Livin' the Dream: July 2013

Hello! Long time, no update. Believe me, this is purely for lack of time, not lack of material. Henry is truly growing and thriving and keeping us busy, busy, busy! I can't properly recollect each small milestone he's achieved since the last post, so I'll let you know what life is like with HRB these days.

At 23 months, like Forrest Gump, wherever he goes he is RUNNING. He will walk when holding hands with a parent, but given any open space the speed is turned on. As active as he is, he is also perfectly content to lie on his belly with some crayons and a coloring book for awhile, or "vroom vroom" his FP Little People cars across the rug, or "woo woo" his trains around the tracks. He also really enjoys working in his kitchen and LOVES reading his books. Today I caught him paging through his Little Michigan book (a favorite as we prepare to visit in just 2 weeks!) and he is basically reading it to himself by now. Apples, tweet-tweets, yishies (fishies), and deer that go "neigh" are all immediately identified now.

Henry is a talking machine, and while we aren't quite hearing real sentences just yet, he is eager to learn words and will gladly repeat what we ask him to say. Last weekend he pointed to a picture of our wedding kiss, and said "Mommy Dada bye-bye" and then made an air kiss (with his little fish face.) I'm pretty sure he was telling us we were kissing goodbye. He also speaks a lot of toddler gibberish still, which sometimes can be quite animated and interesting. I love when I "answer" back to him and he nods and chuckles a little, like I got the joke. Lately he's been saying "all RIGHT!" when he's happy about something. We try to get him to do a thumbs up when he says it but he's still working on that.

This kid would live outside 100% of the time if we'd let him. He is always asking to go "my yide" and pointing to the back door. He loves to help water my potted plants and find sticks and rocks around the yard. He also absolutely adores water in all forms. When we water the plants, he likes to put his hand in the hose stream as we fill up the watering can. He will never turn down an invitation to go to the pool and leaving the pool is always traumatic, no matter how pruny he is. He has splash day at school every Friday and his teachers report he enjoys it the most out of his classmates. We met some friends at a splash pad a couple of weekends ago and he was in heaven. We are really looking forward to seeing his reaction to riding on the boat and playing in the pool at the cabin soon.

Henry is still obsessed with the "bow-wow" or "Yacy", "Cucker", and the other cat. For some reason, Sam isn't a name he wants to learn. Neither is Henry, for that matter. He and Lacy chase each other around the house (he does 99% of the chasing) and he giggles the whole time. Lacy doesn't giggle, but she still gets plenty of scraps from his leftovers and he does a great job replenishing her dog food, so I think we are getting along just fine.

Now for the photographic evidence!