Boys first Harley

A couple months ago, a friend of mine brought over a ton of little boy stuff that her son outgrew - toys, clothes. She cleaned house to prepare for baby #3, a little girl. One of the toys she gave Henry was a rocking Harley Davidson. It's adorable. But, it sat alone, for several months. Henry would play with it - which would consist of pulling himself up and chewing on the handle bars, but that was about it. Then this weekend, he taught himself how to get on and ride. He stands on the edge of the base and swings his leg over. Then he holds on like he's riding a crotch rocket. He'll even pose and throw me a few of his inside-out smiles. Grandpa Holzapfel will be proud when he sees this.

Date #2

This weekend, Henry's friend Emily Sachs, came over for a visit. (She brought her parents, too.) The last time these two got together was a few months ago, it was a great visit, but this visit was completely different. They were aware of each other, climbed on each other, pulled each other's hair, shared toys. It was adorable. It isn't often at all that Henry gets to play with "kids" his own age - usually we hang with the older crowd - 2 year olds and it makes Henry look like such a little baby. We can't wait for our next play date!

Feet up

Last weekend Henry, Brian and I walked around Newtown and stopped at Cosi for lunch. Henry's lunch was a bottle in his stroller. He sat back, kicked his feet up and enjoyed the view. Hysterical.

11 Months

Henry's 11 month birthday fell on the first day of Spring. And what a spectacular day it was, all the way around. Sunny, blue skies and 74 degrees. We practically spent the entire day outside soaking up the sunshine. We had lunch with dad at the playground, then Henry and I went to the park with some blankets and toys and played in the grass for a few hours. We sat in a huge, empty field and played, talked, crawled, laughed. It was such a great couple of hours with my little man - I couldn't help but tear up a few times just watching him. He's such a sweet little boy. I tried to capture many of the precious moments from our day so I don't' forget.

the kid loves to read (or look at pictures)

removing the lid from his snack container

Relaxing

Here Henry drinking his bottle and watching TV.

Bye Bye Water

Henry had a short-lived fascination with his bath water going down the drain. So much so that as soon as he got into the bath tub he would try to pull out the drain to say "bye" to the water. Then he'd stick his hand down the drain to attempt to dig for the water that went down the drain. When all the water was gone, he'd cry and we'd have to sing and dance and tell him that we would see the water again "tomorrow". This went on for about a week, then he got over it.

I took the following video towards the end of this fascination, so he isn't as dramatic about it as he was the previous days, but it's cute none-the-less. (Oh, and the kid found his pee-pee, which you'll see here too.)

Smile!

We asked Henry to smile the other day and he did it. And he kept doing it - big, fat, turn your face in-side-out kind of smiles. Cracked us up!

Kitchen Band

Get out your pots, get out your pans we're going to have a kitchen band....

Henry thought play with the pots and pans (taking them out of the cabinet and throwing them all over the floor) was awesome. Then we started a kitchen band and the kid is in seventh heaven. I see drums in our future (at grandma and grandpa's house).

Trucks

Henry hit the jackpot when grandma garlits retired from her daycare center. He got first dibs on all the toys... and his favorites so far are the trucks. We gather all of them together in the living room and watch "Little Bigfoot" on TV. He thinks its so awesome.

Boys Brunch

This is how I found my boys the other day, eating breakfast... watching TV (Elmo) and chatting about the weather. I'm sure Brian will have Henry reading the paper and discussing politics soon enough.

Shadows

Henry is fascinated by shadows - his, other peoples, hand puppets, etc. When he's in his stroller he hangs over the side and looks for his shadow and waves at it. When it's behind him, he looks to me to turn around so he can see his "friend" again. In the house, Nancy taught him to look for hand puppets - when he sees sun spots in the house he crawls over to them, waves and giggles. Sometimes, when the sun is streaming across the room, he reaches for it and shrieks.