jenn at 01:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Henry came down with a cough on Saturday and has been at it ever since. No other symptoms. Just a cough. Lots and lots of coughing. By yesterday it was making me a bit twitchy, all that coughing. We decided to keep him home from school today and after the first couple of hours, I finally gave him a lollipop and told him not to crunch it, just nurse it for as long as he could. After a minute he crunched it anyway, the temptation being far too great. So I gave him another one and made it VERY CLEAR he needed to suck on it, not crunch it. So he did, and it helped stem the coughing tide for the duration of the pop plus a few hours. He's starting to cough again, so there'll probably be another sucker in the not too distant future. I wish I knew what was causing it. I'm secretly holding out hope that he'll develop a full blown cold because at least then we'll know what it's all been about and that an end is in sight. I might try some buckwheat honey next.

Posted by Jenn at 03:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

dave: Argh.
me: What?
dave: I just tried to put a dish in the dishwasher and part of the dishrack broke off.
me: Uh-oh.
dave: Yeah
henry: We should just buy a new house.

Posted by Jenn at 02:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was playing around with my ukulele on Sunday and Henry asked if I could play the song "Daylight". I found some chords and practiced a little bit, deftly raising my ability to somewhere between "Hideously Bad" and "Not Very Good At All". Today after school Henry wanted to play it along with me on the drums, so naturally, I recorded it:

As you can tell, we consider ourselves to be total rock stars.

Posted by Jenn at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Friday morning. Removal of stitches. It didn't go so well. Thursday night I went on iTunes and downloaded Henry's favorite episode of SpongeBob so he could have something to focus on while the Dr. removed his stitches. After Henry was weighed and had his temperature taken and we were hanging out waiting for the real action to begin, I fired up my laptop and was told by iTunes I couldn't play the show I had purchased because I hadn't given permission to any computers to be able to play the show. That I had purchased. And downloaded. To my laptop. So that was a big fail. When the Doctor showed up, he showed Henry what medical tools of doom and torture he was going to be using (tweezers, scissors, gauze) and Henry promptly lost it. Oh the hysterical sobbing. Poor kid. The doctor was really great. We tried to find a way to get the stitches out that would comfort Henry the most, for example sitting on Dave's lap, but none of them worked. Plus, when he did calm down enough to where he wasn't crying, he was still doing the post-hysterics reflexive sharp intake of breath which meant the Doctor still couldn't get the scissors in a good position to snip the stitches. Finally he called in a nurse to hold his head still while I held his arms and hands and three seconds later it was over. Henry couldn't get out of there fast enough. He didn't want a rubber ducky for being brave, he didn't want a lollipop or a sticker or both. He wanted to get to the car as fast as possible. So he, Dave, and Holly headed to the car while I checked us out. The nurse at the front desk said that it sounded like it went well. I laughed and said "You heard that all the way out here, eh?" She said they hear it every day, all day. She was also extremely surprised to hear that Henry handled the stitches going in far better than he handled them coming out. My kid: bucking the trends, as usual.

In the car, Henry said "I don't like going to the doctors because they hurt me." Long pause. "I would like going to the doctors if they didn't hurt me." I heartily agreed.

Posted by Jenn at 09:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Knowing Henry's love of drumming, Dave's parents got him the Stomp! dvd for Christmas. At first he didn't want to watch it, but then he figured out exactly what Stomp! was and now it's on heavy rotation.

There are two reasons in particular why I love this dvd. The first is, Henry has always been creative when it comes to building drumsets. He like pots and pans, but he's never stopped there, and a lot of the varied things he uses they use in the show as well. The second is he's been completely inspired by some of the things they do to make sounds. A couple of weekends ago we were at the local hardware store. While Dave was looking for some kind of plumbing something, Henry and I found the toilet plungers. We wandered up and down the aisle sticking them to the floor and pulling them off. Guess what he wants for his birthday? Sometimes it's so easy to please my kid.

Stomp! is coming to a local theater. We're thinking we have a responsibility to take him.

Posted by Jenn at 05:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

On Saturday afternoon, around 4PM, the time of day when everyone's a little punchy from boredom or is in desperate need of a nap, Henry ran down our back hallway, tripped on our runner, and smashed his forehead on the door that leads down to our garage. He immediately started wailing and crying. Dave was outside taking down Christmas lights at the time and instantly knew from the sound of Henry's hysterics that we would be heading to the ER. When he came in, I was still trying to figure out what had happened. I was hugging Henry, who had his hand over part of his forehead. He told me he ran into the door. I figured a bruise would be about the extent of it until he took his hand down from his face and I saw the blood. Then I saw the wound. That's when I knew he'd be in for at least a few stitches. Dave hustled the kids into the car while I ran around the house stocking up on baby toys and turning off space heaters and generally trying to be organized and thoughtful while in actuality being pretty much neither. When I got into the car, Henry said from the back seat "Guess what happened to me on the way to the car?" "What?" "I fell down and hurt my butt!!!" *giggle* *grin*

Once we got on the road Dave wanted to know who wanted to stop at Burger King for an ICEE. I was all about getting to the hospital asap, but then Dave, who's old hat at this by now, said we'd have a long wait anyway, we might as well be sipping ICEE's while we were there. So we stopped and got one for me and one for Henry. We registered at the front desk of ER then headed for the kid's play area. Henry showed me around. Then we were called back to the intake office where a nurse asked Henry all sorts of questions about what happened. During a lull in the conversation, Henry leaned forward and said "Hey! Hey, Doctor? Guess what happened to me on the way to the car?" "What?" "I fell down and hurt my butt!!!" *grin* *giggle*

We headed back to the play area, picked out a few books, had some Cheetos, finished our ICEE's, then were shown into an exam room. Dave found some SpongeBob and all was good with the world. The Doctor came in, took a look at his wound, and determined he'd probably need two stitches. During a lull in the conversation, Henry turned to her and said "Hey! Hey, Doctor? Guess what happened to me on the way to the car?" "What?" "I fell down and hurt my butt!!!" *grin* *giggle*

The doctor put some numbing gel on for about fifteen minutes, then came back and injected a more potent numbing agent directly into the wound. Henry was crawling up the bed while she was doing that, mostly, we think, because it felt weird as opposed to it actually hurting. It took some coaxing to get him to lay back down, but he did. He focused on SpongeBob while the Doctor did her best to make sure she kept her needle and thread out of his line of sight while she was sewing his stitches. When she was done, he had no idea what had happened. While we were waiting for discharge papers we told him we'd take him anywhere he wanted to go for dinner. He chose a local BBQ joint. On the walk back to the car, he started running. I told him not to because we didn't want to have to take him back inside for more stitches. He stopped, whipped around, and said "Stitches?" I told him never mind, and off we went to dinner.

Henry really pulls it together during times of high stress. It's absolutely amazing. He handles these things better than I do.

Posted by Jenn at 04:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Henry's pre-school has a month long hiatus for Christmas. It's a bit of a drag because he's high energy and I'm not good at coming up with ways to wear him out. On Tuesday I came across this post on my friend's website and thought that it looked like it would be a lot of fun to do. She has links to two other sites that have lots of fun crafts and I decided that I would have to make more of an effort to start planning out projects for the days when the weather's bad (ie. all of January and February, and most of March) if we're going to make it through the winter. Some of you may be thinking "Well, duh." but honestly, doing projects and crafts with my kid is not a place my brain goes to naturally. I don't think it is with Dave, either. Sometimes I think it's hilarious we even have kids. Anyway, back to the portraits. I took profile shots of Henry and Holly, traced them out onto contact paper, cut them out with a razor knife, then stuck the cut-out onto a piece of canvas. Initially I asked Henry what colors he wanted to paint his silhouette with, and he said blue and purple. Then he saw the other five colors and decided he would like to try all of them.

Here's a picture of the artist at work:

And here's the final product:

They came out pretty cool. I've saved the cutouts in case we want to do it again on paperboard. I got reusable contact paper per the suggestion of one of the other websites who describes the process, but it didn't stick very well to the weave of the canvas, hence the smudge of blue on Henry's forehead. If we do it again on canvas, I'm going to use the stickier contact paper. And possibly watercolors.

Posted by Jenn at 04:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

A couple of weeks ago, apropos of some unknown outside influence, Henry decided dancing was pretty cool. So often when there's music playing, he busts a move.

Nothing induces a person to "boogie down" quite like a Christmas carol.

Posted by Jenn at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Henry just straddled two of our dining room chairs. He had one foot on each, and one hand on each, then he looked down at me and said "Mommy! Look at me! I look like an angel!" I had to laugh because he's been a half-sick, bundle of energy today that has been driving me nuts. So naturally I told him he was no angel. Lest you think that a cruel and heartless thing to say, you should know he doesn't believe a word that comes out of my mouth anymore, anyway. His response was "Yes I am!"

Posted by Jenn at 04:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today was Dave's department's holiday party. It was also a snow day, so Henry didn't go to school. Normally I'd be at my wits end trying to figure out what to do with an energetic four year old, but Dave stayed home as well to get some work done, so Henry and I were able to put on our snow pants and head outside without having to worry about Holly. We cleared the snow off of the boxwoods out front, built three snowmen, then came back inside to make some rice crispy treats to bring to the party. Dave also made deviled eggs using a recipe my Uncle sent us last Spring when I was pregnant and having an "I MUST HAVE DEVILED EGGS!" moment (a moment that lasted for weeks). After unsuccessfully trying to convince Dave that maybe we should just stay home and eat all of the deviled eggs and rice crispy treats ourselves because sometimes doesn't he think sharing is a wee bit overrated, we piled into the car and headed to the University.

It was a lot of fun. It usually is. Everyone is very nice. Holly was passed around and got lots of love and attention, and Henry ate lots of cookies. The most extraordinary part was when a friend of ours who has a nine or ten year old daughter turned to Henry at one point and said "We're going to our house to go sledding. Do you want to come with us? Your mom won't be there, it'll be just us. Do you want to go?" Henry thought about it, then very quietly said "Yes, I think so." And she repeated that I wouldn't be there and was he sure, and he said yes again. So she asked me if that was all right, and I was all "YES! YESYESYESYESYES!" Because I love my kid but sometimes he's timid and I thought he was a long ways away from doing this sort of thing. So I got him all bundled up in his coat and sent him on his way. I sat back with Holly, watched the three of them briefly chat with and walk past a suddenly very confused looking Dave, and totally relished the moment. My baby is growing up. I love that he doesn't need us to always be there anymore. I remember how exciting it was to go out and do things all on my own like that. And now I know how nerve-wracking it can be to wonder if he's being polite and making a good impression and in general being a good boy.

About an hour after I got home, I got a call from Dave, and he was all "Are they sledding at the University? Where is he??? Is he at their house?" He sounded a bit freaked out. I had to laugh because of the two of us, I assumed I was going to be that parent in our relationship, but I'm not! It's totally Dave! Hah!

Posted by Jenn at 09:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Jenn at 05:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Henry refers to a nearby amusement park as the Special Park. Two years ago, we rolled out of bed one day and decided what the heck, let's head over to Knoebel's to see if Henry would be interested in riding the rides. This was at a stage where all he wanted to do was "go to that park that has the pool", and let me tell you, that gets old fast. So when he asked if we were going to the park, we told him that we *were* going to a park, a SPECIAL park, thereby upping the intrigue factor and sparing us from what would have been a very long car ride that would no doubt have featured lots of arguing for the park that has the pool. Since then, the three of us have always referred to it as the Special Park.

In order to ride the rides, you either get a hand-stamp that's an all-day pass, or you can buy books of tickets. We go the ticket route because Henry's still confined to the little kid section, both because of his height and because of his sense of self-preservation. This year was the first year that he worked up the courage to present the tickets to the operators all by himself. He's very pleased with himself, and sometimes he likes to reenact that part of things here at home. So, without further ado, I present to you the second leaf pile of the season:

Posted by Jenn at 08:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Friday evening we had Elsa and her adult contingent (plus her new baby brother) over for an impromptu bbq. Henry and Elsa wreaked much havoc and raised much ruckus and so Henry didn't get to bed until about nine or a little after. That, combined with getting up around 7AM all week to make it school, made for an interesting day yesterday. He actually kept it together surprisingly well. We got up around 7AM, kicked around the house during the morning, then at 1 headed out to my friend Jasmine's house so she could meet Holly. Her son was in town for the weekend and what with all the adult talking and baby snuggling going on, we ended up staying longer than we had thought we would. Henry occupied himself by hanging out in Jasmine's papasan chair and generally wandering around, checking things out. A couple of hours later found us at Target where I shopped, Henry and Dave had a snack, we all hung out in the car while I fed Holly, then we all went back in to Target to look at closet organizers and Halloween costumes. Dave and I knew Henry was spiraling down to the point of no return when he started running in circles around the aisles and generally not listening to us. After we paid, Dave hustled the boxes and Holly to the car while I hustled Henry to the bathroom. As we were walking out of the store Henry zig-zagged his way through the store security towers to the double doors and when we got outside he just fell over. Literally. I don't even think he tripped over his own feet. A woman behind him said she saw the floor pop up and trip him, after which he stood himself up, looked a little dazed and embarrassed, then sprinted to our car. He spent part of the ride home doing his best impression of a bobble-head, and by the time we pulled into our driveway he was out like a light. He and Dave stayed in the car for a bit while I took Holly in, fed her, and got dinner in the oven. It was impressive. It took four years, but I think we finally wore him out.

Posted by Jenn at 04:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Some of the things that have come out of Henry's mouth over the last few days:

"We can't go out, I need to spend some quality time at home."

"I'm going to build a freaking huge drum set. It's going to be really freaking loud."

"...and then after that, the Easter Pig came, and he left me lots of pig-shaped eggs all over the backyard, and they were filled with jelly beans, and strawberries, and blue m&m's..."

Next we're going to teach him to say "Frak!" whenever he's upset about something.

I have a whole bunch of pictures sitting on my camera, waiting to be shared with the world. If only we could figure out where we packed our USB cord so we can download them.

Posted by Jenn at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

This morning was one of those mornings. Playgroup was held at a house with a pool. Henry was all excited. Then we got there and he was extremely timid. Then he and I proceeded to get extremely irritated with each other, him with me because I was trying to get him into the water, me with him because he was being so stubborn about not doing it. I carried him around with me briefly in the water when we first arrived thinking that if he could just get past the first hurdle in his brain he'd be a bit more adventurous, but alas, it didn't work. He really needs the kid pool at the community pool which starts off at 0" and works its way up to just over three feet. The gradual deepening of the water is much better suited to his personality. Either that or he already has major trust issues with me.

After playgroup we swung by the University to pick up Dave, head home for some lunch, then head to the local amusement park. I warned him that we weren't in a good mood. It became evident pretty quickly exactly how much of a bad mood we were in, what with all the whining and bickering that Henry and I were doing. I was surprised that he hung in there, that he didn't bust a Dave-shaped hole through the wall of our house to get out as quickly as possible. Instead we all piled into the car and hit the road. Frankly that outing was just what we needed. We all came home much happier, full of frozen yogurt, sprinkles, sno-balls, and caramel apples, and with a brighter outlook on life in general.

Right now, Henry is in bed dreaming of lightning bugs, bounce houses, and ball pits, and I'm off to pop an allergy pill and settle onto the couch to watch a few episodes of "Weeds". Perfect end to what turned out to be a pretty good day.

Posted by Jenn at 08:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Henry and I are having a very quiet day, spent mostly on the couch. We went to my friend's house this morning so she and I could practice a dance we're learning. While we were tending to our chasse's, Henry threw up all over her couch. It seemed to be apropos of nothing, so after throwing cushion covers in the wash and rinsing out a certain someone's pants, Henry spent the rest of our visit running around in his underpants, shirt, and socks. All he needed was his sunglasses and he would have truly been channeling Tom Cruise in Risky Business.

I think the morning must have completely wiped us out because after we returned home, we spent some time half-heartedly playing and doing some light clean-up around the house, but finally threw in the towel and hit the living room couch with snacks, the TV remote, and Dave's laptop. So far we have a list of things that we're going to do when Daddy gets home based on things we've seen. One is to make a Drumbone a la Blue Man Group, which Henry was totally into. One day when he gets over his aversion to loud noises and darkened theaters, we'll have to take him to see them perform. The other thing we decided we want to do is to make a wind chime. Dave's going to be busy when he gets home, unless he succumbs to the lure of the couch as well.

Posted by Jenn at 02:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So Henry has pneumonia. He started coughing again this afternoon and while I (selfishly and truthfully) panicked at facing the possibility of another week spent tossing and turning and listening to him hack and cough all night just as it seemed he was getting over the last bout, he was kind enough to cough so hard he threw up. Twice. That was all it took for us to decide to not wait for the pediatrician's office to open in the morning. We piled into the car and headed for the nearest emergency room. About two hours in, I was fairly certain we would leave with the news that it's just a bad cough, that we'd have to ride it out, but then the doctor came back after looking at Henry's chest x-ray and said it was pneumonia. Poor kid. I have to hand it to him, he's had some pretty interesting things hit him this season: first a bad cold, then an ear infection that burst his ear drum, followed by strep throat, and finally pneumonia. He gets his penchant for going the dramatic route from me.

Posted by Jenn at 09:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Actually, we've been back home since Saturday. As soon as we got off the interstate we stopped by the house to pick up our mail, then drove straight to Megan's. Nothing cures the blues that can be brought on by a seven hour car trip like snuggling a newborn. And snuggle I did.

The trip was good. Henry had a cough and since we were sharing a room, neither of us got much sleep during the week. His only consolation was that as he was slowly feeling better, I caught his cold, then Dave called from California to say he'd gotten it, Thursday my mom caught it, then on Saturday morning my Dad was hacking away. The kid knows how to spread the love. I also think that the order in which people got sick is a demonstration of who was smooching on Henry when and how soon after we arrived.

I'm not sure if it was because he wasn't sleeping very well or if it was because he was testing to see if he could get away with a lot more at Grammy and Grandpa's house than he can at his own, but Henry was a bit of a holy terror. He was throwing fits left and right when we were hanging out at home, although when we were out and about, he was his usual chipper self. He tried it again the Sunday morning after we got back to the 'burg, this time complete with crazed leg kicking, and found himself right smack in the middle of fourteen thousand different kinds of trouble because by that point I'd had it. Since then he's been great. Should've done it sooner. Sorry Mom and Dad.

Posted by Jenn at 09:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Right now Henry is completely enthralled by a concert on PBS. It's a jazz ensemble led by Wynton Marsalis. At the age of three, Henry already has classier taste in music than his mom.

Posted by Jenn at 08:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A couple of weeks ago we went to playgroup. At this playgroup, there were lots of balloons to kick around. Henry was very happy. When it was time to leave, he asked if he could take one of them with him, and I told him they weren't our balloons to take, but that, thanks to his Great-Grandma Ethel, we had some at home that we could blow up and play with. When we got back home, Henry selected a yellow one, and he was very happy. The next morning the first thing he did when he came downstairs was locate his balloon so he could run around with it, bounce it, and, finally, sit on it. It popped. Henry was a little confused about what had happened and after I explained that he was a little too heavy to sit on a balloon without it popping, he asked for another yellow balloon. I brought out the baggie, but there were no more yellow balloons to be had. I suggested green. Nope. How about blue, your favorite color? Nope. It had to be yellow. While I was telling him that other colors were just as much fun as the yellow ones, I went out the front door to check the mail. Sitting in the mailbox was a Valentine's Day package from his Great-Grandma Ethel. And what's the first thing he pulled out of his box of presents? A baggie full of balloons, at the center of which was a yellow one. Henry was very happy.

Last Friday evening the three of us were hanging out in the back room. Dave was on the computer and Henry and I were messing around on the bed, playing musical instruments, having tickle fights, and generally raising a ruckus. For whatever reason, I started singing "I'm gettin' nuthin', for Christmas/Mommy and Daddy are mad/I'm gettin' nuthin' for Christmas/'Cuz I ain't been nuthin' but bad". Henry turned away from me and was very quiet. I leaned around to see if he was all right and his lower lip was stuck out, his chin was quivering, and tears were welling up. I asked what was wrong and he said "Nothing" but still there was the quivering and the welling and the lip-sticking-out-ing. I asked if he was upset about my song and he turned to me with tears running down his cheeks and literally roared at me. There was just no other way to express his feelings I guess. So I dissected the bits of the song: "Are you sad because you think mommy and daddy are mad?" *sniff* "Are you sad because of the part that says 'I ain't been nuthin' but bad'"? *sniff* "Are you sad because you think you aren't getting anything for Christmas?" *WAIL*, *TEARS*, and of course *horrible parental guilt*. I assured him that it was just a song and that it didn't mean anything, that of course he'd be getting Christmas presents, etc, etc, and also GOOD GRIEF. The next morning we got up, I went out to check the mail, and Henry had a package waiting for him from his friend Clementine. And in this package were awesome blue (his favorite color!) pajamas that were housed in a lovely Christmas gift bag. I was all "SEE? I told you you'd get Christmas presents! It was just a silly song!" And so if there were any lingering doubts left over from the previous night's musical debacle, they were successfully put to rest by a very sweet little girl and her family. Henry was very happy.

Posted by Jenn at 03:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

One of the first words Henry learned how to say was "moon". In fact, I don't think we even really knew that he knew how to say it until one day while we were toweling him off after a bath he spotted a mole on his upper thigh, pointed to it, and with great conviction declared "Moon."

Tonight while getting him dressed for bed I pointed to his thigh and, per custom, said "Nice moon", to which he replied "Yeah. It's a brown moon." long pause "How come it's a brown moon?" I told him I didn't know, and then I pulled up my sleeve and pointed out a brown moon on my arm. Henry said "Look! You have a brown moon too! And another one! You have lots of brown moons!" Then he looked up, waved his hands in front of my face, and excitedly declared "You have lots of pink ones too! There are lots of different colored moons!"

Is that a hint I need to call my dermatologist?

Posted by Jenn at 08:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Henry woke up yesterday morning crying a snotty, tear-filled, fever-fueled river, a river that flowed heavily for approximately ten minutes whilst sitting on the floor of his bedroom in his daddy's lap. It was extremely sad. I happened to notice that the lymph nodes in his throat looked swollen and that they also felt swollen so we made an appointment with the pediatrician for later that evening. During the course of the day he ate a little bit, and perked up in general, and he didn't seem swollen anymore. I briefly thought about canceling the appointment, but then decided to go anyway considering how sick Dave has been with a throat thing, and how sick I was the two weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, not to mention all the holiday traveling we're about to do. The doctor did a throat culture and this morning we got a phone call saying it had tested positive for strep. So now we're onto antibiotics which caused a rash, Benadryl for the rash, and new antibiotics. I'm not thrilled with the feeling that we're filling our kid up with all sorts of medicines. I'm also not surprised he had an allergic reaction to the first antibiotic because it's the same one I'm allergic to. Fortunately his fever has pretty much left the building so I can stop giving him Tylenol, so that's one med that's off the list.

About five minutes ago Henry discovered under the tree the Christmas present that his Great-Aunt Liz sent him the other day. He showed it to me, asked if it was for him, asked if he could show it to his kitty cat, then asked if it was Christmas-time and could he open it. I explained he had to wait until Christmas day. He protested a bit, but generally took the news like a champ. He's now sitting on the couch under a blanket watching a movie, accompanied by his kitty cat, his Christmas present, and a bowl of crackers. The ultimate sick day.

Posted by Jenn at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Bright and early this morning Henry and I hopped into Kim and Elsa's Jeep sleigh and headed off to have breakfast with Santa. Both kids were into the breakfast part, but neither was enamored with the whole Santa bit. That is, until Elsa found out Santa was handing out presents. Then she made herself known to him very quickly, and then proceeded to reacquaint him with her presence often after that. Henry, however, was not to be enticed by the notion of presents at all. He chose to spend the majority of the hour and a half we were there hiding under our table. I say hiding, but really it was more along the lines of playing. I should give my kid a little more credit. I do think a little part of him was worried I'd pick him up and make him go over anyway, which I did very briefly consider, but then thought better of it.

Meanwhile, Elsa continues to push Henry's buttons (what, like it's hard?). While unpacking Christmas decorations a few weeks ago, we came across an orange cat doll that one of Dave's Aunt's gave to Henry last year. It came complete with a sweater that says "Henry", plus a Santa hat and scarf. The cat is now naked, and the only thing keeping him warm is the glow of Henry's love, not to mention the death grip he has on the cat at all times. Elsa picked up on this right away, and reveled in the sight of Henry having a complete freak out whenever she would sneak the cat away. Finally she gave up on the "sneak" part and walked up to where he was sitting and pretty much said "Hey Henry, I'm taking your cat," waited for that thought to register in his brain, then once it hit home and he got a little wide-eyed over the whole thing, she took off with cat in hand. Of course, Henry chased after her protesting loudly. At the end of breakfast, Elsa crawled under the table to hang out with Henry and he immediately started rolling around on the ground and crying "NO ELSA! DON'T TAKE MY CAT!" I had to tell him that she wasn't interested in his cat at this particular time and he calmed down. She definitely has him on the ropes.

Posted by Jenn at 04:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here are three little things that Henry's been saying lately that make me melt into a puddle of goo because they're so cute:

1. When he wants another one of something, he says "Uh-nudder one?" Silly, and probably not post-worthy, but honestly, he can have whatever he wants when he says it.

2. "Ta-daaaaaa!" I don't know where he picked that up. Probably pre-school. Whenever he finds something he was looking for he holds it up for me to see while saying "Ta-daaaaa!"

3. The last one is when he asks if something is his, he says "Is this mine-t?" Don't know where the t came from, but I'm glad it's there.

Posted by Jenn at 09:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yesterday we headed out to the wilds of a nearby town to go for a ride on the Holiday Express. It's a diesel train that's decked out Polar Express-style. The trip lasts about an hour and features holiday songs, a reading of the Polar Express, a visit from Santa, Rudolph, an elf, and a snowman, followed by more holiday songs. We went with our friends Kim, Jason, and the always ebullient Elsa. We told Henry we would be going for a ride on the train, and he kept asking if we were going on "the one near Grammy and Grandpa's house, the loud one with the escalator and the doors that open like this *hands held side-by-side, palms out, moving away from each other, then back again*". He was pretty disappointed that the answer was no until we pulled up to the "station" and there was the train in all its glory, decked out in icicle lights and looking resplendent. Even I started to feel pretty excited when I saw it. When we got on the train he wanted me to carry him and then he spent the rest of the walk through the many cars saying, with deep impatience, "C'mon! C'mon! Let's go! Can we sit there? Can we sit here? Can I have a blanket like one of those? C'mon! Hurry!" The train was pretty full when we got there, and we ended up in the furthest car from the entrance, which also happened to be the dining car. It was very cool. It was just past sundown so we could see the Christmas lights people had decorated their houses with, much to Henry's great joy. We noticed a couple of people peering at us from the windows of their houses and even managed to elicit a few waves. I didn't think Santa would go over very well with Henry, but since Henry and Elsa were the first kids in the car, I know Henry at least was too surprised to be nervous. He was shy though and ducked under his chair when Rudolph and the Snowman tried to high five him. Meanwhile, Elsa danced the whole second half of the trip. In the aisle. Often with Dave. If only I'd had my camera.

On the ride home, every time we passed any Christmas lights anywhere, Henry would say that he had seen them earlier on the train. This was especially amusing when we drove down Main Street where the street lamps are individually decorated, because then it was a mad rush of pointing at each one and saying "IsawthoseChristmaslightsonthetrain... IsawthoseChristmaslightsonthetrain... IsawthoseChristmaslightsonthetrain..." Needless to say, it was a *very* good evening.

Posted by Jenn at 08:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Is it possible for Leo to look any happier than he does at that moment?

Posted by Jenn at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

...and to celebrate, Henry spent the evening enjoying the feel of the breeze on his own tail end. After a post-nap trip to the powder room, he emerged sans everything but a shirt. He spied me sitting in front of the computer and ran over, asking if he could watch Christmas Lights "without underpants, without pants, and without socks on?" Naturally I said yes. Then when Dave called us in to dinner, he asked if he could eat his pepperoni pizza "without underpants, without pants, and without socks on?" Of course, we said yes. Soon after, he asked if he could play his drum set "without underpants, without pants, and without socks on?" Those two practically go hand in hand, so there was no way we could say no. Getting him ready for bed tonight will be a lot easier with a couple of the usual barriers removed.

It's hard to believe November is almost over. We've got lots of Christmassy activities on our schedule over the next few weeks: rides on the Polar Express, breakfast with Santa, tree-lighting ceremonies, parades, cinnamon applesauce ornament making, and Henry's personal favorite, a nighttime car ride where we eat donuts and drive around looking at everyone's Christmas lights. There's a lot to look forward to.

Posted by Jenn at 08:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

More fun with Henry. He's certainly testing every limit he can think of. Of course, the real fun began after he decided to stay awake for his entire nap, despite the dark room and the soothing hum of his humidifier. Nothing like a three-year-old with red-rimmed eyes actively ignoring you and the wisdom that has come with thirty-three years spent walking around on this planet. Kids are great. And then sometime kids are even better when you drop them off at your best friend's house so you can drag your husband to see a vampire movie that's geared towards fourteen-year-old girls. Man, am I looking forward to tomorrow.

Posted by Jenn at 08:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Henry was a holy stinkin' terror yesterday. Wouldn't listen to me. Did the opposite of everything I would ask him to. By the end of the day, my patience was entirely gone. Actually, by naptime my patience was gone. Dave offered to put him to bed but by that point I wanted to see the whole ordeal all the way to the bitter end. No way was I going to lose out on the satisfaction that closing the door on him for the rest of the night would bring. Sounds terrible, doesn't it? Some days are like that though.

Yesterday morning, I watched my friend's kid during playgroup and then brought him home with us afterward. It couldn't have happened on a better day because at least one member of the 3-and-under-set was listening to me and doing what I asked, on top of being an all around pleasant kid.

This morning I took a deep breath, opened the door to his room to get him up, and sure enough Henry was pushing limits right away. This time, though, I immediately plopped him on a chair and left him to stew for approximately five minutes, no second chances. Within three minutes he was right back on the chair. Since the second time-out, he's been pretty good. Right now he's blissfully snoozing away upstairs. Lucky kid.

Posted by Jenn at 02:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I had an inspiration for today's post, but it's now gone the way of the dinosaurs. Instead, I'll tell you about how when we came downstairs this morning, Henry proclaimed it was dark in the house. I asked him if he'd like me to turn some lights on and he said "No. We don't want to waste energy."

Also: IT'S SNOWING!!!!

Posted by Jenn at 03:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Gravity has a regular habit of winning Elsa's battle to stay vertical and so every once in a while when we're all hanging out, Kim and I will hear a loud thump, and upon investigation we'll sometimes find Elsa sprawled on the floor on her tummy. Henry's used to this, and being a gentleman, always runs and asks her if she's okay.

The other day Henry and I were hanging out at Elsa and Kim's house. There was a lot of pretend swimming, pretend eating, and real pleading for apple cider (at least on the part of Henry) going on. At one point Elsa decided that Henry needed a big hug, so she ran over and put her arms around him. He squirmed and yelled "No! No! No hugs!" until she let him go. Kim told Elsa that she didn't think Henry wanted to be hugged and that she needed to ask him first anyway. After hearing this, Elsa turned to look at Henry, who was looking at her warily. After a few seconds deliberation, she decided to go for it anyway and lunged after him, at which point Henry turned and ran for his life. They charged around the house at full blast, eventually ending up back in the living room. Elsa gave Henry a big hug from behind despite his loud protestations, then turned and walked away. She then went and sat at one of the chairs at her little table, purposely fell off, and landed with a thud on the floor. Henry ran over saying "Are you okay, Elsa? Are you okay?" She said "Yes", then she held her arms out and said "Henry pick Elsa up? Henry pick Elsa up?" I turned to Kim and told her that Elsa definitely has some Southern in her.

Henry may be older, but Elsa is, without a doubt, wiser.

Posted by Jenn at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

...whenever Henry gets a cold I figure it's only a matter of time before it hits me. After a burst of energy this morning that came to an abrupt end once I picked Henry up from school, I'm now dragging. I want someone to come over and make me a delicious, healthy dinner, maybe some sushi, and then send me off to bed.

I'm going to muster what little energy I have left to point you in the direction of Dave's blog. Last night he wrote a great post about chemicals and how they're villainized by the media thus creating havoc and confusion and a rising influx of English majors stampeding into the halls of venerable learning institutions, English majors who could've been outstanding scientists if they hadn't been scared into studying the works of dead authors by the likes of major news outlets. Or something to that effect. That didn't happen to me though. I happen to really like dead authors. Dead languages too. Maybe I'll post tomorrow in Old English, just for a laugh. Also, I prefer dead bugs.

Posted by Jenn at 04:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Henry won't go downstairs in the morning unless you go with him, possibly because he thinks if he goes down alone, who knows how long it'll be before someone comes down to cater to his every whim. One shudders to think... The other morning I was making beds (ha!) and putting dirty clothes in the laundry hamper (as if!) while Henry patiently waited for me at the top of the stairs. Finally he piped up with the following: "Mom, c'mon... Hey! Mom! C'mon! Mommy, c'moonnnn... Mommy! C'mon!" and when I finally wandered over and started going downstairs with him, I got: "Good girl, mommy, good girl!" This happens to be pretty darned close to what we say to Flash whenever she pees on command in the backyard, and I'm not so sure what I think about that.

Posted by Jenn at 07:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Not too much, as it turns out. Henry tossed and turned all night Friday, getting approximately three hours of sleep. He had a little fever on Saturday morning and said his ear hurt. We put him down for a nap at 11AM, he slept hard for five hours, and when he woke up, he told his Grammy his ear had cleared. On Sunday he was fever free and aside from looking tired seemed on the mend so we headed to the red line for a quick train ride before his nap. On the way back, he wanted to get off, told us his ear hurt again, and that he wanted to go back to Grammy's house. Dave and I decided to take him to the emergency room at Mount Auburn Hospital where he had the most amazing experience with medical professionals he's ever had. He hates having his temperature taken, but the nurses and doctor had such great bedside manners that he was perfectly happy to let them do whatever they wanted. He was such a trooper. It turned out he had an ear infection and that his eardrum had burst, which would explain why he woke up on Saturday saying his ear had cleared. Now he's on amoxycillin, or "pink juice", three times a day. We went in to his pediatrician this morning for a followup. His great experience at Mount Auburn really gave him confidence to keep his chin up for this appointment. He fussed initially at the prospect of going to the Dr.'s, and, in fact, requested a trip back to the "new doctor's office" we visited on Sunday. Once we got in the examination room though he let the nurse take his temperature and even stood on the scales all by himself. Then, as if things couldn't go any better, our pediatrician's office went and hired an amazing new doctor whom Henry liked very much. Dave and I walked out of there on cloud nine. I think Henry did too.

To make a long story longer, Monday was the only day we really went out and did anything. We went to Shelburne Farm in Stow to go apple picking because what else does a person do when they're in the big city other than drive out to the country? Henry loved pulling apples off of the trees, but not as much as he loved the sugar-crusted cider donuts we bought and consumed while we were there.

To make lemonade of the whole situation, the fever and burst eardrum forced us to lay low all weekend which means we actually got some much needed r and r. Now we're home, maxin' and relaxin' and enjoying, as Henry says, the trees with all the colors.

Posted by Jenn at 09:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

...the time of year when a mother's paranoia shifts from fear that her kid will drown in a swimming pool, to fear that we'll all die of carbon monoxide poisoning. All of this is to say that today I turned on the heat for the first time, just to get the house temperature up from a slightly chilly 63 to a much more comfortable 66. Then I turned it off again, because despite the definite chill that's been steadily creeping into the air, it still feels too early in the season to be turning it on at all.

We spent the morning hanging out at Megan's house. Her mom is in town visiting. Henry had such a great time, that when he was climbing out of the car after arriving back at our house, he said "Megan's house is fun!" Also while we were there, Henry's nose started running and wouldn't quit. Right now he's upstairs coughing intermittently, all of which leads me to believe we are now officially embarking on cold #3 of the season. This doesn't bode well for the rest of the year, unless he's busy inoculating himself now against everything the 08-09 cold season will have to offer. I'm a firm believer in getting the tough work done early instead of putting it off, so if he's getting it all over with now so he can surf from November into next summer on a wave of good health, he'll have an even bigger and louder drum set waiting for him on the other end.

Posted by Jenn at 03:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

me: Henry, are you a boy or a girl?
Henry: Uhhhhh...nope, I'm Henry!

That answers that. It's been a busy, preschool-centric week here. When I haven't been driving Henry to and from school, I've been spending a lot of time on flickr looking at other people's bento boxes. There are some amazing ones out there. The school Henry's attending has a trash-free lunch policy, which fits in nicely with my apparently strong (and previously latent) desire to accessorize food.

Henry's very much enjoying preschool so much so that he doesn't seem particularly thrilled to see me when I arrive at the end of the day to pick him up. On Wednesday morning he did do me the favor of telling me he didn't want me to go back to the car, and he even gave me a hug when I said good-bye, which is something I normally have to bribe him for, so that was a nice change of pace. He loves the teachers, and loves the activities, so I'm happy that all in all it's been a rousing success for him. Wait until it snows and they take him sledding. He won't ever want to come home.

Posted by Jenn at 07:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I got back home from dropping Henry off at his first full day of pre-school. When I left he was sitting outside with one of the teachers and a few other kids pulling sunflower seeds out of sunflowers. He was very pleased with the activity and once in a while he would turn around with a seed he had just worked loose, holding it up for me to admire. While he was engrossed with that activity, I snuck over, told him to have fun at school, patted his head, and walked away. It was a little more difficult to leave than I thought it would be, but of the two of us, I'm glad I'm the one whose heart was breaking just a little bit.

Before we left the house this morning I asked Henry if I could take a picture of him to commemorate the occasion. He said "NO!" and ran into the living room. After a little cajoling I convinced him that I would not be taking any pictures of him, after which, of course, I managed to sneak one in as he came back into the kitchen to go to the car. He wasn't pleased with me after that, but it was totally worth it. He doesn't exactly look nervous about going to school, does he?

Now I get to figure out what to do with the next two and a half hours. I'm thinking maybe I should take up smoking again to help calm the nerves, what do you all think?

Posted by Jenn at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Today Henry had his pre-school orientation. He wasn't thrilled after I got him strapped in the car and told him where we were going, but then on the drive he said that school is where all the numbers and letters are and he seemed to be vaguely interested in at least checking it out after that. It's a nature-oriented school so he spent most of his time outside, filling up a sandbox one bucket at a time, helping to clean carrots and apples that eventually got cut up for snacks. He also got to sand and oil wooden blocks that will be used inside the classroom. Basically everything he did was the coolest thing ever. One of the teachers took us inside with another little girl about Henry's age so he could get used to the classroom. He was very interested in two tasks. One of them was using little tongs to pick up little balls which he then placed in little holes. Doesn't sound like much, but he was seriously into it. The other was putting sesame seeds into a little pitcher and then pouring them into another little pitcher, and back and forth, etc, etc, a task he did just long enough for him to never want to stop doing it ever.

After orientation was over I told him I was taking him out to lunch to his favorite restaurant and he said "Okay, go have lunch, then go back to school!" His first day is Monday. Hopefully he'll remember the warm gooey feeling he had about it when he left today.

Posted by Jenn at 04:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Henry worked a little math magic while we were visiting my parents.

Henry happens to know that a certain someone, we'll call him "Grandpa", hordes his beloved root beer popsicles so that he can share them with his grandson whenever said grandson comes to visit. This may not seem like a big deal, but it requires the consumption of blue raspberry and the ever-unappetizing banana flavors of popsicle, because you can't just buy root beer flavor alone, you have to buy the mixed bag. Life always requires a sacrifice of some sort, you know?

Anyway, Henry's Grammy made him spaghetti and meatballs for our first night back in Boston. Henry ate one or two bites, squirmed a lot, ate another one or two bites, then finally made a break for the freezer, which he tore open, quickly locating the bag of popsicles. We told him he couldn't have any until he ate more of his dinner, so he reluctantly returned to his chair where he sat sort of still but not really, all the while looking longingly at the freezer. After about a half an hour of trying to get him to eat, my mom told him he could have a popsicle if he had three more bites of meatball. She held up three fingers, which Henry studied very closely. Finally he got off his chair, pushed down two of her fingers (and her thumb, which was slightly sticking out; he didn't want there to be any confusion), and said "Henry have a popsicle after one more bite of meatball."

We agreed to his terms. What choice did we have? He used math against us!

Posted by Jenn at 10:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Remember back in March when I listed out the three things I wanted to accomplish by the end of this summer? To jog the memory of those who don't:

1. Lose the binky.
2. Get Henry into a "big boy bed"
3. Get him potty trained

Of those three things, the one which really struck fear into my heart was number 1. And 2. Aaaaaand 3.

As it turns out, it wasn't too bad. We tackled item number 1 first by telling Henry we lost his binky. He asked for it a few times then he seemed to just get over it. He never cried or seemed very upset that it was gone.

Item number 2 took care of itself while we were at the beach. Ages ago I bought him one of those toddler aerobeds for traveling. He hated it so we kept using the Pack and Play even though he outgrew it in length and weight. After a week of sleeping in it while on vacation, he decided he'd had enough. He asked to sleep in our bed which we let him do until it was time for us to go to bed, after which we would move him back to the Pack and Play. Henry did this every night until we got home. He seemed pretty happy to get back to his own bed, but we figured if he had spent a week getting accustomed to a bigger bed, we didn't want to lose this opportunity to transition him to one at home. So we brought up the mattress in our guest room and he's been happily snoozing away in the freedom of a full-sized bed ever since. The bonus is now we can crawl in with him and talk about our day after he's been tucked in. It's one of my favorite times of day.

The third one we accomplished with the help of my friend Gabriella who I've since told should write a book about potty training. I thought it was going to be a nightmare, but it was pretty easy, until, of course, he regresses, but, you know, la-la-la-la-laaa...

So, the potty training was the really big thing we needed to accomplish because at the end of the summer Henry is starting school. In fact, he's starting school on the 8th of September. He isn't going to know what hit him. I feel bad, because once you start preschool it doesn't end for a really long time. So long carefree days of playgroups and sitting around banging drums, and hello text books and teachers' dirty looks. Poor kid.

Posted by Jenn at 05:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week Henry embarked upon the journey that is commonly known as "potty training". Armed with only toddler-sized underpants and a very large bag of M&M's, I laid out the ground rules for basic bathroom etiquette (his dad can flesh out the rest since I don't know exactly what-all men do in the bathroom, being a lady and all) and soon we were on our way. I'm not going to expound upon the particulars because once a kid is old enough to both sit on the potty *and* sincerely ask his mom for a little privacy, I figure I should respect that request all the way to Moveable Type's "Create New Entry" screen. Plus I don't want to jinx our amazing progress. Let's just say he's doing so well you can practically hear the M&M's rattling around in his tummy. Let's also say he's doing so well he got an extra special treat in the form of a magnetic fishing pole complete with little wind-up fish to catch. It's going to be a fun time in the bathtub tonight.

And just for the record, there's nothing like potty-training to make you feel like everything in your house reeks of urine, regardless of whether it actually does or not. One should really not have to focus so much time and attention to another persons, ummm, "outputs".

Posted by Jenn at 03:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last week on Thursday Henry woke up with a runny nose. On Sunday I felt a little under the weather. Henry developed his usual cough but we started using his asthma medication straightaway and after a couple of nights full of good sleep we were both on the mend.

Until Wednesday night. I didn't sleep very well for whatever reason, and was exhausted all day yesterday. Sometime in the early afternoon Henry developed a dry cough which got progressively worse. He had a hard time falling asleep for his nap, then an even worse time last night. He was consistently coughing every 30-60 seconds. At 2AM we were all still tossing and turning. I came downstairs and caught a few z's on the couch, but needless to say we all woke up today feeling pretty lousy. I'm practically walking into walls over here, delirious from both a lack of sleep and from a cold that won't go away. Dave's been burning the candle at both ends trying to get grading done so he's not feeling that great either, and Henry just won't stop coughing. We took him to the pediatrician this morning. I was fully expecting to leave with a prescription for steroids which is what usually happens when he has a persistent cough like this, but when the doctor listened to his chest he said Henry's lungs sound clear and his ears look great (I was worried about another ear infection) and that we shouldn't bother with his albuterol anymore for this cold because it's not going to help. This was all very good news except it turns out our kid is probably coughing because of a tickle or irritation in his upper respiratory system, the prescription for which is honey during the day and a mild sedative at night, the sedative's purpose being mainly to help him relax enough to get some sleep since the cough is keeping him up. So is there an end in sight? Who knows.

Meanwhile, I'm on edge because I've been listening to Henry cough nonstop for 24 hours now. There's no where to escape from it in our house because our place is so small. I end up sitting around waiting for him to start coughing again, and when he does, I get irritated, and then I feel incredibly guilty that I'm irritated because good grief, I'm his mom! That combined with the lack of sleep resulted in a quiet bout of crying on my part when Henry spilled the entire contents of his cup of milk all over the dining room table and floor this afternoon at lunch. I cried all the way to the bathroom to get a towel, I cried while mopping it all up, and then I was okay. It passed just as quickly as it came.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that tonight is better.

Posted by Jenn at 02:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

My kid could win an Oscar lately for some of the dramatic acting he's been throwing his whole being into lately. The last two days have been priceless. Yesterday he threw major fits at Megan's house so we left early, which, as far as punishments go, is right up at the top of his "Things I Will Never, Ever, Be Able to Forgive My Mom For. Ever" list, which made the howling on the way home easier to take because wow was he ever learning a lesson. And for the record, he was an angel after his nap.

Then today there was some drama over leaving the park. He's always good about leaving the park because we do the whole "Pick one more thing to do and then we're heading home," bit which always diffuses fireworks. So today he picked a slide that had been adopted by a carpenter bee that buzzed and hummed and tried to stare us down. While I was doing acrobatics keeping the bee away from Henry long enough for him to go down the slide, Henry sat at the top, seemingly paralyzed with fear. After five minutes I'd lost all patience, especially because by that time I started to get the feeling that Henry was less "afraid" and more "enjoying the show". So I carried him home. And I cursed the bee. And Henry cried. And I didn't have much sympathy.

Lately by the time naptime rolls around I just want to crawl into bed and not get up until the next day. Everyone talks so much about how much sleep kids need, yet hardly anyone mentions how much moms need. Taking into account the way I've been feeling lately, I'd put that number somewhere around seventeen hours of sleep a night. This would mean putting us to bed around 3PM and waking us up around 8AM.

Sounds glorious.

Posted by Jenn at 03:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Things are heading south over here. Last night Henry was up a lot with a cough. We gave him two doses of albuterol during the night, plus two doses of Tylenol. Unfortunately it would take him a while to be able settle down long enough to fall asleep, so we were all awake for about an hour to an hour and a half each time. I had fitful dreams that I attributed to being awake so much during the night, but as the day progresses, I'm feeling worse and worse so I have a feeling I'm getting his cold.

Henry went down for a nap about twenty minutes ago and I can hear him coughing away upstairs. Because he's an over-achiever, he also has a sore throat. I gave him some decaf tea with honey in it. Not too sure it did anything because he stopped drinking it fairly early on, but it was worth a shot. Might have to try a popsicle or cold apple juice later on this afternoon. Hopefully he'll catch a couple of z's, otherwise it's going to be a long evening.

Karen, Thomas, and Beth came over to play this morning. We had pumpkin pancakes and bacon. After breakfast we headed down to the park where we ran into Phoebe and Otto, the latter of which was tearing up the ground what with all the fast tracks he was making everywhere. Henry's cold definitely hasn't slowed him down at all; he was too busy running all over the house and park today and showing off for Karen to stop long enough to feel sorry for himself. I, however, am going to settle down in the living room with some tea and honey and commence wallowing in self-pity. I'm not above that at all.

Posted by Jenn at 03:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back in 2001 or 2002, Dave and I went and saw Harry Belafonte perform at the North Shore Music Theatre. At one point during his concert, he told a story about how when he was first embarking on his singing career, his mom told him to make sure he liked every song he sang. Her theory was that whatever song he didn't particularly like would be the one that would become a big hit, and he'd be stuck singing it over and over at concert's for the rest of his life. That song for him happens to be "Jamaica Farewell". And by the way, mother's are always right.

When I made my dad and Henry matching pairs of the World's Ugliest Pants, I thought it would be a great laugh, that we'd pack up Henry's pair, and that we'd only see them when there was absolutely nothing clean left in his bureau. Little did I know they'd become the most requested pair of pants in the household. Whenever I ask him what pants he'd like to wear, he always says "Henry's wear orange pants." I now have to look at them almost every single day of the week. The lesson to I had to learn the hard way is: make sure I like whatever it is I'm planning on sewing for my kid, because if I don't, it will become his favorite article of clothing.

And by the way, mother's are always right.

Posted by Jenn at 04:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

You know what would be fantastic? If just once when I say to Henry that it's time for a nap, he goes upstairs, reads a book with me, climbs into his bed, lays down, accepts kisses from all of his stuffed animals, snuggles in under his blankets, and goes to sleep. Although if he did do this once, that would create an expectation that he'd do it again and I'm sure it would only lead to disappointment. My kid sure can protest. And procrastinate.

Meanwhile, ever since Dave got back from his conference, whenever I'm around Henry insists that I be the one to do things. This is especially true when it's time to wash his hands and face before bed. We go into the upstairs bathroom and if Dave is with us, Henry insists that he leave the room. In fact, he insists that Daddy go into Henry's room. When we're all done in the bathroom, Henry then kicks him out of his bedroom and wants him to go downstairs. The other night he asked Dave to leave so Dave stood around in the hallway. When Henry noticed him in the mirror, he said "No, no daddy stand in the hallway, go like this!" then he climbed down off of his stool, walked into the hallway, then walked into his bedroom, physically demonstrating exactly where he wanted Dave to go. It was hilarious and odd all at the same time. This isn't a problem if I happen to be out of the house; as long as I'm nowhere to be seen, Henry's perfectly fine with being put to bed by Dave.

There are three things I'd like to accomplish by the end of the summer: lose the binky once and for all (we had a minor setback), get him into a big boy bed, and potty train him. The most important one is the potty training since he's going to be going to preschool in September and there's a moratorium on diaper changes there, but I'd like to wait on that one until the weather gets a little warmer. I'm not terrifically pushed to get him out of his toddler bed and I'm also not terrifically pushed to spend money on a new bed period, so losing the binky got bumped up to the top of the list. We started with his nap yesterday. So far so good. He asked for it a lot yesterday afternoon and evening, but today he only asked about it once. He's been a bit crabby but that's understandable. Hopefully it'll soon be a distant memory. I'm pretty proud of him for handling it as well as he is, and I'm also proud of myself for managing to put off the whole potty training thing. Again.

Posted by Jenn at 02:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Last Thursday was our last full day in Boston and when I asked Henry what he'd like to do he said "Ride on the train." My kid's so easy.

We headed out the door and on the walk to the closest train station I decided that since people usually go somewhere specific after they get on the train, we'd head over to the Aquarium to check out the seal exhibit (which is right outside the entrance and therefore free).

Henry got the true commuter's experience since he not only rode on the red line, but on the green and blue lines as well. Later when it was time to get back on the trains to go home, he summed up how he (and many others) felt about this particular adventure by emphatically declaring "No ride the blue train! No ride the green train!" True, true.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Long Wharf and I try to go at least once whenever we visit. I love being near the water and watching the planes take off and if you're lucky in the summer you might catch sight of a tall ship. Despite the many field trips I took as a kid to various historical sites around Boston and Concord, I feel like there's nowhere else in the area that is as steeped in history as that one spot, for me anyway. Before heading over to the Aquarium Henry and I walked down to the waters edge and looked at the occasional boat that would motor by and watch the planes taking off and landing. Henry particularly enjoyed throwing rocks down a set of stairs onto the lower level of the plaza.

Eventually we headed over to the seal exhibit at the Aquarium, making our way through scores of school kids who were congregating near school busses that would take them back to school, so we couldn't have timed things better. Henry fell madly in love with the seals, and spent a full five minutes with his nose against the glass. I asked him if he wanted to go in and look at the fish and he actually seemed pretty excited about the prospect. When I tried to buy a ticket the woman behind the glass said she happened to have an extra ticket so I totally got in for free which, you know, score!

Although the penguin exhibit was closed for maintenance, Henry really enjoyed wandering around and checking everything else out. He loved seeing the crabs in the Harbor Island exhibit and the giant turtles in the main tank, but by far his favorite thing about the Aquarium was the giant red lobster lollipop we bought on the way out of the cafeteria. When we walked outside some kid came up to Henry and started saying something until he caught sight of the lollipop that was half hanging out Henry's mouth. He stopped dead in his tracks and stared, wide-eyed. Later he passed us again with his dad and I heard him say "Dad, that kid has the biggest lollipop!" His dad looked, laughed, and said "Yeah, he really does."

A (short!) trip on the green line and long ride on the red train later we were back at home, waiting for Grammy and Grandpa to get home so we could get in one last hurrah before we headed back to PA the next day.

Friday was a very long and sad car ride home.

Posted by Jenn at 09:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How about I regale you with yet another tale about my kid?

Last Fall we managed to break Henry of the binky habit, but then he came down with his first bout of cold-induced asthma (although we didn't know what it was at the time) and the only way we could get him to stop his coughing long enough to fall asleep was by giving him back his binky. Then came a few other colds and more asthma attacks and soon we weren't thinking about how to break him of his binky habit at all anymore because it was turning out to be pretty useful.

Then came the first really bad day of this latest cold. Naptime came around and I told Henry to grab his binky and sleepyhat and we'd head upstairs. He said "No. No binky. No sleepyhat." My first thought was that this was going to turn into a way to procrastinate going to bed once we got upstairs, but the joke was on me. He let me tuck him in, turn off all the lights, and close the door, with nary a peep about running back downstairs to grab the hat and binky. And so it went that night, and the next naptime, and still I was completely blown away that he had made this decision on his own and was following through.

Then last night I came home from walking the dog and all I could hear was Henry yelling "AAAAUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!" nonstop from his bedroom. I asked Dave what was going on and he said he had no idea. I ran upstairs, opened the door, and instantly the yelling stopped and Henry just looked at me, totally calm. We talked for a little bit then I asked him if he wanted his binky or sleepyhat and he said he didn't. As soon as I closed the door: "AAAAUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!" So I opened it again and stuck my head in and instantly he was quiet. I left the door open a crack and went downstairs. As soon as I got downstairs: "AAAAUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!"

This went on for a while so Dave went up. Then he came back down and Henry started yelling again. We didn't bother going back up. We decided this was some weird way of settling himself down to fall asleep. A little bit later it was quiet. Around three in the morning he woke up coughing a bit, but then fell back to sleep after having a drink of water. Then at 4:45 he woke up again coughing so I gave him some albuterol and he fell asleep again.

I think we'll be taking an early nap today.

Posted by Jenn at 01:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Henry's sick. This morning he woke up with a slightly runny nose and now he looks like death warmed over, not that he needs a nap or anything, at least according to him. I just gave him some Tylenol and wrangled him into bed; I'm hoping against hope that he'll fall asleep quickly and easily and without a lot of coughing.

When Henry gets sick like this our rules about tv watching get pretty lax. When I'm sick I tend to watch a lot of tv because it helps take my mind off of my nose/sinuses/cough/whatever and it keeps my having to talk to people at a minimum because no one should have to put up with me when I'm sick and therefore crabby. I figure it's only fair for the same rules to apply to the kid. Henry's latest and greatest favorite thing on television is "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse". This saddens me greatly because I'm more of a Bugs Bunny kind of girl, but maybe Henry will come around with time. A few weeks ago we went to playgroup at a little girl's house and she had a pink Mickey Mouse ears hat that Henry immediately fell in love with and wore for the most glorious five minutes of playgroup time there ever was. If only I'd had my camera.

Anyway, this afternoon while Dave was home for lunch I ran to the grocery store and bought things to help us get through a toddler cold: chicken noodle soup, cereal bars, sweet potato puffs, and orange juice. Oh yeah, and Kleenex. Lots and lots of Kleenex.

Posted by Jenn at 02:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Today I'm too tired to come up with a title.

The day started out pretty good. Henry and I hung out with some friends, then came home for lunch, but then Henry threw up and I'm not really sure why. He had choked a little bit two minutes before it happened so it's possibly related to that, but it had also seemed like he'd worked it out, so I don't know. He had a fever the weekend before last and although it passed with no other symptoms at the time, he developed a cough a few days later. We started him on albuterol (which is an asthma treatment) a few days ago and although last night he seemed better, today he's been coughing a lot again. It's not a nice cough either. It sounds like it hurts although he doesn't seem to be too bothered by it. I'm not sure what to make of it all. We're carrying on with the albuterol as aggressively as the doctor recommended when he prescribed it to us, and if there's no improvement over the next day or so, we're going to head back to the pediatrician's. I feel bad for Henry. He's got a lot of energy and is still running around being himself, but he's not napping well because he coughs more when he's in bed than he does when he's up and about, so he looks pretty tired despite his upbeat attitude.

Meanwhile, after the throwing up episode at lunch, (which appeared to be an isolated incident but when coupled with this cough made me freak out just a little bit) (because really, when you're kid's healthy you worry, and when you're kid's sick, you really, *really* worry) I tried to get him to eat something else. He sadly shook his head at everything I offered until I waved a bowl of animal crackers under his nose. He took the bowl over to the coffee table and with each crunch, both of us felt better. After that we went for what was supposed to be a quick tricycle ride before naptime but which ended up being an hour and a half long excursion because nothing with a two and a half year old can be ever done in any kind of manner that might possibly be deemed "quick". He abandoned his tricycle in favor of walking because the allure of all of the puddles created by all the melting snow was just too strong to ignore. We came across one house that had a long puddle right under some gutters that were dripping. Henry squatted for five minutes and watched the water splash as each droplet hit the puddle. It was just so darned fascinating.

Now it's way past the time I usually get him up from his nap but we got home so late and it took him so long to settle into a coughless sleep that I haven't got the heart to wake him up yet. Poor kid.

Tonight I have a meeting to go to in New Berlin. I think Megan's going to have to kick me under the table a lot to make sure I don't fall asleep. Lucky girl.

Posted by Jenn at 05:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The latest thing we've been teaching Henry is getting him to pump his fist in the air while loudly proclaiming one of the following: "Wicked!", "Rock on!", and "Party on Dude!". I tried to convince him that Billy aka Earl Pickens would totally dig it if he went up to him after music time was over and pumped his fist at him and said "Rock on!" Henry didn't think that was such a good idea.

Today's music hour was a huge success as far as my kid was concerned. (Are there other kids on the planet? I had no idea! I thought mine was the only one.) As soon as the guitar came out of the case Henry was frozen in one spot. Unfortunately that one spot happened to be behind and to the right, so it wasn't a very good vantage point. After trying to suggest that perhaps it would be better if we joined everyone else who had the good sense to sit in front of Billy, he might be able to see the actual guitar playing that was going on. Henry wouldn't budge so I had to take his hand and walk him over to the rest of the group. I sat on the floor and Henry stood next to me, mouth slightly agape, eyes unblinking. By the end of the set, he was on his knees with his head in my lap. It was apparently completely cool and totally overwhelming. What wasn't cool was when I sang along ("No mommy sing.") or clapped to the beat ("No mommy clap hands."). I was totally stifled, man.

We made pizza for dinner tonight. We've found an amazing and amazingly easy pizza dough recipe. I thought I'd share it because it really does make one of the best pizza crusts I've ever had and you just can't keep something like that to yourself.

Posted by Jenn at 08:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My friend Karen went into labor this morning and on the way to the hospital they dropped Thomas off at our house. I was curious to see what it would be like being alone with two kids running around the house because lately Dave and I have been having the "Should we have another kid?" conversation. Not that having two boys who were born within weeks of each other, both of whom are now at a fairly reasonable age (meaning that you can reason with them, sort of), is anything like having, say a two year old and a newborn, but you know, I was curious nonetheless.

Since I wasn't sure when Karen's mom was going to be arriving in town, I mapped out the whole day: playtime, lunchtime, movietime, naptime, restofmovietime, playtime, dinnertime, playtime. Little did I know Karen was going to be superwoman and have her baby before the morning was over, but I did get to have Thomas for four hours today and it was a lot of fun. The three of us made play-doh spaghetti, built a fort with tunnels and tents, mastered the harmonica (at least mastered making sounds come out of the harmonica), colored with markers, washed our hands, danced to some music, ate some Spaghettio's, colored some more, washed our hands some more, and generally wreaked havoc, and would you believe somewhere in there I managed to sit down and read some of my book? I only read about four or five pages but still! Hands down the best part was when Thomas' dad showed up and when he asked if he wanted to go home Thomas said "No." And then I got a big hug right before they left.

Feeling pretty darned good over here.

Posted by Jenn at 02:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

When we were on sabbatical in Boston a year ago, we happened upon one of those displays at a grocery store that proffers really inexpensive DVD's. We picked up two. One of them is a collection of old cartoons, like the first Casper the Friendly Ghost (which, by the way, is really a sad cartoon) and the other features sing-along "Screen Song" cartoons, as in follow the bouncing ball. We watched the first one right after we got it, but Henry was not interested, so we packed them away someplace clever, and only recently rediscovered them. I unwrapped the sing-along collection since Henry's big into music, and there's one in particular that instantly shot up to the top of the "Things My Kid Will Watch 4 Billion Times in a Row" list. Whenever he says "Watch tuba!", we know he's referring to this:

Posted by Jenn at 02:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back in September I signed up to make a monthly donation to our local PBS station. Today our free gifts came in the mail, an Elmo doll and a Sesame Street "Let's Make Music" dvd. Henry eschewed the doll as if it were a box full of socks unwrapped on Christmas morning, then dug around in the envelope until he pulled out the dvd. Once he spied the tuba on the cover he was all "Watch this! Watch this!"

It features some of the cast from "Stomp!" which means there's lots of drumming rhythms. Henry's got a holiday tin and a round box that used to hold molten chocolate cake mix arranged in front of him on the coffee table and two drumsticks in his hand. I'm pretty sure the word "heaven" is one that he would use to describe the state he's currently in, if he had any idea what feelings the word "heaven" intimated.

Christmas came early this year!

And poor Elmo! Never has he been so spurned by a member of the toddler set. Tsk, tsk.

Posted by Jenn at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Henry's sick. Again. For those keeping count, this is the third time in six weeks. All I have to say about it is: AAAAAAUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Posted by Jenn at 02:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A couple of inches of snow fell last night. My mom and I attempted to take Henry for a walk in it. He refused to put even one foot down on the ground outside. We ended up pushing him through slush and over unshoveled sidewalks in an umbrella stroller. I say "we" but mostly it was my mom. An umbrella stroller is not the best all-weather mode of transporting a toddler. It was seriously hard work.

Meanwhile, Henry's thoughts on snow can be summed up thusly: good from far, far from good.

Posted by Jenn at 07:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday at approximately 11:30AM:

me: Henry, would you like a V8?
Henry: B8! B8! B8! Okay B8!
me: Oh boy! V8!

I rinse out his cup, pour some V8 into it, put the lid back on, put the straw back in, and then hand it to Henry.

Henry: Sob! Wail! (Falls to the floor, tears streaming.)
me: What? What did I do? Oh, right...

I take the straw out and hand the cup and straw to Henry. He hands them back to me.

Henry: Mommy do it.

I reinsert the straw into the lid of the cup and hand it back to Henry.

Henry: Sob! Wail! Trauma!
me: Gah! NOW what did I wrong?...oh...wait...

Open refrigerator, put cup on bottom shelf, close door. Henry walks over and taps the refrigerator door.

Henry: Mommy do it.

I open the refrigerator, Henry reaches in, take his cup of V8, and walks off into the living room, happily sipping away. Meanwhile, I have a nervous breakdown.

Posted by Jenn at 02:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Look! It's a stove!

Dave's dad worked and worked and worked on this over the course of the last three days. At one point I told him I felt like he was Cinderella, stuck in the garage. After watching the process from the sidelines, I can confidently say neither Dave nor myself would have had the patience to do a good job. His dad on the other hand, had the patience to do a spectacular job, because it came out beautifully.

Want to see a picture of Henry pretending the sink is a drum?

I need to find something to put on the stove top to act as burners, as well as find a handle for the oven door. Aside from those two things, all it needs is some kitchen supplies, like food and pots and pans, and it'll be ready to get some serious cooking done.

Posted by Jenn at 02:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Henry's sick again. Double ear infection. Wheezing. It's a good thing he likes taking medicine through a syringe because he's been doing it a lot lately. Also, we've been to the doctor's so often lately, that he now starts to cry in the parking lot as opposed to in the hallway that leads to the examination rooms. Despite his unhappiness at being there, he's always very polite, sobbing out a "bye-bye" as nurses and doctors come and go.

No one got much sleep last night, least of all Dave because he got up early to try and make a doctor's appointment for Henry. I think we'll be looking at an early nap time for a lot of people today. Henry especially needs the rest. One look at him and you can immediately tell how exhausted he is. He was up and down every half hour to hour starting around 1AM, and finally at 4:30 he was so frustrated and exhausted that neither Dave nor I was any kind of comfort to him. Dave suggested perhaps it would be best to let him cry out his frustration a bit, and sure enough after two minutes of crying and general moaning and groaning he was fast asleep. It was difficult to do that because I desperately wanted to help him feel better, so I'm grateful that Dave was thinking clearly enough to suggest that.

Anyway, here's hoping he sleeps well this afternoon and starts feeling better soon.

Posted by Jenn at 01:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The February before Henry was born, Megan gave us our first baby present. It was a newborn-sized romper with a matching hat. You can see them both in the picture below. We chose it as his "going-home from the hospital" outfit.

No one knew what an important item this hat would become in Henry's life. It essentially became his security blanket. There are two knots on top that he chewed on to get some relief from teething pain. As a result of almost two years worth of hardcore noshing, the hat's looking a little beat up.

Beat up is pretty generous. When you take away the glamour that the camera naturally adds, it's pretty disgusting. As you can tell from the picture, the seams at the ends of the knots are the only things that have survived, the fabric itself having surrendered ages ago. Also, the knots are kind of yellow. And brownish. And he still chews on them, so after a couple of nights, it smells pretty bad too. But he loves it, so what can I do?

I can make him a newer, better one that he'll love just as much! So I went over to Wal-mart (the only store that sells fabric within a forty minute drive), except they didn't have knitted cottons for sale by the yard. So instead I bought two 5T turtlenecks. I came up with some measurements based on his old hat, which still fits pretty well because it stretches out, and then I added a little room to grow. I even made a pattern with black contruction paper, so it would feel official.

I cut the pattern out and sewed the two sides together. I almost sewed it with the two wrong sides facing, but caught myself at the last minute. Boy, would that have been embarassing. After sewing it together using a straight seam, I decided I should probably reinforce it with a stronger stitch, so I went over the straight seam with a really tight zig-zag.

The final result, modeled by Henry himself:

Cute, right? He only wears it when he doesn't realize the hat I've put on him isn't his old one. Which I take as a compliment. However, there's no replacing an old friend, no matter how hard your mother tries to.

Posted by Jenn at 05:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Henry and I got up bright and early this morning to make our 8:00 AM Dr's appointment. Man, it was hard getting out of bed. There was much coughing during the night keeping everyone up, so when the alarm went off, it felt like it was buzzing two minutes after I'd finally fallen asleep. It was worth it though; the doctor checked Henry out and said he thought he had a sinus infection. Good to know. We now have 10 days worth of antibiotics sitting pretty in our fridge, the first dose of which is coursing through Henry's system, hopefully taking care of business. I should have also asked the Dr. about Henry's addiction to Cars and if there are any twelve step programs we could take him to in order to help him get over it. I have a feeling though that if I had asked he would have suggested we simply stop putting it into the DVD player and I'm not sure I'm capable of that. It turns out Owen Wilson is ridiculously cute, even when he's an animated red car.

Posted by Jenn at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I didn't really say much about Henry's Halloween experiences did I? Allow me to rectify that situation poste haste.

On Tuesday we took Henry to the mall for their trick-or-treating night. This is a mall that I've been to many times, at many different times of the year, many different times of the week and day, and never have I seen more than twenty shoppers wandering around, each of them no doubt wondering how a mall with so many stores in it could possibly not have any shops worth going into (with the exception of Victoria's Secret and Old Navy, but Old Navy is less than a year old so we were entirely without for a really long time.) Naturally I assumed that no one would be there for tricks-or-treats either, but wow, was I wrong. There were throngs of kids and families, all lined up single file, waiting for six o'clock to hit, at which point everyone started to shuffle in a big slow-moving circle around the mall, getting candy from employees who were stationed outside each store. It was the strangest thing I'd ever seen. It also didn't seem like the ideal way to spend the next twelve hours because that's how long I calculated it would take us to make the circuit considering how slowly the line was moving. We had decided to give it five more minutes when a girl in costume came careening through Sears with a shopping cart full of candy and started dishing out heaping handfuls into kids' eagerly awaiting treat bags. Dave took Henry over and on the way back, Henry peered into his pumpkin, stuck his hand in, pulled out a mini-Hershey bar, and then decisively said "This one!" Dave and I declared the evening a success, and immediately headed over to Wok Express for some delicious mall Chinese food. (No, really, it's pretty good!) We got some interesting looks from the families who overheard us decide to leave. I don't think they could believe we were throwing in the towel when there were people at the mall willing to give us candy! for free! whereas Dave and I felt like this was the last year before Henry gets caught up in trying to get as much candy as possible. We decided to take advantage of it.

On the actual evening of Halloween, Megan, Megan's mom, and Leo came over so we could go to a couple of neighbor's houses, ostensibly for candy, but mainly to show off how cute our kids were. Henry really didn't seem to care much about the candy after the first house. He was of the opinion that since he already had some, why bother knocking on anyone else's door? By far his favorite house was our neighbor Howard down the street whose wife is out of town. He was blasting the blues and cooking up indian food. While we chatted outside, Henry kept peering around the front door trying to figure out where the drum set was; he could hear it, he just couldn't see it. Howard doesn't know it, but Henry would have gladly sat on the couch to chat about music with him over some Chicken Tikka Masala. He may have even been willing to share the juice box Howard gave him, which is saying a lot for a two year old.

Posted by Jenn at 03:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Henry had his last tumbling session today. He was a little maniac too, running circles around the gym many times over. I'm attributing it mostly to a touch of cabin fever: on Monday, because it was my birthday, we both stayed in our PJ's until after naptime, then yesterday we woke up to a gray rainy day. Indoors is not the natural habitat for a toddler, at least not my toddler, so by this morning he was ready to see lots of people other than his mom and he was ready to expand his realm to a much bigger indoor arena. So, on his last day of tumbling, he ran around in circles, jumped on the trampoline, walked a bit on a balance beam, crawled through a tunnel, attempted to vault a big foam thing shaped like a mailbox (but then thought better of it), rode his beloved airplane for three seconds, stole some safety cones, got a timeout, spun around on a sit and spin, and got a lollipop for his trouble ("Oh boy, pop!"). The end. Last Wednesday because we were feeling totally wild and crazy, we decided to go ahead and sign him up for the next session. Henry really is enjoying it and after the first class I noticed he was doing more physical things outside of tumbling, like learning how to jump, and that can't be a bad thing.

I also signed up for the next session of belly dancing. This time we're going to learn Turkish style belly dance which is going to be a lot more aerobic. It also features a 9/8 beat which when I first heard the teacher say that thought was impossible because you can't have 9 beats in an 8 beat rhythm, but apparently you can. Can't wait to see how I do with that.

Posted by Jenn at 03:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last weekend we experienced our first temper tantrums from Henry. I don't remember what the first one was all about, but I definitely remember the second one, because an hour later I was sitting on the couch madly knitting, chowing down on peanut m&m's, and wondering when the tightness in my chest would dissipate.

He's completely entrenched in the "I want to do it my way" stage of the game and it takes a bit of a toll on a person's outlook on life over the course of the day. By naptime we've both had it with each other and are equally pleased about getting some alone time to spend in a darkened room, staring at glow-in-the-dark stars or reading a book until nodding off, depending on which one of us we're talking about.

When they're little tiny babies, when the end of the day rolls around and you've put them to bed, sometimes you feel like all you've managed to do is keep them alive, nothing more and nothing less. Of course you've also been talking to them, playing, showing them around, but you don't remember that and you feel like you're not doing much of anything at all. Lately I've been feeling that way again, except this time around I feel like all I'm doing is being stern and aggravated. Sometimes I'm amazed when Henry wakes up from his nap and is excited to see me because I'm not sure I'd be all that excited to see me. He's testing boundaries all the time so it's not surprising I'm saying "no" and having to redirect him to other things a lot more, but it's still a little hard to get used to.

Yesterday a friend of ours came over for dinner. Henry was shy at the outset, and he came charging over to me so he could snuggle under my chin and inspect our guest from a safe location until he decided what he thought. It was the most glorious moment of the day, because it was one of the first times in a long time he wasn't running away from me.

Posted by Jenn at 03:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

On Sunday Henry bonked his head on our dining room table and after thoughtfully rubbing it for a few seconds, he looked at me and said "Mommy kiss" and shoved his head towards my face. So I gave him a kiss on his head. And then I devoured him because it was so cute.

The next day he bonked his head again, I have no idea on what because I wasn't in the room at the time because I may have been checking my email instead of watching my kid. What, like you haven't ever done that? Henry shuffled in whilst rubbing his head. I looked at him in a way that I'm sure would be best described as "hopeful puppy dog" and sure enough he said "Mommy kiss!" then once again he shoved his head in the general direction of my face.

For two years my kid has been actively and successfully fending off kisses and suddenly he's going out of his way to ask for them, sometimes without the excuse of an injury.

Life is good.

Posted by Jenn at 03:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Henry's butt was looking a little red yesterday so I took his diaper off and let him run around in the buff for a while. I set the computer up so he could watch "The Wheels on the Bus" on youtube while I snuck into the bathroom to brush my teeth. When I peeked into the room to check on him, he was standing up in his daddy's chair, legs wide apart, staring down at the seat. I took a closer look and lo and behold, he had wee-wee'd all over the chair. And he apparently wasn't too keen on sitting back down in it. Can't say I blame him. I wiped it up with a washcloth while Dave went and got some industrial strength (but environmentally safe) cleaner with which to cleanse the chair. Thoroughly.

While Dave rabidly disinfected, I introduced Henry to his potty and he practiced sitting on it, closing the lid, and saying "Bye-bye poop!" which was followed by him asking me for "More poop", presumably so he could say bye-bye to it again, although there wasn't any there to actually bid adieu to in the first place. It was interesting responding to a two-years old's call for more poop. I highly recommend it.

And that is the most exciting thing that's happened around here since tumbling on Wednesday.

Posted by Jenn at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

About a month ago I signed Henry up for tumbling. I thought it would add a little excitement to our relatively quiet weeks, get us out of the house and socialized, you know the drill. Last Wednesday was our first class and it went slightly less than smashingly, to put it mildly. Airplanes are the big love of Henry's life right now, and in one corner of the gym there were a bunch of big plastic ride-on toys which the kids aren't allowed to play on until after the class, and through some weird twist of fate one of them happened to be an airplane. Henry set his sights on it and refused to be distracted by anything else, including rousing renditions of Humpty Dumpty and a trampoline. So he cried hysterically for the entire half hour. Really, I think by the end of the class we were both pretty annoyed with each other. Dave came home for lunch so I could go into the back room and bang my head against the wall until it was time for him to go back to work.

Since I'm a glutton for punishment, I thought we might as well go back this week to see what would happen, only this time Dave came along, the idea being if we were both there enjoying the activities, maybe Henry would too. Last night I started to have some anxiety about it, and this morning as we were walking in I was terrified. Once again Henry ran for the plane, and once again he was directed back to the mats by the teacher. This time he held out a bit longer. He wasn't keen on doing any of the warm-up exercises, but he did enjoy watching Dave try to touch his toes. When we had all lined up to start doing some of the tumbling, Henry suddenly remembered that last week when the class was over the teacher gave everyone of lollipop, which prompted a running chorus of "Oh boy pop! Oh boy pop!" that lasted about two minutes. I explained to him that everyone would get one after class, but first we got to have lots of fun on the trampoline. He wasn't buying it. In fact, he wasn't buying any of the gymnatics stuff we attempted to get him interested in and after the waterworks started we stopped trying and just watched everyone else do it. Or sometimes I would do some of the exercises while holding him. At the end of the class he dried off his tears, ran to his beloved plane, and sat on it with a totally blissed out look on his face. After about five minutes I pulled him off of it so other kids could have a turn and he was okay with that. Not thrilled, but not fussing either. I was pretty proud of him.

At the end of each class the teacher sings "Where is pointer?" and all the kids have to stick out their pointer finger so the teacher can put a sticker on it. Henry didn't like that at all. He had a complete and total meltdown that subsided only when the lollipops came out.

So it was traumatic (again) for all parties involved (again) except this time we inducted Dave into our little group of two (welcome to the club, dad). However, he was amused by more of what was going on this week than he was last week. We're thinking that next time he'll like it a bit more, and maybe, by the last class he'll even want to try a somersault. Or he's just completely not interested in tumbling at all and next week will be our last. I'm completely on the fence. On the one hand he's learning the hard way that sometimes he has to wait to get what he wants (ie. the airplane, lollipops) which is a lesson that's got to happen at some point. On the other hand he doesn't appear inclined to want to do any of the activities, not even the trampoline, which completely blows my mind because it's a trampoline! Bouncy fun! And I feel like if he was interested in the activities then he wouldn't mind waiting to ride on the plane because he'd be having fun doing other stuff. Now that I'm writing it out I'm wondering why we're bothering to go again next week; he's obviously not interested. Except I can't help but wonder how interested he'd be if the plane wasn't there.

Gah. Where's the tylenol?

Posted by Jenn at 02:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I would like to take a quick moment out of this very busy day to extend my heartfelt thanks to Henry for coming into the bathroom and hoisting up the blinds. While I was on the toilet.

So...thanks Henry!

Posted by Jenn at 02:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Back in July when I started snooping around amazon.com looking for birthday ideas for Henry, I came across a surfboard growth chart:

I instantly fell in love with it. Not only does it have a surf theme, which is what I'm going for in Henry's room, but it's something that he'll get to keep forever if he wants to. (It made me a little sad to cover up the previous homeowner's offspring's record of growth when we decided to repaint the kitchen.) So I added it to Henry's birthday wishlist and moved on.

A few days later, for some reason Dave's dad popped into my head, which made me think of the pond he built, which made me think (once again) "Wow, I can't believe he built a pond", which made me think if he could do that, he could probably make Henry a surfboard growth chart. So I mentioned it to him, sent him the link to the inspiration growth chart, and he said he'd give it a shot. Would you like to see the end result?

Isn't it the coolest thing you've ever seen? It came out beautifully. Dave's dad and I went shopping for paint colors while we were down in Virginia for a visit earlier this summer. After we chose the paint, we talked a little about how to put the numbers on and I suggested we go to a craft store to see what kind of pens and stencils they had. He thought that sounded like a good idea, which was completely mind-blowing for two reasons: (1) most men have a natural aversion to craft stores, and (2) whenever I suggest to his offspring (we'll call him "Dave") that we go to one, Dave immediately starts fussing and grumping and proclaiming that he couldn't think of a worse idea, so I'm used to having to put up more of a fight. When Dave's dad said "Great, let's go," my initial reaction was "Really? Just like that?", but that was nothing compared to when I asked if he'd mind if I took a quick look at the yarn section: he said "Sure!" That's when my head exploded. Dave, are you paying attention?

We picked up a couple of different silver pens and stencils (although I recall he later mentioned having to buy a bigger stencil for the numbers to replace the one we'd originally thought would work). I had been planning on ordering the hibiscus stickers from a shop I found online, but while I was at Target yesterday perusing the automotive section, I found some stickers there proving once again that whatever it is you need, Target has it. They're white with silver outlines which goes perfectly with the silver pen.

Right now Henry hates standing in front of it, but only because lately he appears to hate doing anything if it seems like we really want him to do it. Cursed toddler power plays. I'm going to try reverse psychology on him and insist he refrain from standing in front of it.

Posted by Jenn at 02:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

More spoken word courtesy of Henry:

Posted by Jenn at 01:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Henry turned two really, really early this morning at 3:53 AM. To mark the occasion I slept through it, quite possibly punctuating the exact time with a snore. Hey, I can be sentimental.

We're having a big bash for him on Saturday. I don't know how it turned into a big bash because I feel like we really don't know anybody, but there you have it. Despite the impending weekend celebration, we couldn't let the actual day go by without some pomp and circumstance, so after dinner we opened some presents and ate some cupcakes. We sang Happy Birthday and blew out a candle. Then Henry played with the boxes his presents came in while Dave and I played with his toys. So far, Dave really likes the Thomas the Tank Engine train set I got Henry, Henry really likes his new car racing set and Harold the Helicopter, and I really like the radio controlled ladybug Dave got him.

We're all very happy over here.

Posted by Jenn at 08:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The fortune in Henry's fortune cookie today said: "Today has to be better than yesterday".

What do you suppose that means?

Posted by Jenn at 08:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two and a half weeks ago Henry started to tentatively repeat words that Dave and I said. One week ago, it stopped being so tentative. This has finally progressed to his using words to reference things without the one-time prerequisite "Hey Henry, what's that?" prompt. If I may, I'd like to reiterate that "finally" that's back there in that last sentence: FINALLY! It only took you 22 and a half months to pipe up, kid. What's up with that? Huh? Did you enjoy all of the funny looks the nurses were giving us when we said you weren't talking yet, not even a "mama" or a "dada", starting with your one year appointment? It's not nice, you know!

Anyway, I first noticed him labeling things on his own last week Friday when we stopped by Megan's house before heading over to Phoebe's for lunch. Henry went straight to her kitchen so he could rummage around in the cabinet where she keeps her Goldfish. While he did this, he repeatedly said "cracker". I was completely blown away. He has never used either sign language or spoken words to indicate what he wanted before. Now there's officially all sorts of talking going on over here. If I ask him if he wants milk he says "Milk!" If he sees a dog he says "Dog!" When he discovers the moon is out he says "Moooooo!" "N"'s are a little tough. You get the idea.

On Friday when we finally made it over to Phoebe's, Henry had a grand time exploring her house. It's big and there are lots of cool things, his favorites being the piano and a light Otto has in his room that projects moons, stars, and planets all over the ceiling and walls. Another object he found fascinating was the digital photo frame they have in the living room that runs through a series of photos. This one in particular caught Henry's attention:

In the photo, from left to right: Eric, Otto, Henry, my headless body, Leo, Ade's hands.

I thought he liked it because he noticed he was in it, but I was wrong. He pointed at Leo's shiny, bald pate, definitively declared "ball!", then turned to go back upstairs to look at the stars and moons.

Posted by Jenn at 02:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last night we braved the wilds of Pennsylvania roadways, cutting a path to Reading so we could catch a Wiggles show. My mom emailed to ask if Henry enjoyed it. I thought I would post my reply since it sums everything up:

he had such a good time! he got to eat lots of french fries and chicken strips from the concession stand which he loved, except i just changed his diaper and wow, he can't be feeling that great although he's in a good mood so what do i know. i think he was a bit stupefied by the whole experience, but when they played one of his favorite songs during their opening medley, he started to figure out what was going on. he sat on my lap the whole time and just stared and stared. lately he's been making us sing twinkle twinkle little star, often, and last night they sang it with all the lights turned down and a disco ball spinning around. they also had parents hold up cell phones so it looked like there were lots of little stars in the audience. it was great. henry loved that bit. it was a lot of fun. a grandma who was seated behind us stopped us on the way out to comment on how well-behaved henry was throughout the show. i mentioned i thought it was mostly due to shock. her grandkid was about henry's age and was all over the place, physically and emotionally, going from happy to crying at the drop of a hat. it was how i imagined henry would be at the show because he's pretty young to be sitting in one spot for an hour and a half, but he did. i can't believe i'm going to say this but it was a relaxing evening. also, anthony is even cuter in real life. so's the pirate. i bought a feathersword for henry, but let's be honest, i really bought it for myself. rowr.

Posted by Jenn at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Henry had his teeth looked at today. The dentist said he thought everything looked fine, and to bring him back for a cleaning later on when his gums have had more of a chance to heal. We're all very relieved. Despite many pre-appointment viewings of the episode of Elmo that features teeth and a trip to the dentist, Henry did not think very highly of the experience.

Afterwards, we headed out to another pool party, which is both a great way to start the week and a great way to end it. On the drive out Dave kept telling Henry that we were going to see another dentist, that in fact, Henry had a few more dentist appointments after the next one as well. Fortunately, Henry doesn't pay too much attention to what his dad says to him.

This particular pool party was surrounded by 96 acres of farmland, meadow, a big hill, and lots of islands of trees to run around. And a groundhog hole. I don't think I can adequately express exactly how much fun Henry had running around, eating, swimming, and swinging. And then, as if the day couldn't get any better, just as we were about to leave he wandered into the house, found the kitchen, and discovered up on the counter a bin full of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

Right now he's upstairs sleeping all of the excitement off. I think he's got the right idea. I'm off to the couch.

Posted by Jenn at 03:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I put Henry down for his nap around 2:15. He finally decided to stop banging on the walls and go to sleep at 4:45.

It's going to be a long, grump-filled evening.

Posted by Jenn at 05:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Henry and I just got back from a pool party at Libby's. Also in attendance were Megan and Leo, and Phoebe and Otto. It took Henry a little while to get the nerve up to spend any significant amount of time in the pool. The shallow end is over his head so he was a bit apprehensive to be in the water much, so while everyone else was splashing around and spitting up in the water, I was chasing Henry around and around the pool.

Yesterday I got him a little inflatable boat to ride in because I had a feeling Henry wasn't going to be thrilled about the depth of the water. He didn't love it right off the bat, but by the end of our time at the pool he was so enamoured with it that he added the word "boat" to his vocabulary. He most particularly liked it when I'd crash him into the sides of the pool. He also very much enjoys it when you count to three and lift him out of the water real fast. Oh, the joyous shrieks, which eventually evolved into preemptive joyous shrieks because he was filled with joy over not just the action itself, but the anticipation.

Onto other business related to swimming and last weeks stroller accident, while Henry was shrieking earlier today I was able to get a really good look at his upper gum for amounts of time that have been impossible to achieve while brushing his teeth thanks to all the screaming and crying and general tight-lippedness. It looks okay except his top right tooth is exposed really far up so I'm thinking we need to take him to a dentist for an expert opinion as to whether that's a problem that will fix itself in terms of the gum growing back down or if we need to do something to help protect that tooth. Poor kid.

Posted by Jenn at 03:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Henry's latest youtube obsessions:

Johnny Cash singing "Nasty Dan" for Oscar the Grouch. Henry always points the guitar out to me.

"The Wheels on the Bus" guitar lesson from iPlayMusic:

I think I see a Henry-sized guitar in the not-so-distance future...

Apparently he's going to be a big practical joker because he thinks this video is hilarious:

Should I be afraid?

Posted by Jenn at 09:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Last Saturday evening we made a very exciting trip to our local hospital's emergency room. Henry took a little spill in his stroller and the aftermath was tear-filled and awfully bloody. His mouth received most of the impact with a brief detour down to his chin which got a bit scraped up. We had a hard enough time figuring out where he was bleeding from to be able to tell if he needed stitches that we decided to take him to the hospital so a doctor could check him out.

I had seen something on the news somewhere not that long ago that the average emergency room wait is four hours long, so I madly ran around the house trying to pack into a bag everything I could think of to keep him entertained. Anyone with a toddler knows this is a futile exercise, but I tried anyway. On the last trip up to Henry's room to grab some diapers, I spotted the frog he sleeps with every night, and although he hasn't shown any strong attachment to it in terms of it being a comfort, I grabbed it anyway and we jetted out the door.

Naturally we hit every red light on the way there.

There was hardly anyone in the waiting room and we were registered and talking to a nurse within five minutes. A few minutes after that, all three of us were squeezed onto a bed in a hospital room, trying to make each other feel better while waiting for a doctor. Since it was Saturday, Lawrence Welk was on our local PBS station, and wouldn't you know it was the only thing since the accident that had any calming effect on our kid. Lawrence Welk, with the bad renditions of Burt Bacharach songs and the hair and the costumes and the, ummm, yellow and the pale blue. And those late sixties early seventies orange and green. You know what I'm talking about. That's what quieted my kid down.

When the doctor came in, he felt around Henry's mouth, checked out his gums and teeth, cleaned him up a bit and said he looked pretty good. He didn't need stitches, his teeth were in good shape, and within a week or two he'd be perfectly fine. All of this attention to his sensitive mouth condition sent Henry into a crying jag that not even Lawrence Welk could penetrate. I tried to get him interested in some of the books and toys I had brought, but had no luck. Finally I asked him if he wanted his frog and he reached out, grabbed onto the frog, and clutched it to his chest until we were discharged and on our way home.

Sure enough, each day he's been progressively better. Saturday night was rough, but a little Tylenol and lots of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"'s made it go a bit better. And today he was back to his old self, teasing me with cheddar bunnies and tearing around the house.

Amen.

Posted by Jenn at 08:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lately some of my free time has been spent thinking about and shopping for Henry's big birthday bash next month. I'm particularly excited about this year's birthday because he'll be a lot more aware of the concept. Well, he'll at least be able to more fully appreciate the cake he's going to be diving into than he did last year, and last year he really appreciated it. Anyway, I've been rummaging around amazon.com for ideas re: what kind of toys he might be interested in and started up a wish list for him so I could keep track of all of the possibilities. I pretty sure I could happily browse for toys for my kid forever. Is that really sad?

Speaking of cake, yesterday we went to Megan and Adrian's to celebrate the 4th of July with a bbq and some fireworks. They had cheesecake for dessert. Henry wasn't too sure about it, but when I kept insisting that it really was made of cheese and cake, two of his favorite things, he decided to give it a shot. He didn't like it right out of the gate, but two minutes later, he'd eaten his fair share of my piece. Three minutes later he'd moved on to eating his fair share of Adrian's. I overheard Adrian saying "Okay, Henry, you can have one more bite, but the rest is mine." Except Henry doesn't give up that easily and apparently Adrian does. Megan and I encouraged him to eat as much as possible in between giving Henry bites. That's the magic of toddlers; they teach you to eat fast and not enjoy your food at all.

Posted by Jenn at 03:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today we went to the pool for the first time this season. I wasn't sure what Henry would think of all of that water splashing around all over the place, but as it turns out, he was instantly enamored.

This was also the first time he's been to the pool since learning how to walk. He slowly waded in, inching further and further into the water, unable to just jump in and face the cold all at once, but instead suffering with each footstep. Just like me. Once he had worked himself up to his belly, he reached out and grabbed my hand and let me guide him further in until he was uncomfortable with the depth and wanted me to hold him. His confidence in the water grew each time we waded out and back in, but each time as soon as he got up to his belly, he would grab my hand then push it away then grab my hand again. He desperately wanted to be on his own, but just couldn't muster the courage.

I couldn't help remembering how last summer, halfway down the length of the kiddie pool was as far as he could've gone without submerging. Now he can make it almost all the way down to the other end. It blows my mind. I may have even become a little sentimental there for a second this afternoon.

There was a huge group of kids running around, splashing, and raising a ruckus while we were there. One of them kept yelling out to his friends as he was chasing them "I'm want to dine on your flesh!" How gross is that? What's video games has he been playing.

Posted by Jenn at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Henry's in a pretty lousy mood today. He was all right until about 10:30 this morning, when he decided the world (specificly, everything that was going on in our house) was against him so in response he started to cry. And he carried on crying: while I put his shoes on; while we walked down our front path; while we crossed the street; while he picked a dandelion; for the entire three block walk to the park. It reminded me of that scene in "There's Something About Mary" where Ben Stiller thinks he's lost the woman he loves, and he's walking down the street sobbing hysterically. Miraculously, as soon as we got to the park, he became rather chipper an spent the next hour and fifteen minutes happily running around the place in circles. One of his favorite rituals at the park is picking up the wood chips (The areas around the playsets are filled with mulch/wood chips.) that have migrated onto the sidewalk and throwing them back where they belong. I think he gets that from me because whenever we go to this particular park I'm overwhelmed with the desire to sweep the sidewalks. Sometime soon I'm going to sneak over there with a broom and work a little magic under the cover of darkness.

The crying began again as soon as we got back to our house. Henry mashed his face against my legs and bawled on the front porch for a while, then he cried inside while I washed his hands and face, then he cried over a pear. He stopped crying for lunch, then started back up again while he plucked what was undoubtedly the "Toddler Blues" on Dave's banjo. Now he's upstairs, tucked away in bed for a nap that's taking place ~ an hour and a half earlier than usual. Is it too early for a mint julep?

Posted by Jenn at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lately Henry has become Mr. Independent. He no longer wants assistance with anything. Before, he would want a finger to hold onto while stepping down stairs. Now he'd rather get down on his knees, turn himself over so he's sitting, then scoot forward and down, one step at a time. It's a much more time- and labor-intensive way to go about it, but in the end he can say it was all him, and that's the point. It took us a while to catch on that Dave and I were obsolete as far as Henry was concerned. We carried on with the (now) old-school way of doing things, blithely offering assistance in little ways: trying to hold on to his hands while going down the tiniest step, handing him his water bottle from the top of the counter, lifting him up onto chairs when it seemed like he needed a little push up, each time wondering why by the time we'd helped him get to where he obviously wanted to be he was a puddle of tears. Once we had the minor epiphany that he wanted to do everything himself, life became a lot easier for everyone.

Except, Henry's growing up awfully fast. Which, I know, is what kid's are supposed to do, except, really? This fast? I hardly ever get to sneak a snuggle in anymore because he's always either running or, if I do luck out and catch him, pushing away.

I think maybe he sensed we were feeling a little mothballed because lately, before naptime and bedtime, Henry has insisted on crashing out on either Dave or myself in the capt's chair in his room. This generally occurs right after we finish a book, and right before he goes into his crib. It doesn't last very long, maybe five minutes, just long enough for him to chill out and relax, but not long enough for him to go to sleep.

It's the most glorious five minutes of the day.

Posted by Jenn at 08:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dave spent the day today in Philadelphia attending a conference. I spent a lot of the day worrying about how Henry and I would pass the time, especially since we were without a car. By this evening I was a little pooped out and rather than spend the last half hour of the evening crashed out on the couch while Henry watched Teletubbies, I strapped him into his stroller and we headed to the park. We chased each other around, slid down some slides, got spooked by a couple of teenagers who were cuddling in a remote corner of a faux castle, and pretended we were the captains of a boat. Right after telling Henry we had five more minutes before we had to head home for a bath, I introduced him to one of my favorite pastimes: I picked a dandelion and blew on it, sending the fluff everywhere. Henry thought this was hilarious and ran immediately to another patch of dandelions, picked one and handed it to me. He did this over and over until he realized he didn't have to relinquish the dandelion to me, he could in fact retain possession of it while I blew on it, which added a whole new element of excitement to this particular adventure. As I was sitting there watching my kid walk amongst the dandelions, carefully considering which were the best candidates for being defluffed, I couldn't help stopping and really holding on to that moment, knowing that it would soon be over. God, motherhood has made me so sentimental.

Posted by Jenn at 10:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Tonight after Henry's bath I let him go around in the buff for a little bit so that he could air-dry, because who doesn't love to indulge in a little post-bath air-dry every once in a while. And Henry, wow, does he love running around naked. The only problem is, almost every time he does get to "make it a nudie" (Props to my elderly next door neighbor who is always telling us on hot summer days that he is going to go for a dip in the near-by stream and that he's going to make it a nudie.) he leaves a little present for us somewhere. Tonight was no exception. He was squatting while flipping through a book. I didn't think anything of it because he always squats while flipping through books. I turned my back for five seconds and when I turned back around, there it was, a nice little present sitting on the floor, waving at me. Not exactly what I wanted for Mother's Day, and frankly, the absence of even the littlest grunt makes me think he didn't put much effort into it. Later, I mentioned it to Dave, who was mowing the lawn at the time, and he asked when we need to start thinking about potty training. I told him our book recommends waiting until they actually know what "poop" and "potty", etc. etc. are. So basically, not quite yet. I'm trying to convince myself that his penchant for doing his business on the floor stems from an innate enjoyment of being able to do it without having to sit in it for an uncertain amount of time (ie. until Dave and I notice the green fog emanating from the back of his diaper). This would bode well for potty training. I think I'll stop thinking about it.

Posted by Jenn at 09:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We just got back from playgroup. Since the weather has been nice the last two Monday's, we've been meeting at a local park. This seemed like a good idea when it was first mentioned, but my kid runs from slide to tunnel to fire truck to swings to slide to fire truck to tunnel and so on and so on the entire time we're there. I spend the two hours running after Henry and staring wistfully at the other mom's who are standing around chatting as their kids play around them or wait patiently for them to finish their conversation. If that's what four years of age is going to bring with it, I can't wait. I don't think I appreciated enough the joy that a room full of toys and kids and a closed door can bring. To me, anyway.

This morning after one and a half hours of non-stop running, Henry spotted a little girl having a snack at one of the picnic tables. He ran over to her and hovered around her, slobbering over her oranges. I got his cereal bar and water from the car and I sat down and reveled in the two minutes of rest. Then with a gulp he was off again, running running running. About ten minutes later one of the other mom's from our playgroup came over and asked if we'd already taken a snack break. I said we had, then took off to catch up with Henry. At some point he noticed the rest of the kids in our group sitting around a picnic table chowing down, so he ran over to them. I hadn't brought any other snack because the kid's been eating barely more than nothing lately so I figured he wasn't going to be interested in much of a snack. I was wrong. He ate almost an entire bag of raisins that had been utterly spurned by the two girls they had been brought for, plus a big pretzel, plus a lot of watermelon. He was acting like he hadn't eaten in twenty years. He was practically crawling over the table to get at everyone's food. I told the other parents that next week I was going to bring Henry lots of different bags of snacks and that I was going to hand them out to the other parents to give to him because he certainly wasn't interested if I was the one offering him food.

After snacktime, we ran over to the music play station at the park where Henry banged on some big plastic drums. Then he ran over to the musical bells and smacked one with his hand. Then he collapsed on the ground and tried to go to sleep. So we came home. Another successful playgroup.

Posted by Jenn at 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by Jenn at 04:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We had a great Easter this year. Not that past Easter's have been bad, it's just that this Easter we happened to celebrate it with a kid who was totally into it.

Saturday night Dave and I doctored a frozen pizza with some avocado, sausage, tomato, and mozzarella, set up a couple of episodes of Psych we had downloaded earlier from iTunes, dissolved some Paas egg coloring tablets, and then dove head-first into an evening of tv watching, egg dying, Easter basket preparing, and plastic-egg-filling the likes of which haven't been experienced in our neighborhood in years. I loved every single second of it, mostly because it felt like Dave and I hadn't sat down and just hung out together since the semester started. We made a vow that we would have to do things like that more often because really, the reason we married each other is the whole love thing, sure, but also because we actually like being around each other so, yeah, we should hang out more often.

Megan, Adrian, and Leo came over for an Easter brunch. We had raspberry pancakes, broccoli and mushroom quiche, cantaloupe, stuffed mushrooms, bacon, and bunny shaped cookies. Leo (who is almost two months old oh my god where does the time go) smiled at me. I believe that calls for the obligatory girlish "squeeee!" that usually follows any mention of a teeny baby smiling at someone.

Later in the afternoon we took Henry outside and thus commenced "Operation Backyard Easter Egg Hunt 2007" wherein we spent the next forty-five minutes helping Henry find the five billion (it really didn't seem like that many when I was hiding them) eggs hidden in plain sight around the yard. He totally got the concept. He got it even more when one of them accidentally popped open and a little chocolate bunny fell out. Later in the evening he dropped a bunch of them on the floor and stomped on them to get them to OPEN ALREADY so he could get at the chocolate inside. He has a great-grandma who's partial to chocolate Easter bunnies; she would have been very proud had she been here to witness the destruction.

Aside from the bubble blowing monster debacle where my kid almost broke his neck, it was a great day. I think we'll do it again next year.

Posted by Jenn at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by Jenn at 05:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Once upon a time I taught Henry how to sign the words "cup" and "book". I was very pleased. Then I tried to teach him some others and Henry was all "I see what you're doing over there but I think I'd really rather have you read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" for the four thousandth time." Thus my dreams of having a baby fluent in baby signs came crashing down around me.

Over the winter Henry finally became interested in knowing what the name of everything around him was. Lunch took four years because the tray, the plate, the sippy cup, the fork and spoon, and the fruit all had to be labeled over and over (and over) again. I thought it would be a good time to try the baby signs thing again.

I was hanging out at the yarn shop not long ago talking about it with Libby. There was another woman there shopping who said she thought baby sign language was neat, but was worried that it would discourage kids from learning to talk. I totally understand the logic behind that argument, because if you can talk with your hands, why bother learning how to speak? As it turns out, there's research that indicates the opposite is true, that kids who sign learn to speak quicker. My kid is absolutely no indication of this because he doesn't talk, other than a "mama", or a "dada", or the ever popular "YES!!", although maybe if I'd kept up with the signing he'd be talking by now. Hmmmm....

The other day we were practicing some new signs and I think I may have pinpointed a potential speedbump on Henry's "Road to Talking". See if you can figure it out:

me: Henry! Watch me! This is the sign for "eat"! See? Can you do it? You're "eating" crackers!
Henry: Eat!
me; No, no, no. Do the sign for "eat", don't say it. Watch, this is how you do it. See? "Eat"!
Henry: Eat!
me: Watch me! (signs "eat").
Henry: (signs "eat")
me: Hooray! You did it! Good job! You signed "eat"!
Henry: Eat!
me: Wait, did you just say eat? You said "eat"! YOU SAID "EAT"! GOOD BOY!!!

Teaching a kid baby sign language isn't going to hinder their ability to learn how to speak. Me teaching a kid baby sign language will.

Posted by Jenn at 03:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Earlier this afternoon we went to our town's annual Easter egg hunt. It's organized by the university and is held at a downtown park. Dave and I were curious to go for two reasons. The first one's pretty obvious: Henry's never been to an egg hunt before so we were dying (ha! punny!) to see what he would make of the whole thing. The second reason is the hunt happens to coincide with the university's annual student shindig called House Party Weekend. To sum up: there's lots of beer; lots of students driving in from other universities; a few live bands who all play the same Pearl Jam songs; and lots of all night partying. (As an aside, I think it's sad that the grunge music of my high school years is the same stuff that's speaking to college kids fourteen years later. Even I've moved on.) Some locals dread this weekend and try to get out of town but I kind of like hearing all the ruckus, especially since this town's usually really quiet. Anyway, back to the second reason: we wanted to see how hung over the students who volunteered for the egg hunt were.

When we got to the park there were plastic eggs strewn around the park as far as the eye could see, at least relative to a toddler. Henry immediately ran for them and tried to pick them up. We told him he couldn't do that yet, so he wandered around, pointing at all the different colored eggs. Then he discovered if he stomped on them they'd pop open, which technically isn't picking them up, right? Dave steered him back towards the sidewalk and distracted him from the glory of Easter eggs by pointing out a duck while I stayed behind and put back together the ones he'd stomped on.

Henry loved running around with all of the other kids. He was not enamored with the Easter Bunny so we didn't get any pictures of them together. He was, however, extremely fond of Bucky the Bison. Bucky tried a couple of times to coax a high five out of him, but Henry prefered to admire him from a distance.

At one o'clock everyone gathered around the grassy area in preparation for the hunt to begin. When the opening bell sounded a bazillion kids ran out with their baskets and started grabbing eggs. A bazillion kids minus Henry, that is, who stood on the sidelines and was either confused, or was doing a very good job of obeying his mom and dad's advice about not picking up any eggs. Obviously he was confused. I stood in front of an orange egg and encouraged him to pick it up. The other parents were very nice about steering their kids clear of that particular egg. Finally Henry ran over and picked it up. Then he ran over to a purple one and picked it up. After that, there were no more eggs to pick up. It was over that fast. Seriously. I'd guess the whole thing lasted 30-60 seconds and then everyone cleared out. Further up the lawn were a couple of empty eggs that had been looted and dumped, which Henry spied and ran to pick up. That's what's great about Henry's age. It's not about what's in the eggs, it's all about the thrill of finding them.

And in case you were curious, the students didn't seem at all hung over.

Posted by Jenn at 02:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I have this problem whenever Henry and I go into Toys'R Us: I want to buy him one of everything in the store. Today we went there so I could pick up some things for his Easter basket. I was thinking of getting him something cat-oriented because he loves them THIS MUCH. While perusing the aisles, we eventually found ourselves facing a big wall filled with stuffed animals. Henry squealed with unabashed glee and pointed his finger. This was not your average finger point, oh no, it was a finger point full of great purpose. I spent the next few minutes picking out animal after animal and watching him vehemently shake his head in the negative, until finally I got to a huge stuffed bear. His arms shot out and he grabbed it, rubbed his face in the bear's belly, then he cooed a few times. I thought about getting it for him, but then I remembered the last time he went ga-ga for a doll. It was a koala bear. He killed me with his cuteness in the store so I forked over the money, and by the time we got home Henry was all "Whatever, mom." It has since sat untouched on his book shelf. So today we left without a bear. And yet, I still want to buy him everything in that store.

Posted by Jenn at 07:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Henry turned 19 months old last Friday. To mark the occassion, I thought I'd share with you some of the things I've discovered about him since we've started going to playgroup:

1. He can stack things. At his 18 month checkup the nurse asked if he could stack things. We had no idea; we don't really have stackable toys at home. We said "Uhhh, sure." The nurse also asked if our home life was happy and we hemmed and hawed so much that by the time one of us said yes, she was looking at us funny. For the record, we have a very happy home. Also for the record, we always manage to somehow blow the important questions. There's probably a big, red flag in Henry's folder now. Anyway, at playgroup there are big cardboard bricks, which one day Henry started stacking. So there you go.

2. Henry can sit in a chair all by himself and eat a snack. At the same time! Which is more than I can say for myself.

3. He can eat apple slices. He nibbles his way through the middle of a slice then shoves each remaining half in his mouth while I stand next to him quietly having a heart attack.

4. He likes bug-shaped graham crackers, but seriously, who doesn't?

5. He's way more naturally social than his mom is. That's not really a surprise though is it?

6. He can stick a whole ping-pong ball in his mouth. I couldn't be any prouder.

One of the four year old girls who attends the same playgroup came up to me this morning and said "Hey! It looks like you brushed your hair today!" I told her I had, then I asked her if it was an improvement over how my hair usually looks and she said very vehemently "Yes!". I'm going to go sit on the couch and work up a complex now.

Posted by Jenn at 01:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was flipping through some of my mom's photos last fall and came across one of my uncle when he was a kid. I was immediately enamoured of his totally rad haircut. It was cut really short from his neck up to the top of his head. The hair on top was left longish and tousled looking. My dad told me it's called a "high and tight", a common military haircut (usually the military version is a lot shorter on top, more like crew-cut length). I decided that would be Henry's next haircut. Did you know that watched hair never grows? I learned that the hard way. Finally, this month Henry achieved a proper state of general hair disheveledness (only the second time it's ever happened), so out came the clippers. This morning, in fact. Yes, even though I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing when it comes to hair, I decided to cut Hank's myself.

Before I unveil the "after" pictures, I'd like to point out one thing that's probably pretty obvious and doesn't need to be said but I'll say it anyway: it's hard to cut an eighteen month old's hair. Especially when they're running around instead of sitting in a chair which in hindsight probably would have been a good idea. The initial cut only took about five minutes, followed by a half an hour of stealth swipes which took place while he was sufficiently distracted by something like a book. Or the Wiggles. I think it came out all right though. It's not perfect, but he's cute enough to pull it off. Next time I think I'll just take him to a barber.

Posted by Jenn at 01:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today it's absolutely glorious out. So glorious, Henry and I went for a walk downtown earlier this morning, something we haven't done in three weeks because one or all of us has either been: 1. sick, 2. getting better, or 3. scared to go outside because it's been 20 degrees or less out. By the time we got to where we were going, we were both so happy we were skipping and singing "Tip-Toe Thru' the Tulips With Me" (you should hear Henry play the ukelele; it's wicked).

Last weekend my parents came up to spend a couple of days with us. It was great timing because Henry was feeling 400% better than he was the week before. There was much playing and chasing and squealing going on, which was a nice change from the moaning and coughing and grumping of the previous two weeks. Both sets of Grandparents brought books for Henry when they were here for visits, and both books are dastardly in their own ways. Dave's parents brought Henry a pop-up book featuring a dog named Scruff who's hiding so he doesn't have to take a bath. The first page is a pop-up of the bath that's actively being avoided by Scruff. It features lots of glittery bubbles. Henry is at the stage where he likes everything to be labeled, so sometimes we sit there for five minutes while he points at each bubble and waits for me to say "bubble". Then when we get to the end of the book, he turns it over and we do it all over again. Sigh. Thanks grandma and grandpa. My parents brought Henry Sandra Boynton's "Your Personal Penguin" book which has an accompanying song sung by Davy Jones which you can download for free from the publishers website. We listen to it approximately 497 times every day. It's the last thing I hear in my head when I go to sleep and the first thing I'm humming when I wake up. Thanks grandma and grandpa.

Posted by Jenn at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yes this is another entry all about how my kid is still sick.

Last Monday was the last night of good sleep Henry's had. Tuesday night he was fussy all night, Wednesday night he moaned and groaned, Thursday night he had a full-blown cold and couldn't breathe comfortably, Friday night see Thursday but also include the revelation that he's also teething (because apparently the Universe hates us). Which brings us to Saturday night. He couldn't settle down long enough to sleep because of the teething and the coughing. Around 3:30AM I pulled him out of his crib and brought him to bed with us so that I could rub his back until he fell asleep. He slept for a couple of hours, then sat up, fussed, and threw himself dramatically across Dave's neck, after which he sighed comfortably and settled down. Dave put up with this for a few minutes then came to his senses and put Henry back in his crib. He slept until 8AM. Dave went in to get him up for the day but as soon as he picked him up, Henry laid his head on Dave's shoulder and went back to sleep. So back to bed he went. And he slept until noon.

Henry was pretty groggy during the early afternoon but he had some lunch and wandered around the house for a bit. Dave and his parents took him up to the University for a tour of Dave's lab and by the time they came home around three, Henry was ready to crash again. I put him down for a nap and let him go for two and a half hours. When I got him up at 5:30, he was out like a light but I was worried that if we didn't get him up now, he'd be awake all night. He was feeling hot so I took his temperature which was 103.4. We got pretty worried, gave him some Tylenol Cough and Cold for Infants, then called his doctor. He said we were doing the right thing, that Henry's temperature was high but not at the point where he was really worried about it. If it got up to 104 or more, put him in lukewarm bath to cool him down. He also told us to bring him in for a checkup today at 8AM. We stripped Henry down to his diapers and put him back to bed. He went to sleep immediately. Dave and I took turns fretting and going upstairs every 20 or 30 minutes to take his temperature. It went steadily down until it finally broke a few hours later. At 10 Henry woke up hungry so we gave him a late dinner then freaked out because we were uttlery exhausted and here Henry was, wide awake after having slept the entire day with the exception of about four hours in the middle. Dave read him his favorite book which he wasn't remotely interested in. In a desperate bid to get him to sleep, we turned off all the lights and Dave rocked him. He fell asleep a few minutes later. I couldn't believe it. He only woke up a few times during the night after that.

The doctor checked him out this morning and said to continue giving him the Tylenol or we could switch to Advil (which you don't have to give as frequently). He also said Henry has infections in both of his ears so we got a prescription for antibiotics which we have to give him twice a day. The Dr. mentioned he couldn't really hear what was going on in Henry's lungs because he was crying the whole time, so he couldn't rule out pneumonia, although he doesn't think Henry has it. Either way the antiobiotics would take care of it if he does. He's been in a much better mood today, running around the house a bit and playing with some of his toys which had gone untouched since Thursday or Friday. All the sleep he got yesterday really helped him out.

I'm so looking forward to having things return to normal around here.

Also, thank god Dave's parents were here to help look after Henry because we were both stretched pretty thin by the time the weekend rolled around. At one point Saturday evening we were standing in the kitchen, completely dazed, getting dinner ready when Dave stopped and said "Look, we're both in the kitchen getting dinner ready. And Henry's in the living room with my parents. How great is this?" And it truly was great.

Posted by Jenn at 01:54 PM | Permalink

Henry got a cold Tuesday night. Yesterday I started showing symptoms of it too. Sleep? What's that? Last night was the worst night so far. He's really stuffed up and can't sleep even though he's dead tired so Dave and I took turns all night long rocking him. There was lots of moaning and groaning and snuffling and coughing. Finally around 5AM he dropped off in his crib. For two hours. It wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't had to blow my nose every four seconds during the night. He's pretty loopy today from lack of sleep, but is otherwise in a decent mood. Okay, technically right now he's rather vocally protesting having to take a nap, but other than that he's in a decent moo