Wow, I can't believe it's been four months since I last did one of these Henry blogs. I assure you I wasn't consciously being lazy or anything. It's just like the cliché title of the article says, times flies when you're having fun. Henry is getting older and he's a lot of fun to just hang out with.
I think Henry might have a future in modeling just look at how he naturally strikes a pose in the picture on the left.
There’s a park about 5 blocks away. On the weekends if I feel like I need a little exercise I put him the stroller and take him over there. Or if I’m lazy I’ll drive him over there. The park has swings and two big play areas with lots of slides (see the lead picture of this article), some of them are double slides and Henry constantly wants me to slide next to him. Must be a funny sight, me going down a kid’s slide.
When he’s not on the playground, Henry likes to play with his Duplos. He’s got this set for making car and he’s got a set for making animals so naturally he combines the two and makes an elephant-car. Or, I just put random blocks together on the car piece and stick an animal head-piece on it and let him play with some sort of horse with a sheep’s head that has a gas tank hump. The other thing he loves to do with his Duplos (or Mega Blocks) is to stack them. He’ll find every single piece that’s the same size and just start stacking them on top of each other and when it gets so large that it falls over and breaks apart all over the room, he just laughs and starts over again.
Henry is also a big fan of rock music. I’ll put on Pandora and rock out to some Rolling Stones or some Led Zeppelin, some Queen, STP, Credence, or whatever, Henry isn’t picky. If he’s digging it he’ll start dancing or he’ll go get his “drums.” He’s got two empty formula tubs that make a great pair of drums or he’ll grab the guitar-hero guitar-controller and start “jamming” with that. One time we were listening to the Beatle’s “Get Back” and Carol and I shouted “Get back Jo Jo.” Well, Henry thought this was hilarious, so to this day if you shout, “Get Back Jo Jo” Henry will shout it too. And it’s only rock music he likes, try to play anything else like classical music or something and he’ll just say “no that” until you turn it off.
Henry does a lot of running around, I’ve chased him around the living room over and over again until I think to myself, “What am I doing I’ve got to pace myself”. Taking care of him is a marathon not a sprint. So sometime while he’s doing laps, I’ll just get a pillow and lay down on the living room floor. Sometimes Henry will stop running too and say “Night, night” and get another pillow and lay down next to me. Of course he can only stay down for a couple of seconds before he wants to run around again. But he’ll sometimes turn it into a game and he’ll say “down” and lay down and then say “up” and sit up and then if I don’t play along he’ll say “Daddy up” over and over again until I sit up then we’ll go up and down until he gets tired of it.
We moved at the end of July so a swanky loft apartment a couple of exits north of where we were living. It is a great apartment. It has a beautiful spiral staircase and Henry can walk up it just fine with one of us behind him, but we always carry him down the steps. Anyway when he’s going up the stairs for “bath, bottle, book, and bed time” he shouts to whoever is still downstairs through the spiral staircase “Bye, bye Mommy,” step, “Bye, bye Mommy” step. It’s cute, but I’m always thinking just get up the steps kids. I made up a couple of rhymes like “less squawking and more walking” and “less chitter-chatter and more pitter-patter.” I know they must be good because Carol started using them now too.
He's still a messy eater!
We have a morning routine where Carol wakes him up gets him dressed and brings him into the bathroom and I help him brush his teeth and then he follows me back into our bedroom and he plays with exercise balls and an empty tool box while I get dressed. Then it’s downstairs and he sits in his highchair and has some toast while I make sure Carol and I have some lunch while Carol fixes Henry’s lunch. Then it’s off to work. Henry used to be able to have a bottle of milk or juice in the car, but after the 3rd time he poured the juice all over himself instead of drinking it he lost that privilege, but he stills says “my juice” or “my cup” every time you get him in his car seat
Daddies are like cars, they have to go from zero (calm) to 60 (screaming) in 3 seconds.
In the Henry is a genius department, Henry already has a job. Every evening he gets the cat bowls from off the floor and brings them to me across the room and I dish out the cat’s kibbles and Henry carefully carries the full bowls back across the room and puts them down by the cat’s water dish so the cats can eat. Every once in a while he’ll dump some kibbles out by accident. But Henry is so thorough when he does this that he will not stop cleaning up the kibbles until the job is done. I was in a hurry to get him upstairs and change his diaper or something and he spilled some kibbles and I was like “come on forget it.” But he was picking all the stray kibbles up and putting them back in Stella’s bowl. And he had spilled them as he was putting the bowl down so Stella is right there trying to eat her dinner and Henry is like stepping on top of her trying to get the loose kibbles. And I’m trying to pick the kid up, but he is wriggling around and shouting “No, Daddy. No, Daddy.” And Spock is about a foot away eating his food and not having any trouble.
These two pictures help you see how Henry has grown in four months. The left one is from July 8th and the right photo is October 7th.
You can see how Henry has grown with these pictures too. The first photo is from July 30th, the middle one is September 25th and the last one is October 16th.
Henry loves to see both sets of his grandparents in person. But in-between visits he likes to talk to them on skype. Whenever I get a phone call it is hard to pay attention because Henry will start shouting "Pop-Pop! Pop-Pop!" (that's what he calls all four of his grandparents right now). But he is used to video chatting. He doesn't know what to make of regular phone calls. He usually stares at the phone and wonders were the picture went.
It's hard to explain this photo so I'll just say there's an alternate dimension where Henry is the 15th Doctor and I'm his bumbling but loveable companion and we'll leave it at that.
Henry and his Momma. I'm partial, but I think Carol looks great in this picture. :)
Four months ago Henry (July 11th to be exact). It's funny but when I look at this picture today it almost looks like it's a picture of a different kid already. That kid was July-Henry of little resemblance to the older and wiser October-Henry. And I know February-Henry will be different too, but hopefully I'll do a blog or two before we get there.
