Henry: The Speed Button

Henry has been hilarious lately. And while he has moments where I wish I was miles away... most of the time he is so energetic and cute and lovable.

• Pictures were inspired from an idea on Pinterest. The angry face makes me terrified for his teenage years. And whenever you ask him to make a silly face, this is what he pulls out. Scared? Maybe he is happy to be scared? Crazy kid!
• One thing that Henry has been saying a LOT is "Mommy, look at this." "Look at this, Mommy." And its not like what I am looking at is ever anything more exciting than him jumping off the couch (again) or biting into a piece of sandwich. This actually brings me a huge helping of guilt as I can't always look and lose patience in actually wanting to look. Sigh...
• Henry has discovered these "buttons" on his body. He will push his fast button on his tummy and then race through the apartment. He has turn buttons, stop buttons, jump buttons and even a slow button. Sometimes he uses this excuse "my fast button is broken" or something similar when I am trying to get him to cooperate. 
• Henry has been loving preschool! That is a total understatement. He has even made a couple of friends: Franny and Ruby. I was hoping he would befriend some males. Nope. He comes home singing new songs with a backpack full of artwork and a head full of stories to tell me. Its so neat to see him growing already. He can explain to me things that happened that were important to him and without me prompting him. For example, he told me this whole story about sharing the swings with a little girl who had swirly yellow hair.
• One thing I was most interested to see when he started preschool was the influence of other people on him. This is the first time he has been away from us and learning from other people who aren't Steve and I and people we really know. One of my favorite things are the songs he sings that I didn't teach him. This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine...
• There is a church in Athens that recently had a fire. Henry calls this church the "hot church." He is obsessed with it. And the obsession goes from fascination to terror. One day he was crying when he found out we'd be driving by it so I had to drive around campus another way. Luckily, they are tearing it down and putting up a new church. Hopefully it will be done soon so we can move on. But his noticing of fire stretches to everything now. There is a guy in the Avengers show, the Human Torch who Henry calls the "hot guy." It took us forever to figure out what he was talking about. I was relieved when it was the torch guy and not him thinking Iron Man was cute. 
• Henry has started to notice when he gets angry. Being upset is fine but we're working on how he shows it. Sometimes he throws things or pouts off into his room. My favorite thing he does is he'll get all mad in the face and say, "I'm going to get angry. Here are my claws." Then he dramatically lifts his hands that have been scrunched into claws. He doesn't hit anyone with them he just uses it as a way to express his frustration. 
• He will also come up to me in amazement and say "Mommy, look at what is happening." He'll lift his hands and they will start to turn into claws as if he has no control over them. Its pretty amusing. He also turns into a puppy a lot too. 
• His favorite movie right now is Peter Pan. He watches it every day. He even has a whole scene memorized and acts it out while running around the house pretend sword fighting. He also is enjoying Aladdin and is fascinated by the cave of wonders. He watches that part while hiding behind a chair and peeking out until the cave has sunk back into the sand. 

Henry's First Talk

This last month, Henry gave his first talk in Primary. In case you aren't familiar with what this is, every Sunday a child prepares and presents a talk to the other children at church. It usually has something to do with the monthly theme and is usually between 30 seconds to 3 minutes depending on the age of the child. This month the theme was "Families Can Be Together Forever."
 I pretty much wrote Henry's talk but as he is three, that is acceptable. He did so well though. He came right up to the microphone, held up each picture and repeated the sentence clearly. It was so cute.
And for posterity's sake, here it is. Except these pictures were taken afterwards as he is NOT wearing church clothes:

"I love to see the temple, I'm going there someday."

"Temple marriage is being sealed for eternity."

"This is a gift from Heavenly Father and Jesus."

"I went to the temple with my family. I love my family and we will be together forever."

A is for Art

I saw this great tip online that showed how a mom scanned all her children's art instead of keeping stacks of mangled drawings. She then compiled smaller images into one print to frame for the home.

And while I think maybe a few really good ones should be saved, there is no need for mountains of paper to be shoved in a drawer somewhere. So I finally got around to scanning all the art we had saved from the past 10 months. It was fun to see how far Henry has come in his hand eye coordination. Here are some of my favorites:

Circles within circles. If Henry is ever getting bored of coloring I ask him to draw a circle and then another one around that and so forth until the page is full. I think he needs/likes having direction.

I like when he switches to pencil and you can actually see the stab marks. Sometimes the art he creates is just stab holes. Wounded paper? Tortured artist?

Finger paints. So fun and so bright. He calls them "The one with the hand on it."

Here we used a thread cone to make this fun pattern. Simply dipping it in the different colors kept him really busy and thoroughly entertained. This was during an "A is for Art" afternoon.

My mom managed to find some paint with water books online. The paint doesn't bleed together as well as I remember it as a kid but it is easy and relatively clean fun.  This is the back of a painting. I just like it better than the front. Can you see the farmers?

Another "A if for Art" experiment. Henry loves glue sticks. So I cut up some shapes and let him glue them to colored paper. A nice change from just coloring. You should have seen him put a huge area of glue down for a tiny circle. So cute and determined.

Henry Update: I'm Two

Henry is awesome. If anyone asks him how he is doing, he responds "I'm two." Full of energy and spunk, here are some of the things he is into these days:

• Hiding. Especially in the curtains and on the "big bed" which is our bed. He loves hiding under blankets, pillows and behind furniture. He doesn't even care that we are watching him hide and know where he is, as long as we say "Where is Henry?" and he can pop out and say "Here he is," he is happy. When he is hiding with one of us on the big bed, he will yell "Mama (or Dada) come find us." 

• Tangled. The kid loves Tangled-he thinks that is Rapunzel's name-and Flynn Rider. He also loves Finding Nemo and I have started him on some older movies, he liked Aladdin a lot. 
• Talking in complete sentences. I feel like it happened overnight. Instead of scattered words, he is more likely to use a full sentence these days. He also will get talking and just go on and on telling a whole story. We call it "monologuing". When he monologues, only part of what he is saying can be deciphered. Some recent favorite sayings:
• I need a band aid
• I got the power
• Wipe a nose please and I also need water
• I want to watch a movie
• Singing. Henry loves singing. We have been teaching him primary songs and he loves them. He is also really getting good at classic kid songs. He loves singing: 

• Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
• Give Said the Little Stream
• The Itsy Bitsy Spider
• Rubber Duckie
• Search, Ponder and Pray
• Families Can Be Together Forever
• I am a Child of God
• Call Me Maybe
• Wait, I need a hug. I love you.
• He also really loves to change up the lyrics to songs. For example: instead of singing "Call me maybe" he will sing, "Call me Henry" or "Call me hot dog." After such a clever word swap he bursts into laughter. My favorite was when he said "Cover me Pillow Cover."
• He also likes dancing. We have mini dance parties here at home and he really cuts loose. Sometimes he is the only one allowed to dance or sing and will get angry and shout "no Mama, I sing it," or "no Mama dance."
• He is going through a cute/mildly obnoxious phase of continually saying "Mama look at this." And when I look he is performing something for me or sometimes just standing there smiling. He has also started hugging Steve or I and saying "Mama/Dada look at this." We think he is trying to make whoever he is not hugging jealous.
• I have been trying to teach him how to close his eyes without opening his mouth. He can do it if he tries really hard but its pretty funny. 
• He also loves to have me pretend to be asleep and then give me an Eskimo kiss to awaken me. Cute when we are playing, not cute when I am trying to take a real nap and I keep getting his nose in my face.

I inherited a huge box of primary aids from my mom and Henry loves playing with the magnet stories. He requests the "broken bow one" often, its the story of Nephi breaking his bow. He also loves a cute one about a monster under the bed. Henry is also really excited about and enjoys FHE. He sits on his special FHE seat, the red ottoman and will help choose songs to sing, pray and listen for the lesson. After months of working on this, his attention span has really improved from 5 minutes to 15 minutes of sitting still. It helps to have lots of pictures and activities but its really paid off. And he often talks about the things we're learned like Joseph Smith, the scriptures and Daniel in the Lion's Den.

Swimming. Henry is quite the fish these days and loves being at the pool and floating and jumping off steps to me. He is also starting to master using his arm floaties to keep himself afloat. At the pool he is more hesitant but at the lake he just jumps in and doesn't look back. 

He can point out the following letters and numbers with at least 80% accuracy: W, O, S, T, X, Y, P, 1, 3, 2, 0

He has stopped napping. Sad. But he still sleeps 12-13 hours each night and is getting really good at playing by himself. He loves cars, blocks, stuffed animals and books. He hates quiet time (alone time in his room) but if he can play quietly in the same room with me he is happy. He also likes to line up all his cars on the table as I am sewing. They like to drive on the fabric. 

Henry continues to be a wonderful little boy who is such a blessing in our lives. Pictures from July-August.

Strawberry Fields

One balmy breezy morning. Rows of strawberries beds. One gently rounded gallon bucket. One very happy and sticky little boy. Washington Farms in Watkinsville. Strawberry Shortcake for dinner. Yum.

Balloon Boy

The cashier gave Henry a blue balloon. I told her he was a little young. Case in Point: string is more exciting than floating blue ball.

Dear Baby

If you could stop ramming your head into my cervix that would be great. In return, I promise to start feeding you more fruits and vegetables and less Taco Bell.

love you
mom