Henry at Six Months

Dear Henry--

I'm not sure where your sixth month has gone.  I think we spent it in a fog of sickness that started with you (poor baby), then moved to Daddy, then settled in with me for over a week now.  Blech!  Apparently a three-person household spreads germs more efficiently than a two-person one!  Lucky for you, though, we still wouldn't trade you for anything.

I love you at six months.  You've finally gotten serious about rolling from front to back (tummy time is a pretty short-lived exercise these days) and are sooo pleased with your self each time you accomplish a roll.  You're getting closer and closer to the back-to-front roll, but so far you are not overly motivated to become mobile.  I'm enjoying it while I can.

You are such a people person.  You love to catch people's attention (not hard, cuz your pretty cute) and then let a smile completely take over your face.  You've started holding out your arms when you want to be picked up, and you have mastered the art of using a charming, adorable smile and a giggle to get what you want.  It's pretty funny (and kind of annoying, since it's pretty hard not to give in).

This past month you started eating rice cereal.  You are hungry earlier in the mornings, and we have to act quickly to keep you from stealing the food right off of our plates, so we figured it was time.  You cut two more teeth last week (vampire teeth, just in time for Halloween), which means you probably think you're ready for steak!  Your first cereal meal was hilarious--you could not chomp down on the spoon fast enough.  You are still long and lean (while you grew another inch and a half since your last appointment, you didn't gain any weight to speak of), so here's hoping the cereal beefs you up a bit...and buys Dad and I a few extra winks in the morning.

Oh!  And it appears you have finally stopped losing hair and started growing some!  Your dark newborn hair is almost gone, with only a few more weird long Gollum-strands left.  Your genes leave you little option but to be a tow-head, and true enough, blond fuzz is cropping up all over your head.  I love it.

I love the little person you are becoming.  You have pretty strong opinions about things that aren't exactly the way you want them, and you let everyone know.  When we lay you in your bed at night, you like to stick out your tongue, straighten out, and tap dance until we wrap you up.  The other morning I woke up at 4 in the morning to the sound of you talking to yourself in bed.  You actually have favorite books--while we read lots of things, "Hello, Bear" and the BabyLit "Alice in Wonderland" never get old.  And you giggle like crazy when I give you Eskimo kisses.  I can't wait to see what kind of kid you turn out to be.

Love,
Mama

The Pumkpin Patch

In a quintessential fall moment, we spent last Saturday with the Pattersons at the pumpkin patch.

Carly and Kevin, scouting out the patch

We'd intended to go apple picking, but apparently it is too late for apples the first weekend of October?!?  Weird crop season (when I conversationally commented on this, I got a long lecture from the proprietor about how crops depend on the weather and the seasons are different every year, blah blah I have a garden too blah).  Luckily they had enough pre-picked ones left for at least a pie and a good batch of applesauce.
 

Mad because he wanted to stand.

I put Henry in an adorable pumpkiny hat for the occasion.  I had originally bought a 0-6 month size but had to exchange it for 6-12 months after I tried it on him and it looked like his ridiculously small newborn hospital hat.  Apparently the kid's head is coming into its own.  Anyway, he looked adorable, in spite of Jason's derisive snorts.

 

Missy and I with our little pumpkin heads

We may not have been able to pick apples, but we did pick pumpkins, kale, lettuce, and potatoes.  Afterward we took our picnics to a nearby winery, then packed up tired kids and headed home. 

Digging taters

With all our produce

Such a perfect day, and we loved spending it with good friends.  We've been eating kale and apples ever since.

Nursery Reveal (Finally)

We don't even call Henry's room the nursery anymore, so it's sort of weird to use that in the blog title, BUT, if I had posted this in, oh, early March, when I WANTED to have the nursery done, that's what I would have called it.  In early March, of course, it looked like this.

But today, finally finally, Henry's room is officially done.  The room was functional about three days before he was born (major thanks to my friend Maria, who helped a very pregnant me get the crib put together, the bedding put on, and the clothes hung in the closet in an afternoon), and Henry's been sleeping in his crib since he was about three weeks old, but all the touches that have been floating around my head for eight months or so are finally reality.  So glad we get to enjoy a finished nursery for a little while before it starts transforming into a little kid's room.

Going one direction, the room looks like this:

The glider was an awesome hand-me-down from a friend, now clothed in (spit-up covered) grey corduroy, thanks to my mom.  I promise I managed to recover one cushion by myself.  She also just made the cover for the nursing pillow--it's nice to have my extra bed pillow back, after five months of spit up just barely missing it each morning...

We LOVE our Ikea crib.  I went for a "Frog and Toad" theme--long before I was pregnant, I'd decided on butterflies for a girl and frogs for a boy (like the "born again" theme), so it was a logical step to Frog and Toad.  Prints from the books are above the bed.

One of my favorite things in the room is the frog mobile we got in Prague last fall.  It was a good thing they didn't have a butterfly mobile--I just knew that buying the frog one meant we were definitely going to have a boy...

From the other angle, the room looks like this:

 

Henry's changing table is a highlight of the room!  Jason's dad built it from a picture I sent, and we love it.  It turned out beautifully.  I would not want to live without it.  Eventually the changing top will come off and it will be the perfect place for toys and books. 

I am a big fan of these pictures rods (also one in the spare room).  This one kills two birds with one stone--since we live so far away from all our family, I wanted to have pictures of them in Henry's room, AND it serves as a nice distraction for him when he's getting his diaper changed.  Good deal.

Here lives our growing collection of children's books.  We've gathered a few from places we've visited over the past few years, as well as inheriting some family treasures and getting some of our favorites from well-read friends...and it turns out I have no self control at Costco when it comes to kids books...

We put things we like above the books:  a poem we got in Puerto Rico a couple of months before Henry was born, a framed "Child of God" from Alison, "Henry" commissioned by Grandma, Maurice Sendak's "Nutshell Library" from the Griffiths, and a frog from Papa.

A nursery reveal would not be complete without a view of Henry's awesome closet, already FULL to the brim with clothes, thanks to five generous older cousins and a grandma who likes to send cute things Henry's way.  Our brother-in-law Adam wisely suggested we make a deep closet, and we have been grateful for it every day.

Here's the final view as you walk into the room.  Love the green rug--which we must have walked by at Ikea about ten times before finally purchasing last week.  Also love the screaming hungry baby on the floor.  I promise he'd JUST started crying and that I fed him as soon as I took this picture.

The Tail of September

September completely disappeared beneath the weight of me going back to work, but we had a bunch of nice little things (and a not-so-nice little thing) happen at the end of the month.  

Congress decided we are all better off if they just go home for a while.  My views on the congressional schedule are almost purely selfish, so I was totally fine with that.  I'm not sure Henry and I could have handled the stress of another week at work so soon.

Recovering from a tough week

I finally made this plum cake.  No wonder the Anne books are riddled with references to plum cake.  Jason and I ate it in huge, plummy slabs.  (Now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure I made this plum cake in July, but it deserves a blog post shout out.  Plus it is fall now and there are new plums in the fridge, awaiting transformation.) 

Jason called me up way late on a Friday night just to say he was at Arlington Urgent Care getting stitches, no big deal.  During his hockey game, he got stabbed in the ankle by someone else's skate, resulting in a laceration about two inches wide that went all the way to the bone and chipped it.  This meant canceling the long-planned trip to Mali he was supposed to take the next day.  All involved decided it was best to avoid a nasty bone infection, and so far so good--yesterday he got the go-ahead to get back on the ice tonight.

Gross.

My mom came for her fall visit, which delighted us all.  My plan to have her all to myself while Jason was in Africa sort of fell through, but she was happy to get to see Jason and Jason was nice about the fact that she and I tend to eat lunch at 3:00 or so while we're shopping and aren't hungry for dinner when we get home.  He didn't starve. 

Henry and Granny at our favorite place.

As usual, Mom dug me out of my self-created sewing hole and finished Henry's curtains (which I'd been working on since June, blech).  Then she dug me out of my decorating hole and helped me finish putting together our new upstairs.  It is worthy of its own blog post, but let me just say how happy I am to be sitting in a neat and orderly computer nook instead of on a folding chair surrounded by piles of boxes.

Learning to sew early.  Jason's comments about the sweatshop being back in order were not appreciated.

The other weekend we found ourselves home on a Saturday, just the three of us, with no obligations.  The weather was perfect and crisp, so (since we were already up...) we went out to breakfast, took a walk, played with our baby and all took naps.  So amazing.

A perfectly crisp fall day!