What do you see?

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Smile

Henry, you make me smile. Lots of things you do make me smile and laugh. Let me recount a few:

1. Standing all the way up in the cabinet of toys. And your skinny, white, white legs. Sorry, son.

2. At the check out line of Target:
Henry: waves at the check out lady as we leave
Check out lady: face turned to see the next customer
Henry: waves higher and more adamantly at the lady so she waves back
Mom: "excuse me, he would really like it if you could wave bye-bye at him"
COL: "oh, bye-bye!" and a wave
Henry: BIG SMILE and a proud look on his face
Mom: "thanks"

3. Your wild man hair when you wake up

4. Looking up to see the ceiling wherever you go:
Mom: "wow, that balloon (or sign, or light, or fan) is really high"
Henry: waves at mommy because she said high.
We'll have to work on homophones soon.

5. Driving home:
Mom: "Henry, when we get home, you'll have to stay out of daddy's hair because he's working"
Henry: touches his hair.
And apparently, we'll be working on idioms too.

6. And of course, your sweet, sweet smile.

Saturday, October 31, 2009

All About Halloween

First time trick or treating

Henry was all about Halloween tonight. He arrived at his friend's house, spotted the big bowl of candy, picked up the Reese's Cups Regular Size Bar (they don't mess around) and put it in his bucket. All without any direction from mom or dad. No one had to teach him what to do! Then, he took the big candy bar out of his bucket and proceeded to carry it around their yard and up and down the street, clutching it and his candy bucket, even in his mouth. Don't worry Henry, no one would take your candy away from you. As we began trick or treating, he followed behind them with his little tiger legs, strode up to the door in line with the bigger boys, held out his bucket, and made mom and dad proud. So cute, and so smart, Henry!

Choosing the Reese's

Walking around with the treasure

Starting Trick or Treating (notice the Reese's still in his hands)

Come on guys, wait UP!

Calvin and Hobbes

Three Friends

Enjoying his efforts. Turns out, he likes peanut butter cups.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Fall Fun

Already past the peak of Fall leaves, it's hard to believe that we're almost through October and coming to the end of Fall. In the midst of our move, we've still enjoyed some fun activities that the yellows, reds and oranges bring. Unfortunately, we missed apple picking between looking for houses and travel and moving, but we did manage to enjoy the pumpkin patch. On a fairly cold, gray and windy day, we ventured out to gather some pumpkins for our family to enjoy, and we'll be carving this week, maybe tomorrow. This pumpkin patch happened to feature some games and things for kids, so we had fun. Although you don't actually get to pick your pumpkin off the vine, so that was a little disappointing. Next year, I know of a really cool farm which we will visit. But, we had fun....

riding in wheelbarrows

picking the small pumpkins

playing with the pumpkins at home - a family one, a small one, and a tall skinny one - like Henry!

running towards the pumpkins

They had a really cool inflated pillow basically that you could bounce on. We waited for the older kids to clear off, and Henry really loved bouncing on the huge pillow. He giggled like crazy - we love his little laugh! Henry really loved when Mommy or Daddy bounced him high!

Talking to the goats

Farmer Brown

"Dat, Dat, Dat!"

Last weekend was pretty on Sunday, so we spent the day playing outside and tackling the many leaves in our backyard. We love our backyard, but man, there are a lot of leaves! Somebody get this little boy a little rake :)

We had to show Henry how to jump in a pile of leaves. After that, he had big fun doing so!

Thanks for the help, Henry. One leaf at a time.

Henry is interested in all things boys - balls, trucks, and power tools

Pulling all the bags out of the box is great fun - they just keep coming, and coming and coming!

And to top it all off? A SPOOOOOOOOKY Tub!

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Welcome Home

It's been exactly one month and one day since my last post. Needless to say, we've been very busy......MOVING! Between packing up the house, moving all our stuff across the city and to the "country", and unpacking, we've been busy, all done with a one year old attached to our hips. I've never felt this unsettled or disorganized in a move before, nor has it taken me this long to get organized and unpacked. But, I've never moved with a one year old before either! We've ventured into new home ownership, complete with painting, buying new appliances, minor repairs, and fixing the garage door which broke, coincidentally, the day after we moved in. After all the hard work, and more to come, we're really happy to be in our new home. We love having our own house with so much more space and storage, fun places for Henry to play, a big beautiful backyard, nice neighbors, and lots of amenities that we didn't have in our old house. It's the small things - a dishwasher, a fireplace, garbage disposal, a garage. We're excited about making the house our own and have had fun decorating and picking out paint colors. There's still a long way to go, but we're going to be here for a good long time, so we're taking our time.

Last family picture in front of our old house

Surprisingly, I was a little sad at leaving our old house. The first place we brought Henry home to will always hold lots of memories for us when we think back to Henry's first year. But it took me just a few days to forget that sadness and just be excited and happy to be in our new place!

First family picture in front of the new house!

Dad, the dolly is for boxes, not babies.

Once I decide where I'm going to hang pictures, we'll take some pictures of the inside. Hurray for a new place to grow our family!

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Aunt Allllllllllison!

We tried hard to get Henry to say Aunt Allison this past week, but alas, could not. But, we had a really FUN weekend visiting in Cincinnati! Henry really loved spending time with his aunt, and he perfected his walking skills as well. Now, he takes a really long walk of 20-30 at a time, rather than just 5-8 steps. He's a walking champ. We had fun shopping, eating, and playing in Allison's apartment!
Peering out the window at the rain, longing to go outside and play.
Rainy days means mountain climbing!
Mom, I'm pretty tired from all this play. Could I please go to bed?

Although the weather was rainy the whole week, we managed to find some fun things out of the house. While dad recruited, and Aunt Allison worked, Henry and I took a field trip to the aquarium, where waved hi to the fishys, walked through a rain forest, got scared by some loud birds, waved hi to the scuba divers cleaning the tanks, and saw them feeding the sharks. We DID NOT touch sharks however. Mom's not brave enough, maybe when Henry is a bigger boy.

Looking through the tunnel at the sharks swimming overhead.

Eye to eye with the frogs!

Completely surrounded by fish.

What's the best snack to bring to the aquarium? Rainbow Goldfish, of course!

We also heard about a Children's Museum, and took a trip to see that too. Totally worth it, and we'll be going back, definitely as Henry gets older. They had some really cool exhibits for older kids, but a whole entire area devoted to kids four and under. Complete with a sand table, books and chairs, apple picking, climbing toys, fire engines, grocery shopping, and so much room to walk and play, we had a blast with non stop action.

And after lunch, the excitement continued with the SPLASH ZONE! Henry looked darling in his little blue smock with the sleeves rolled up and long enough to touch his shoes. He loved splashing in the water, watching the older kids make the machines turn using water, and getting wet. And we commemorated the event with a bath toy with a series of machines that you can rearrange to make the water move!
Yay, Aunt Allison's house!!!

Friday, September 18, 2009

Columbus

Can we please go out and play?

Last week, we traveled with Gabe to Columbus to stay with our friends and see their new baby! Henry was mildly interested in playing with the baby, got lots of licky kisses from the dog, and got to check out the Columbus zoo. But I think he had the most fun exploring a new house. He did well with the traveling on the way out, a 4.5 hour car drive and earned himself an A+. The way back was a little more difficult, but we made it. Big fan of the portable DVD player for long car rides. We weren't sure if it would help, but it did distract him for a little bit. Monica and I had fun shopping, hanging out and playing with the kids. We loved meeting Justin; He was just starting to bring his legs up for rolling over and is so sweet. Thanks Kowalskis!

Henry did a lot of finger sucking and lovey holding on the drive in