The snowy weekend

Henry has seen snow before. This is not even his first blizzard.

But at age 2.5, last year seems like the misty past. The foot and a half (and counting) we've received is like Henry's first snow.

And for the first time, he shouldered that most manly of burdens...

...shoveling.

Story Time

Story time usually precedes bed time. Henry enjoys it, of course. When we announce the "last story," he accepts it only because he knows that there will always be a "very last story" (he got this from Frog and Toad) to come. He saves his protests for after the very last story. Still, stories are to be passively enjoyed as a prelude to sleep.
But, instead of announcing a last and then a very last story, Uncle Joe (who heroically braved the snow to come up from NYC for a brief visit) segued from story time to...

Computer Time

...computer time.

Uncle Joe had lots of pictures on his hard drive.

Henry's favorites were the ones of the cats and, of course, of himself. He's changed a lot in the past six months.

Goofin' around for the web cam.

Fortunately we get to hang out more with Uncle Joe (and Aunt Anita!) in Madison next week.

Gift from Sonali

 

Before the stream of gifts becomes a torrent... Sonali left a present for Henry with her friend Kris when in town for a conference. Only this week did we pick it up. Henry was pretty underpracticed in receiving and opening presents. This will not be so for long.

Conversation

Me: Henry, if you're done using the potty, maybe you can get off so we can empty the contents in the toilet.
Henry: What is the toilet? No. I mean, what is contents?
M: Well, contents are what is inside something. What's contained in it. Like, we talk about eating food out of containers. It comes from the same word: container - contents. Or look, this magazine has something that's called a "table of contents." Here it is. It tells you what stories are contained inside the magazine.
H: Is the potty a container?
M: Yes, the potty is a container - for poop!
H: Can food be contents?
M: Yes! Like, if I say, "Henry, could you please give me the contents of that pickle jar," you'll give me a pickle, right?
H: (counting on fingers) I will give you one pickle two pickles three pickles and you will eat them up and say Yummy.
M: Yummy. Now can you get off the potty so I can wash you in the bathtub?
H: I don't want to take a bath!

Later, Henry in the bath, to Ken: "Contents are if Mommy asks me for the contents of a pickle jar, I could give her thirteen or fourteen or fiveteen pickles!"

Aquarium

Classes ended this week. Hurray! Despite various deadlines, we're actually a little less frantic. This morning we finally got on the T and went to the New England Aquarium. Henry loved the penguins (and the turtle-shaped admission stamp on his hand).

He was indifferent to most of the fish, preferring to play (bossily: "Mommy, come and work with me in my office!") in their grim little toddler discovery area.

While Mommy wanted to watch the nurse sharks and moray eels.

The sight of the penguins getting fed made us all hungry (wickedly) for sushi.

But we settled for Ethiopian food instead.

Taking ourselves very seriously

Having two academics for parents must be a real pain in the neck. Henry is not usually precocious: bright, yes, but not posturing for grown-up approval. Sometimes, though, he struggles to get our attention, like at the breakfast table as we're discussing some upcoming conference or publication, and he resorts to something like: "Well, my article is about..." or (we had been talking about kohl, or was it the store Kohl's?): "Mommy? Mommy. There's a boy named Cole at Debra's house." Then I feel momentarily bad. Hard to explain why. I just hope he's not feeling pressure to make himself interesting to us.
Anyway, he's taken to showing up in our bed sometimes: not to sleep, just to hang out. Yesterday he came in around 7:30 am: "Excuse me, it's morning!" These photos are from a few days ago. He just decided he wanted to read his book in our bed.

Don't worry, he can't read yet. I keep trying to teach him the alphabet, but he is not interested - just picks out the capital "H"s and says, "That's an H, for Henry!" Loves turning pages, though. Loves rhyming. And when I read him some Shel Silverstein poems the other day, he latched right onto Zachary Zugg and Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout from the first reading. "But why is the hour too late to tell us what happened to her in the garbage?"

Gingerbread cookie

Henry's daycare teacher has been doing a lot of baking with the kids. This culminated in a lunch of pizza they made themselves. Before that, there were apparently lots of cookies and muffins and things. Since Ken does all the dropoff and pickup, I have only the vaguest idea of what goes on there until Henry brings something home:

With Grandpa Valya

Grandpa Valentin came over for Thanksgiving, bringing Henry a small plastic basketball hoop and ball. (Last time he brought a wonderful set of trucks.) They played together for a long time.
Then, between courses of dinner:
 
We are so happy to see them completely comfortable together and enjoying each other's company! 

Just Henry

Nice to have a weekend at home; no conferences, no classes: just us.

Yoga

There was a time when Henry pronounced it "yoo-ga" but now it is yoga. Someone came into his daycare last week and gave a demonstration, so he knows a wider range of poses now.
Whenever we do it, he wants to join in--not on his own mat but on one of ours, usually directly underneath us. Eventually we give up and he takes over the mat.
But he has such fun doing it, especially standing on the yoga block and jumping off, that it is hard to hold it against him.

Sharing

On the subject of possessiveness: how would you like it if someone you didn't know too well showed up and asked to "borrow" your car? Or your iPod? The demands we make on little kids to "share" their stuff are totally unreasonable. Yet Henry's day care teacher has done a great job training the kids to share and to be diplomatic about not wanting to.
Having no siblings, Henry seemed a bit disconcerted when Paul arrived. Yet his first reaction when Paul came and sat on his little chair: "I will go bring another chair for Paul to sit on."

Never mind that Paul may have had other ideas.

You have to at least admire the impulse.

Visit from "Baby" Paul

Our friends Kathryn and Eckart came to visit last weekend with their 18-month-old, Paul, whom you may remember from our New Haven posts as "Baby Paul." Kathryn was presenting at a conference in Boston; unfortunately I was simultaneously presenting at a conference in DC, so only got to intersect with them for one night and one morning. Still, it was great to reconnect and hang out.

Paul has gotten very big and smart. He has a funny easy-going way about him, a bit like Winnie the Pooh.

He and Henry reprised their old custom of taking baths together -- now with the addition of 2-year-old possessiveness.

And look how expert they've both become at mugging for the camera!

Thai food with Hazem

Latest art

Paper-cutout art from day care. The assignment seems to have been: make a portrait of your family. There's Daddy Bear, Mommy Bear, and Sweet Henry Bear.

More cutout art. We've mostly been saving these things to wrap Christmas presents; I used one as stationery the other day.

These are about the size of an egg - cute. His fine motor skills are getting pretty fine.

Training for the Dinosaur Liberation Army

Tweetle Beetle Battle

It seems someone at day care has been reading Fox in Socks to Henry...

Night cap

One night at bedtime Henry spontaneously asked for a hat. I brougth him this John Deere cap, which we think might have come from the organic-farmer uncle of Ken's friend Kim.

This hat has now become part of the bedtime ritual.

Which gets extended, of course, any way Henry can think of. (Look at the number of books he's pulling out.)

Good night at last?

Last night he literally put Ken and me to bed: around 10pm, seeing that we had both fallen asleep reading stories to him in our bed, he quietly left our room, went to his own room, climbed into bed, and went to sleep.