"Happy birthday to you, Masha. Yeah."

In Andover. We celebrated my mom's birthday, which was actually the 11th. (The title of this post is the singing phone message Henry left on her voice mail last week.) The weekend was a bit of a multitask: we came mainly to hang out with Aaron and Ana, who are finally back from their year in Japan (they get married in Sao Paolo this July -- hurray!), but as it happened we also got to start the process of house-hunting in Boston (total mixed bag, frightening and exciting). Took lots of pictures of bad wallpaper, pink-and-black-tiled bathrooms, and high-potential attics, which we'll spare you. Instead, here are Aaron and Ana making a beef stroganoff for last night's dinner ("Henry want more meat!")...

...Henry and Ken and my cousin Daniel playing with the new fire engine my uncle and aunt Paul and Sophia gave him...

(moving parts, sound effects, a little man who climbs a ladder and rescues people, the whole deal)

and Henry going "Cheers!" with my mom and Ana. He's suspiciously good at this. Has he been practicing at the babysitter's?

Henry talks in sentences

It seems like the kid's got a new part of speech every day. This weekend, prepositions. In the video, he actually looks at a post from his own blog; his comment is "Henry is cooking onions with Mommy, on a chair." Our favorite game over the past few days has been to build sentences in blocks, adding a block each time: "Henry is sitting on a chair at the table in the kitchen with Mommy." "Daddy is eating rice and beans on a plate. The plate is green. Daddy is eating rice and beans on a green plate." And so on. With prepositional phrases, especially, you can keep chaining for ever.

He also (unrelated fact -- have I mentioned this before?) knows all about the food chain: "Worms eat compost! Fish eat worms! Henry eats fish! Daddy eats fish!"

Daddy's PJs

About a year ago, Ken's Aunt Sis came across this Kenny pajama top and sent it to us. Now Henry has grown into it and really likes wearing it.

Here he's trying to delay a nap by strutting around his room and pulling stuff off the bookshelf.

Snaps in the back -- from when kids used to be allowed to sleep on their tummies. Remember?

The sun comes out

Unbeknownst to him, Henry's life got a lot better last week. Both his parents landed jobs -- and in just one metro area! Ken will be at Tufts; I'll be at BU; both are tenure-track positions.

Hurray!

Toys

Some finger puppets our friends Ari and Lily brought back from Peru...

...and my Skype headphones!

Block letters

Cooking

Henry loves sauteeing onions. Really!

A cold

Henry and I have both been sick with a cold and super cranky since Wednesday. He even had to stay home from the babysitter. At least we got to read Ezra Jack Keats' Snowy Day.