Videos of Henry

Sorry about the week in between posts - there are a lot of reasons.
- I haven't taken that many photos/videos lately
- I've been so tired after being on a computer all day at work, then having time with the kids, dinner, bedtime, etc that I just don't want to be on a computer at home!
- I sometimes will write a post while at work, but I've been really busy (and taking at least one day trip a week for the past couple of weeks), so I haven't had time to do that
So, I'm a little behind, but only by a couple of posts.

Over last weekend I took these three super cute videos of Henry. They've just got to go up here!
Video #1: Henry and I "talking". He really likes to repeat sounds back & forth!

Video #2: Henry eating one of his new favorite foods - banana! (He's doing very well with "real foods") He even sounded like he said "nana" a couple of times (I think once on this video), but it doesn't seem to have much meaning so we're not counting it as a word yet.

Video #3: Natalie making Henry laugh. I love this kid's laugh - it's about the best thing in the world.

Natalie's a busy girl

I uploaded a photo to facebook of a really cheesy statue I saw at a customer site; many of you can probably guess what university I'm at today:

When I looked through the photos on my camera, I came across some that I had taken with my camera of Natalie from some things we did this month. First up: her first trip to the dentist! I took her at the beginning of February, and overall she did really well. She had no problem sitting right down in the dentist chair

and she was very excited about the whole thing. She let Gretchen, our hygienist, take a look in her mouth and  touch her teeth to check them - no problems. Then, they brought out the spinning toothbrush. After about 3 seconds of Gretchen scrubbing her teeth with it, she got visibly upset and started crying. She wanted out of the chair; I calmed her down, and she went back in. The toothbrush came out, and she got upset again. We managed to get all of her top teeth clean, and she was basically done. I told her she had a choice: either clean the bottom teeth, or let Gretchen floss. She chose floss, and she was really good about letting Gretchen do that. Gretchen then had a thought, and asked her if she didn't like the toothbrush, or paste. Turns out the problem was with the gritty toothpaste stuff they use- Natalie didn't like it. We switched to regular toothpaste, and she was fine! Still a little weirded out by the automatic toothbrush, but she did very well. In particular, she liked "Mr. Spitty", the water rinser.

Overall, I was proud of her first visit to the dentist, and we're scheduled to go again 6 months later (in August). Then, a couple of weeks ago, Natalie and I went to my salon to get our hair cut. Back in December I won a $150.00 gift card to my salon, and I'd only used $40 of it to get my hair done in January for our date night. So, I took her there and we both got a hair cut. Unlike the dentist, Natalie had no problems getting her hair done - she loves it.

That's my stylist JJ - she's awesome!  And I love the final result - she took off about 1.5", and angled her bangs so they'll be more out of her face while they're growing out.

Henry having fun

Henry woke up with his hair all, well, sticking out and not cooperating this morning, so I decided to go with it

The hair gel really kept it up! How freaking adorable is this? I have to give him more faux-hawks.

However, it looks like while playing outside (Essie had the kids on the playground for a while today, as it's so gorgeous out) his hair did fall, but I don't think he minds - he's having a ton of fun!

Henry is 10 months old!

On Saturday Henry turned 10 months old. He's mostly a happy little guy now; we had a couple of fussy weeks, with his wanting to be held all of the time and waking up a bunch at night, but the past week or so has been much better. I think that's because he has two new teeth now! His two upper front teeth have finally popped through. Both of them coming through at the same time would make me pretty fussy too!

Movement: Henry's crawling everywhere now; no more inch-worming his way around the room.

I absolutely love watching him crawl quickly towards me - it looks SO cute when he does it! He kicks his right foot out to the side when he crawls; you can kind of see it in this video. It's just adorable!

Food: Henry is eating everything in sight. He's started eating more "regular food", such as pieces of banana, small pieces of pasta (spaghetti, rotini), and of course the Gerber puffs that he loves so much. He still loves his baby food, oatmeal, and yogurt, and will eat just about anything we give him for as long as we will give it to him!

I think his last favorite thing is anything that Natalie does or likes. As soon as she gets out a toy, he wants to play with it as well. If she's running around, he tries to crawl after her. If she goes upstairs, he wants to follow (luckily he can't climb stairs yet!). No one makes him smile like his big sister. While it can frustrate Natalie (particularly when he takes one of her toys), which makes her whine to us, overall they just get along so great that I really can't complain.

The many faces of Henry

There's not really much to say about this post; it's just some super cute photos of Henry that I've managed to capture over the past few days.

He's started anticipating the flash based upon the red light that comes on just before the flash, which has led to these photos:

Natalie's first day of school

Yesterday we tried out the first of two preschools for Natalie. It's called Chesterbrook Academy, and they offer a free "Discovery Day" for kids to try it out and see how they like (and how we parents like it too!). The day went really well!

Natalie started off very excited about going to preschool (those are "Tangled" stickers on her shirt that apparently needed to be there)

When we arrived around 8:15am we went into Natalie's classroom (intermediate level for 3 year olds). Natalie's teacher, Ms Ashley was there so we got to meet her (we hadn't before as we went to check it out at an open house on a weekend). We helped her take off her coat, showed her the potty and told her when we'd be back. We gave Ms. Ashley Natalie's things (spare clothes, sheet for nap cot and her blanket), talked to her a little, and then said goodbye to Natalie. Ms. Ashley helped her start playing with the toys below, I snapped a picture, and we headed out.

Note: I totally remember playing with those same stacking rings when I was a kid! We had a whole bin of them as well - I used to make really complicated towers out of them.


Around 1:30 I called to check in. I spoke to Jenny, the principal and she said Natalie's day was going very well. She got Ms. Ashley for me, and I then spoke to her. She told me Natalie'd had a great day - followed the rules very well, interacted with everyone, did all of the activities, ate her food, and took a nap. She was surprised when I said this was Natalie's first day at a school, as she did so well. My response: that's why we want her at preschool, cause we knew she was ready for it!

Evan and I went to pick her up by 4:30pm. She was excited to see us, but obviously had not been anxiously awaiting our arrival as she had the same question for me she has every day at Essie's house: "Where are we going?" (cause sometimes we go places other than home after we pick her up). We talked to the teacher's aide about her day, and were given a number of items: a written report of her day, the two crafts she had made (coloring picture and a painting), and a typed report of everything the class did that day, which included photos of her doing her activities throughout the day!

I really liked how much feedback we got from the school on her day, and they seemed really excited to have her there. The kids all gave her a big "BYE!" when she left, and she waved to them too. It's a strong contender for a school for her, that's for sure! She was tired out from the day, but in a very good mood all evening.

We're also trying out a new one in town, Kiddie Academy, on Friday, so we'll see which one ends up being more to all of our liking. Our plan is to start her off now at 3 full days a week, see how that goes, and then end up at 5 days a week. We'll be sad to not have her go to Essie's anymore, but we'll have Henry there for a couple of years yet!

It's football time!

I don't think I've really mentioned it on here before, but back in early December I introduced Carrie to my coworker Matt. I thought they might hit it off, and it turns out I was right! They've been dating for about 2 months now and are really happy together, even with the long distance (Matt obviously lives by me, and Carrie is still down in Richmond). One of the upsides for me is that she visits up here more often now, so I get to see her more. :)

Matt is from near Pittsburgh, and is a huge Steelers fan, so he and his roommate Joel (who is another coworker of mine) threw a little party for the Superbowl. We headed over to eat, watch the game and hang out - we made it through most of the first half before the kids just needed to get home and go to bed.

Matt, me & Joel (all sporting our black & gold)

Joel & Henry

Carrie and I

Matt bought a new recliner in which to watch the game - before it started, we took some photos in it.

It would've been even better if the Steelers had managed to win, but despite that we had a lot of fun.

Princess weekend

Natalie started last weekend by applying her own makeup. Doesn't she look super fancy?

Then, on Sunday, we went to Tiny Toes for dress up hour. We were actually the only ones there, so Natalie had full use of the dress up room!

The lack of other kids let Natalie run around and have lots of fun in her ballerina dress, showing off her dance moves

and her "grand jete" leaps

Natalie then did some ballerina poses for me (I know she doesn't look happy, but it was her idea!). That's our ballerina!

Natalie's first painting

While I was finishing Henry's name sign (putting on the polka dots), Natalie got to do something new: paint! I gave her a paper plate, her own set of Q-tips, and small amounts of paint. She had a blast! She started out making polka dots like I was, and had very nice orderly sets of them in various colors all over the plate. However, that didn't hold its appeal, and she ended up doing this

It's finally done!

Back in March 2010, I posted about the conversion of the nursery from girl room to boy room. I said this at the end of the post:
"Above the crib I will be doing some sort of big artwork with his name spelled out, but as we aren't picking a name until he's born, I'll do that on maternity leave. And over the changing table I'm going to hang something, I just have to find the right thing!"

I ended up putting some animal stickers on the wall above the changing table and next to the crib

  

but did I do something with Henry's name over maternity leave? No, I did not! You can see in the above picture above that there's a blank white canvas over the crib. Well, it's been that way since April 2010. Until this weekend, that is! I finally got around to putting Henry's name on the canvas, and I'm really happy with how it came out!

It was really easy! I bought a canvas from Michaels, and plain wooden letters. I painted the canvas brown (took about 2 coats, and you can see that it's still not fully saturating the canvas, but I like it that way), and painted each letter. I let everything dry overnight, then glued the letters to the canvas. I let that sit overnight again. I then added the polka dots to the canvas (using Q-tips!), let it dry overnight again, and then put it up on Henry's wall.

Of course, now that I'm putting things on the wall, I'm starting to want to move things around on the walls of both Henry and Natalie's rooms! I do have two things on order for Natalie's room that will necessitate moving some things, but Henry's room would only be because I want to. I like reorganizing :)

So close!

All Henry wants to do is play with his sister's toys - anything she has, he immediately crawls over to and wants to play with. As you can imagine, this makes for a whiny 3 year old ["Henry's touching my book!" "Henry has my car!"]. To manage the situation (and our sanity), our solution has been to tell her that anything Natalie doesn't want Henry playing with, she needs to put up on something (the couch, a chair, etc). 

However, in the last couple of weeks Henry has started pulling up on everything (and just tonight he tried repeatedly to stand unsupported, but of course toppled each time he let go!), so the couch is no longer "safe". Over the weekend, Natalie solved this problem by taking her toys up on the stair landing, causing a deep desire in Henry to get up the stairs to her. I wasn't home, but Evan said he did manage to get up the first step once! He hasn't done it again, but you can see him trying here.