Ah-buh (and more)

let me translate....A bird, in Henry-speak. And actually, I'm noticing I'm needing to do a lot of translating on this blog lately. And as Henry is adding more and more words, we are doing quite a bit of translating for him.

Henry LOVES birds. LOVES them. We set up a bird pole with two bird feeders outside the window thinking that this winter Henry might like to watch the birds. Big hit! Henry asks for ah-buh first thing when he wakes up in the morning, and first thing when we walk in the door. He says "nigh-nigh" (night, night) to the birds when it gets dark out, and asks for "ma, ma, ma" (more, more, more). He runs to the window, and is especially excited when we are able to go onto the sun porch to see a closer look at the birds, despite the cold. And in fact, we checked out bird books at the library, which were also a favorite to read when the birds weren't at the feeder. He points out birds in books, and at the library during story hour, he *loudly* mentioned that there was ah-buh in the book the story lady was reading - on EVERY SINGLE PAGE.


Now, the original writing of this post would have ended here - tell the story, show the pictures, give Henry's cute words. But, a few days ago, looking out the kitchen window, I found the following visitor coming to play in our back yard:

RACCOON!!!! ARRRRRRGGGGGGH!
He sniffed around,
stood on his hind legs,
and Henry and I went out to watch him.

He stuck his nose WAY up in the air,
took a look at us,
and found the birdseed he was after. Henry smiled.
And then he continued his tour of our yard, posed for a few more pictures, and climbed over the fence.
RACCOON!!!! AGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!

They followed us here!!!!!

For those of you that don't know, we HATE raccoons around the Brown house. When we first moved into our rental house, that night at dinner we heard scuffling above our dining room table. Turned out, we had a family of raccoons living in our attic. I was 6 months pregnant or so, and we were mad and freaked out and frustrated that the house we had chosen to bring a new baby into had raccoons. It took 15 DAYS, many trips by trappers and rodent people, and nights spent in another house to finally rid ourselves of raccoons - one mother and four babies, 5 in all. And now, one here. This one better stay OUT of our house. WE HATE RACCOONS!!!