March 2002 Archives

Five more months worth of pictures of Henry are now up in the gallery. Brace yourself for the flood of cuteness...

Brad asked me out on a date to see the movie Mask. I thought he was calling for help on our calculus homework. (I didn't realize yet that he didn't obsess over his calculus homework the way I did.)

And here we are now. (Well, that's us as of August 15th 2001; I think that's the most recent picture of the three of us we have posted online.) A lot has happened during those seventeen years which, by the way, is half of my life; college 10 hours apart in the days before email was prevalent, a break up, a reunion, sicknesses and operations, unemployment, moving across the country, changing careers for both of us, right place at the right time dumb luck, Henry's birth, Henry, more hospital stays, house remodel. Even before Henry, it had been a thrilling ride. With Henry, it's going to be even better. I'm looking forward to the next 17 years (and, hopefully, many more after that). Bring it on, life. I'm ready for ya.

Brad ordered a tricycle for Henry. It arrived today and Brad assembled it while Henry napped. So, Henry woke up to a new tricycle! He loves it. We pushed him up and down the hall, and around the living room. Tomorrow, if it isn't raining too much, we'll head outside.

Henry had his first haircut today! We'll get some before and after pictures up here soon. It went really well; he even had fun. His hair had been hanging down over his eyes and for the past week or so, he's been blinking and scrunching up his eyes a lot. It finally dawned on us that it was his hair that was bothering him. (Yes, I admit to thinking more than once that we'd better take him to the doctor, his vision must be wonky... First time parents! Sheesh!)

We took Henry to The Hair Chair, a salon that caters to kids. Henry got to sit in a chair with a steering wheel and play with all sorts of toys while Tonya cut his hair. She was great—very quick and calm, with a remarkable ability to cut Henry's hair evenly as he bobbed and twisted and squirmed. He got a little restless toward the end, and started saying "pick" (for "pick me up") and "out" while holding up his hands, but Brad was able to divert his attention by telling the "We Drove Our Car Right Onto the Ferry Boat" story, a recent favorite since we took a day trip over to Sequim.

Henry converses. Along with the continuing vocabulary explosion, there is an ongoing eagerness to tell us things. Ask Henry what he'd like to do and he might run to the back door and say "Back, out." A "not right now, it's night time" might be countered with "Back, out. Moon!" Or, he might suggest "Hall Ball," a game of his own invention that involves throwing, bouncing, and kicking any kind of ball down our hallway. Today, when Brad suggested we visit our house, Henry said "Mike, Mike. House," while hammering with his hands. Mike is the supervisor of our house remodel and he'd been away with strep throat for a few days; Henry was eager to see him. Henry repeatedly tells us the tale of "The Beetle We Saw Crawling on the Floor and Wall Near the Basement Door!" This involves saying "Beetle" quite a bit, while doing a GI Joe crawl on the floor and then tracing his finger along the path (more or less) where we saw the beetle.

There has also been a resurgence of babble. Instead of babbling words, though, Henry is babbling phrases and sentences. His babble used to be more of a disconnected series of syllables, as if he was experimenting with particular sounds: "ba, ba, bap, bop, boo." Now, the babble consists of more syllables that are run together, and there is more rising and falling intonation: "muddalee PUDDala MUDDaleeee ssskAA!"

There's more going on in our lives than Henry's linguistic advancement; that's just all I've felt like writing about lately. Up on deck, we have: Baby's First Haircut (tomorrow), Baby's First Cardiac Catheterization (mid-April), and Mom's Second Kidney Stone (yes, I have another one; it isn't causing excruciating pain like the last one—yet). Enough said for now.

So, Henry's been talking. A lot. More and more. In fact, "more" is one of his frequently used words. Most of his other words are nouns and verbs referring to specific things; "more" is a word that covers a more general sort of concept, and he can apply it to many situations. He's asked for more food, more nursing, more tickling; he points out the snow falling outside and then points again and says "more." He points to a puddle and then to all the other puddles around and says "more."

Henry is in the midst of a vocabulary explosion. For a while, he's been saying "dada" and "mama" and a few other words: book, eye, cat, car, moon, bath, path, broth. (He loves that "th" sound.) But over the last couple of weeks, he's been collecting words: coral (pronounced "co-wo-wo-wal"), more, hot, cold, fish, snake (pronounced "hsssssnake"), mouse (rabbits are mice too for some reason), heat, whirlpool, puddle (pronounced "pudd-la"), beetle (pronounced "beet-lee"), puppet, bank, knee, hop, happy, brush, mouth, snow, no (this one is already quite popular; sigh), nose, ear, chin, cheek, remote... and many others. And he imitates laughter: "hee hee hee, hahaha, ho ho ho."

He also said his first sentence: "Nurse... more."

At long last, we have put together a web photo gallery of our remodel project. Take a look at http://www.flickr.com/photos/bradandkathy/sets/72157600055465674/. [edited Nov 2008 to point to flickr]