Daddy's girl

My parents have been a huge help recently. Not only did they keep Henry all through MLK weekend -- when day care was closed, I had to prepare classes, and both kids had a nasty cold -- but they took him again this past weekend, Thursday night to Saturday night. Having him there for two days meant we got tons of work done, and also got to dote properly on Esti.

She can smile now and even giggle -- makes her much more fun to interact with. Barely ever fusses anymore, unless she's hungry or sleepy.

She's turning into a real flirt, I think.

But look at the physical strength, too -- she can practically support her own weight standing up.

A little kitchen klezmer (why not):

Catapult

Remember that catapult design of Henry's a few weeks ago? Well, it inspired Ken to spend a few hours in the basement building one. (Technically it's a counterweight trebuchet, not a catapult. Two weeks ago I wouldn't have been able to tell you the difference.) Power tools would have helped, but it looked impressive and worked fine nonetheless. On Wednesday morning we brought it to Deb's house for a little test launch.

Ken enjoyed explaining the physics of it to the kids. I think Henry was very proud. He certainly got a bit possessive. "It's going to shoot a tennis ball, and no one is going to chase after the ball except me." (Eventually everyone got a turn loading the tennis balls and chasing after them.)

Putting the throwing arm onto the base.

Ready, aim...

Fire!

I know I'm biased, but...

...isn't she beautiful?

This was around Esti's four-month birthday. Incidentally we took her to the doctor for a four-month checkup a couple of weeks ago. She is 40th percentile for length (24 inches), 33rd for weight (maybe 12.5 pounds, I think?). She also amazed the doctor by trying to crawl -- uphill -- on the examining table. The doctor said Esti's abdominal strength was more typical of a 6-month-old: "I've haven't seen many four-month-old babies who can lie on their stomach, hold their heads up, and move their legs, all at the same time."

Birthday card for Grandpa Valentin

Henry discovers the joy of glitter pens.

Nap time

Learning to grab

While Mommy types frantically...

Classes started for me on Jan 14. So pretty much the last chance to get the manuscript out the door was Jan 8. And while Henry played with Grandma and Grandpa... it happened!

Hurray!

Not quite enough snow to sled down the hill on a big piece of cardboard.

Which doesn't stop anyone from trying!

Outward-facing!

Whiteboard fun

New Year's Day. My dad introduces Henry to rebuses.

(He needed a little help to figure out it was his name.)

Henry wrote the B and U. (From back when he decided to be a builder, I guess.) So we played with writing words. We went through some words, like, of course, Butt -- so on the left that's a piece of bread with Butter.

Playing with square letters: hockey, rocket, pocket, etc.

New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve at my parents'.

Photos from my cousin Andrew -- sorry it's taken me so long to post. We had just flown in from Wisconsin that morning, but Henry (and Ken!) hung in there like troopers.

Esti went to sleep early, then woke up for a little 10pm debut. A little glassy-eyed, perhaps?

After dinner there was a "Yankee Swap" gift exchange.

(At this point Esti went back to bed; what's in the baby carriage behind Henry are presents.)

(Needless to say, the kids slept in pretty late the next morning.)

Is my child a prodigy?

Esti will be four months old next Thursday. She's always been strong; even in the delivery room, to the midwife's amazement, she was holding up her head. But this is ridiculous. She can barely even roll over yet -- the babysitter has seen it, I haven't -- and it seems she is already crawling. I left her well away from the edge of this baby gym; by the time I had found my camera, she was at least six inches along. See?

Why I love Henry's daycare (II)

Henry has decided that he's not a knight, he's a builder. (A musical builder. He says: "When I grow up to be a builder, on rainy days when it is too cold to build I will play the accordion.")
At daycare yesterday he apparently drew (not dictated, I've been corrected) the following design for a catapult, which was immediately emailed out to all the parents. (Actually this sort of email contact, twice in two days, is pretty unusual for them.)

Now it seems Henry and Ken and some other interested kids and parents are going to build it.
Henry: "And you feed the ball up through the legs of the catapult, and it goes inside, and you pull the rope and it goes HHHHHmmmmmmmmm on the head of the bad guy."

Why I love Henry's daycare

Here's the email I just received from Deb, Henry's daycare teacher (photo is mine):

Henry’s Story
January 6, 2010

One time I was sleeping in my bed and I thought I was in Plainfield and I dreamed, I imagined that I saw an ambulance driving over me.


Here’s how it begins First we went away for a long time. And then we were in Wisconsin, dreaming about shortbread. (Laughs). There were lots of people (on the airplane) and there were stairs and we got to walk down a long aisle. On the first plane I got to see the pilot. We only walked by. When we landed in Wisconsin, we took two planes, because the first flight wasn’t long enough to get all the way to Wisconsin, so we took another plane. And then we were at Wisconsin at Grandpa Ken’s house. We had Christmas at Grandma Ann’s house and at Grandpa Ken’s house. At Christmas, at Wisconsin at Christmas we opened a lot of presents. It was easy to tell which were mine because they were all wrapped in present, in paper that had candy on it and that’s how it was easy to tell.

Tobogganing in Richland Center

Ken has a serious wooden toboggan...

...and a serious hill across the street (not this one, but another where he actually drove us and the toboggan up the hill in his truck, then let us sled down again).

Richland Center, WI

With Grandma Nancy...

...and Grandpa Ken.

Long way down

Henry sledding behind East High School in Madison. He got so cold that day. The last, absolutely the last time we let him go outside in the snow without his snowpants. But look at the size of this hill! And he's not even scared. When Ken and (Esti and) I went down right after this, I was terrified.

Sledding in Madison

Behind East High School, this wonderful empty post-industrial zone. I think this might have been Christmas Day: very peaceful, no one around.

Trudging across the field...

and up the hill.

Look out below!