Henry at Eight Months

Dear Henry,

These pictures were taken at nap time--on a Sunday, no less--but I am posting them anyway, banking on the hope that your whining face can kind of look like a smiley face in the right light.  No matter.  Eight months, my little friend--this is my favorite age.

You have doubled or quadrupled your bag of tricks this past month.  You roll.  You scoot backwards.  You play patty-cake and peek-a-boo.  You clap (new trick yesterday!).  You talk, with your "yayaya"s breaking out all over.  You jump like crazy in your jumperoo and tear the toys on your bouncy seat limb from limb (the sad day when we can no longer strap you on the bouncy seat is imminent...).  You grab everything.  And oh, do you laugh.  You have the funniest sense of humor.

I get asked a lot if you are crawling (or walking, even!).  You are not.  While you roll, you prefer to roll back and forth rather than over and over.  While you scoot, you either scoot backwards by inches or around in a circle.  I'm more than happy with your current state of limited mobility, by the way.  I realize that one day suddenly you are going to take off and it is all going to be over.

While you may be watching from a stationary position while all your little friends crawl all over you, I have been extremely impressed by the dexterity of your little fingers.  You easily mastered picking up pieces of food, and I love watching you concentrate on an intricate toy (or necklace).  It is fun to imagine the things you will do with those little hands as you grow older.

To Dad's and my relief, you had a major breakthrough in sleeping this month--not only are you sleeping a little later, but you have stopped waking up multiple times a night.  Hooray for you!  And hooray for Dad and me, seriously.  And to my relief, you are a great eater and growing like crazy--18 lbs 4 ounces this week, and I think you grow an inch a week!  You had been stuck in your 3-6 month clothes much longer than expected, but suddenly you have rocketed into the 6-12 month ones, and we are again adjusting your stroller straps and the height of the jumperoo.  I don't get too terribly sentimental about your waning babyhood, but the other day I realized that the little jeans I bought you before you were born were all high-watery, and I got a little sad.

Daddy and I were talking this morning about how lucky we are to have you as our kid.  You are so much fun.  You have a funny, sweet, pleasant disposition.  You are easy to take places, and I have such a good time with you when we are home.  Happy eight months, Henry Hoo!

Love,

Mama

...and there goes November...

I am chasing months by the tail these days.  I've failed thus far to blog about all the things that happened in October, and now I really don't know where November disappeared to.  I swear I barely changed my calendar over, and December is two days away.

Oh, and possibly worth noting:  whatever accidental hiatus this blog has been on has been exaccerbated by the fact that we've apparently reached our photo limit on Google, and figuring out what to do next hasn't been a top priority. I foresee a day of massive posts once we figure that out...

Here are a few random things for now:
*  We've had a crazy week here, since Jason is at a leadership training event all week and Henry decided it might be a good week to get a cold.  It's 7 pm, and if I had already eaten dinner I would be crawling into bed right now.  Still, I am finding myself increasingly empowered by facing the challenges of parenthood and conquering them (finding a hotel in Denver at 2 am when your flight almost gets to Boise and then can't land because of the fog?  Check.).  And increasingly humbled by asking for help and receiving it.

*  This right here is one of the best things I've ever seen on the internet.  Ha.  Love it.

*  Among the many things I love about Henry right now is the fact that he can sit in a cart out of his car seat.  It is nice to be able to go to Costco and Trader Joe's and actually fit stuff in my cart again.

*  I'm on the verge of making these amazing cookies again (if I could just clean the baby snot off of everything for a few minutes).  We're doing a Christmas cookie exchange this weekend, and there is a wee part of me that wants to make crappier cookies for everyone else and keep these all to myself...

*  During Jason's absence I've been watching Clueless again for the first time in years.  It is like reliving my senior year.  Totally existential.  Why are movies from high school and college generally so much better than movies now?  (Although we did watch Sherlock Holmes last weekend.  Lurve.)

*  Here's the thing:  I am so tired of talking about spit-up and poop.  So why do I keep bringing it up?  

*  I confess that we did not love making Thanksgiving dinner this year.  Nothing turned out quite as good as last year (and the gravy turned out way worse), but it was still as much work.  And then we ate leftovers for literally six meals straight (including apple pie for breakfast).  Best. Thing. Ever.  Why don't we make turkey more often?!?


There you have it.  And now I am going to clean up the spit-up that is all over the kitchen floor (!!!), go make myself some waffles, crawl into bed, and read Harry Potter until my eyes are too heavy to open.

A Brief Pause

Jason made me waffles tonight, a real treat, and I ate them along with an entire chocolate bar he brought me from Belgium.  We arrive home tonight after two weeks away, and it was a pretty good meal, considering all we had in the fridge was an empty carton of milk and some overly ripe potatoes.  It's nice to be home, even though I never like leaving Idaho when Jason is already there and not waiting for me in Virginia.

My sisters and I resolved to start acting like adults with little kids when I come to visit, rather than girls who want to go shopping with their mom (since, even though we DO want to go shopping with our mom, it is just so not as fun with seven kids running circles around us).  But sometimes when I'm home it's easy to forget about being the wife/mother/grown-up and think instead about the girl who had a round trip ticket to DC and back and somehow never used the return flight.  It still feels familiar to hear the shower turn loudly on in the morning and the sound of the cuckoo clock chiming the late night hour.  And it's strange to think that the baby next door in Shaanti's room is mine.

Henry changes a lot when we are gone for so long.  For starters, now that he is serious about his solid foods, he has put on some real weight--which is a nice change after gaining an entire ounce in the course of the previous two months (oh the stress I've been under the past few weeks!).  He is giggly and happy and practically sitting up on his own, and with his two new vampire teeth he looks hilarious and cute.  He is a good traveler...though traveling with a six-month-old is trying at the best of times.  We came home with five bags (five!), full of hand-me-downs and Christmas presents and new clothes I don't need but which go perfectly with my fall boots (there was SOME shopping with Mom, after all).  The days of traveling without checked bags are really, really over.

We're tucking into bed now, even though it feels like 8:00 to me (especially since Mom and I stayed up too late watching Downton Abbey the past two nights).  After being sick for over a month, I finally got some antibiotics and feel like a new person.  Our bags are mostly unpacked, though there are a few leftover toiletries and unwashed travel baby food containers scattered throughout the house.  I head back to work tomorrow, so we have daycare bags and work bags packed and soup ready to go in the crockpot.  Our weekend is already packed, and I wonder what it would be like to be home and not have company and not have a million obligations, even though I like company and the obligations on the calendar.  Settling in will probably take a bit.  I'll get reacquainted with my friends and work through some loneliness for my sisters and my mom and dad.  But I'm reading Harry Potter again, and celebrating the holidays early has made me extra excited for Christmas, and it's nice to be back in our little home and in our own beds. 

There is much blogging to be done--not only from our recent trip/s, but from basically the whole month of October.  It will come.  But until then, just a brief pause to say we are home and good night.

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!

Henry at Five Months

Dear Henry,

I am supposed to be napping, since YOU are napping and even at five months the adage to sleep when the baby sleeps still occasionally applies...especially when said baby wakes up hungry at 5:55 on a Sunday morning (soooo early for me!).  But you are five months old today, and I want to mark the occasion.

The biggest event of your fifth month was starting daycare.  Everyone said that it would be harder on me than on you, but two weeks of daycare was not enough time for either of us to adjust.  I think we were both very happy when the House cancelled its last week in session so that we could hang out together all day every day until after the election.

Over the past month you decided to make laughing out loud a regular part of your day instead of a once-in-a-while event.  And no one can make you laugh like your daddy can.  You sure think he is the cat's meow.  I love to watch your eyes light up when you hear his voice.  Your smiles are so big they fill your whole face.  After you went to bed last night, Dad and I were asking ourselves what we used to do when we didn't have you to play with.

You are good at grabbing things when you want to, but mostly you would prefer that things go directly into your mouth without having to use your hands (cue hilarious moment of holding a Sofie giraffe with just one foot and your two teeth)...unless, of course, the things in your mouth are your hands.  It's a toss-up whether your favorite toy is your binky (apparently the whole thing is for chewing on, not just the rubber part) or your hands.  You like to hold them together, admire their handsomeness, and put them in your mouth...and then stick them all over my face and arms.  It is disgusting.  It turns out slobber from one's own child is just as gross as anyone else's.

We aren't going to talk about your eating habits this month, since bottle feedings at daycare were a bit of a disaster and Aunt Jenny had to coach us through a major crisis.  But you are starting to show serious interest in what Dad and I are chewing on, so rice cereal is on the grocery list, just so we're ready...

I feel like having you around is the most normal thing in the world.  And that a girls' night out, dressed in clothes that don't smell like spit-up, sounds like heaven.  I think this means we've officially settled into being a family of three.  And to think that next month will probably be even better than this one!

Love,
Mama

Book Festival and AKR

I finally managed to go to the Library of Congress's National Book Festival this year.  Inevitably we are out of town or it is raining during the festival, and rain makes Jason melt.  We were this close to going and listening to David McCullough a couple of years ago...and then the thunder started...

Ready to get our Encyclopedias signed

Mom, Henry, and me on the Mall

Anyway, in spite of the sunshine this year, Jason stayed home, nursing his lacerated ankle (more on that later), so I took Mom and Henry.  We met up with Dawn and Calvin just in time to hear Amy Krouse Rosenthal read the last few pages of her book "Spoon," then we got a nice little September sunburn waiting in line to meet her.

Awkwardly telling Amy that I, too, have a brother with three sisters

Dawn getting a note for Cal

Dawn and I have a little crush on AKR (or "Amy," as Dawn familiarly calls her).  She wrote this neat little book called Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life that we've been passing back and forth for the past seven years or so (except that now we each have our own signed copy).  Plus, Amy writes mostly kids books these days, so Henry now has a nice AKR note in "Bedtime for Mommy."

With our new best friend

Anyway, it was cool to meet her.  I always feel a bit awkward and ridiculous meeting authors (movie stars, singers, etc.) and am relieved to remember that we will never see each other again.  Except maybe Dawn will, since she boldly gave Amy her blog info (if you aren't reading Dawn's blog, you should be).  Plus, it was a pretty amazing fall day, and who doesn't love an amazing fall day on the Mall?