Bohemian Rhapsody-- in more ways than one

I see a little silhouette-a of a man...

Five Months

Agatha is five months old today!  She is such a happy, sweet-tempered girl.  (Except when she has trouble with her digestion.)  She giggles and squeals and loves to be outside and look around at the world.  She is doing great with her napping, settling down to sleep by herself and taking two good naps a day.  Last night she slept 12 hours with only two wake-ups to nurse.  We've started giving her some rice cereal since she seems so interested in food, but she's not as voracious as her brother was, either with food or nursing.  But then, probably 99% of the population is more low-key and easy-going than Henry!  She really, really loves people, too.  She loves for anyone to talk to and smile at her, and really engages with people (also different from her brother, as I remember it).  We are blessed with our beautiful girl.  

Snow Day

It snowed about 3 inches last night and then rained down some ice on top of that, so Henry's school was closed today.  After the years we lived in snowy Saratoga, we're always slightly annoyed at the way Lancastrians freak out about a little snow, but whatever.  Henry and Michael made a superior snowman this morning.  Michael says we have just enough yard to make a snowman this big (with the rolling around of the giant snowballs, practically all the snow in our yard was sucked into the snowman!).  It will surprise no one to hear that Michael was still outside perfecting the placement of the coal eyes and stick arms long after Henry had come in to get warm.  

Sticking up for Mom

During lunch today, we were having quesadillas and I added hot sauce to mine.  Of course, then Henry wanted hot sauce.  Michael was watching us and as I shook a few drops onto Henry's tortilla, Michael said, "That's enough!"  Henry looked at him and said, "Why did you say that, Daddy?  Mama knows." 

Happy girl

The Deer Hunter

We've gotten in the habit of watching movies with Henry before bed.  Because he is still WAY into robots, MIchael got "The Iron Giant" on Netflix and they've been watching that the last few nights.  Tonight I watched part of it with him, and at one moment the little boy and the giant robot are in the woods and they spot a deer quietly grazing.  They commune with the deer and it's a sweet little moment.  Henry said, "I think the deer's gonna be dead, Mama."  Taken aback, I reassured him and stressed how happy they all were (not having seen the movie before, unlike him!).  Sure enough, in the next moment, two hunters appear and shoot the deer dead.  "Why did they do that, Mama; the deer was so happy!?"  The point seemed to be to show the human-like empathy of the giant as he mourns the deer, but I was horrified that my little child had been watching this cartoon about shooting and killing.    But, the horse being out of the barn, when he asked me why those guys shot the deer, I explained that they were hunters and that they sometimes kill animals to eat them (we aren't vegetarians, after all, so this is a fact we must confront). He thought about that a minute.  Then he said, "I want to shoot and eat an aminal some time!" I explained that the meat we eat is animals, thinking this would give him some pause, but he just said, "I want to shoot a deer and eat it!  I want to crack it open with a stick!"  

Accidents will happen

Henry is still working on mastering the potty, and this afternoon had his first accident.  It bothered him, but he was reassured that next time he would make it.  I don't mind; as long as he's trying, I'm happy.  

The Thomas underwear is proving to be an important motivator.  The only problem is that the large pictures of the trains are on the bum (just little trains on the front), but Henry likes to see the big engines, so he insists on wearing the underwear backwards.  

You lookin' at me?

The Chill of Winter

Today it was a balmy 50 degrees, but we've had some chilly-- very chilly-- weather the past week, including our biggest snowfall of the year, which was about an inch and a half.  Here's Henry wearing his froggy galoshes on a snowy morning, and Agatha with BRIGHT red cheeks after a walk outside. 

Toilet Love

So, Henry really is using the toilet.  He wore pull-ups last night and to school today, but the previous day he went and put on his Thomas the Tank Engine underpants (bought by me as a potty enticement last summer).  When he wanted to take them off to have a bath later in the day, he told me, "Mom, these underwear are too tight."  Bless his heart, he had put them on with his torso through the leg hole, and it was so tight around his waist I could hardly get them off.  He'd worn them that way for hours!  So if he can get through that and still be pro-potty, I think we're in the clear.  He even slept in real underwear on Sunday night.

I talked briefly with his teacher about it today, and she said she's been telling him that one day he'd just wake up and feel like he was ready, and he would always say to her, "Yeah, but I'll do that at home!"  Which I thought was funny.  And he did.  We actually ran out of diapers on Saturday so I told him to hold his poop till we could get to the store, or use the potty, and he decided to use the potty.  Interestingly, he hasn't asked me to make good on any of the myriad bribes I'd offered for using the potty these past many, many months.  I know he doesn't forget anything, so I'm wondering when the other shoe will drop and I'll be forced to pony up on a trip to the toy store. 

Happy MLK Day!

A musical selection from Henry.   

Sound the trumpets!

Henry used the toilet today!  

I'll say it again... Henry used the toilet!  

I have no idea how it happened, really.  He just decided to do it, and went about his business like he'd been doing it all his life, from sitting and taking his time to washing his hands and flushing.  He just got a shy smile and didn't want to make a big deal out of it, didn't even really want me to notice or to tell Michael.  

He is a complete mystery to me.  

His lips are moving, but...

Henry speaks well and clearly, and what he says makes sense, and yet he is not rational.  He is not a rational being, at least not all the time, and this is what makes parenting him so frustrating and tricky these days.  He will absolutely go to the mat arguing for something that, it turns out, he doesn't even want or believe!  And yet sometimes, of course, he is saying something important that does really represent his feelings.  How to tell the difference?  

It's hard to give an example, because they mostly are long negotiations that get increasingly off the rails until you suddenly realize there is no way to resolve this with talking.  (Maybe a little bit like the Middle East?)  Today's nap was a case in point.  He didn't want to take it.  Now, normally you ignore that predictable opposition, and move ahead anyway.  But it is true that he sometimes doesn't need a nap; that after his last nap on Wednesday he didn't sleep well; and so on.  Nonetheless, he seemed tired and whiny so I decreed a mandatory quiet-and-dark time in the bed.  He fought; he cried; he raged.  I tried my usual enforcement regime of carrots and sticks but still no progress was being made.  Then he struggled to master his emotions and tell me calmly that he really wanted his lights on and to play quietly in his room.  Okay, I thought, fine; maybe I'm wrong-- he can just play quietly instead.  (It was the pseudo-calm that got to me.)  But then he changed his position and began insisting on going downstairs and eating a miniature pizza and a large chocolate bar.  This was the pod-person moment, the realization that I had been led down the garden path and squandered 15 minutes trying to reason with a tired 3-year-old.  Nonetheless, negotiations continued.  I made my final offer: a drink of milk.  He accepted, if I was willing to throw in a change into his pj's.  Exhausted, furious, frustrated, I returned with the milk to the scene of my little blond boy snuggling into his bed.  "Mama, can you organize my covers, tuck me in, and give me a kiss?"  And then he rolled over and went immediately to sleep. 

Ingress and Egress

One more thing for today: Henry is very interested in getting in and out of things.  Anything he looks at in a book, he wants to know how the person got in or out of there.  If SpongeBob is riding in the crow's nest on a ship, he wants to talk about how he'll climb out, slide down the mast, and so on.  He saw a picture of Epcot Center in the Wall-E DVD we got him (which arrived yesterday), and was fascinated by it.  We had to look it up on the internet to try to find pictures of the entrance, so he could understand how a person could get into such a building.  Then he wondered if it rolled around once you were inside.  

Rocket ships

Henry is very interested in rocket ships and space.  He saw a picture of the space shuttle yesterday (I should say, he knows all about it and has seen many pictures of it before) and was asking about where the cockpit was and so on.  This morning he announced that he wanted to ride on the space shuttle today and sit in the cockpit.  I said the cockpit is the only place to be in the space shuttle, explaining that there are no passengers and just a few seats for the astronauts.  He thought about that for a while and then said, "There are only three seats, Mama, so you and Daddy can sit and Agatha and I will stand."  

Here's how we look during our chilly, wintertime, predawn hours.  This is the morning oatmeal tableau!  

Milestones

Agatha rolled over, from back to front, on Monday!  Now when you put her down, all she wants to do is immediately roll over, and then she gets mad because she's stuck on her tummy.  She pumps her legs like she wants to get moving somewhere.  Reminds me of her brother!  

Also, Agatha laughed out loud for the first time over the weekend.  For quite a while she's made a very cute squeal of delight, but now when I am changing her clothes she giggles-- I guess she's ticklish around the arms and neck.    

Let's see, any Henry milestones?  Well, he's starting to act out little narratives with his toys.  You can hear him voicing both sides of the conversation, like, "Are you ready to go to school, Tiger?"  "Yeah."  "Okay, let's go."  He seems to have these periodic blossomings of maturity, surrounded by continuing bouts of annoying toddler behavior (like whining and so on).  Yesterday after school was one such golden moment.  Usually Tuesday afternoons are a little difficult, because he stays late for afternoon class and is tired.  But yesterday he talked a blue streak about school.  He told me that some kids weren't playing nicely on the playground and the teachers had to "straighten it out."  "They were playing too violently-- I mean rough, Mama," he said.  "They need to be more peaceable because we have a peaceful school."  I wondered if the teacher had said exactly that, correcting her word "violent" to "rough" to make it more comprehensible to the children, but Henry remembered the whole thing.  Then he asked for 5 carrots for a snack.  I told him to count them to make sure I gave him the right amount, which he did, and then he said, "If I take away one carrot, then I have four left.  If I take away two carrots, then I have three left...."  I was so proud!  

Happy Birthday, Rebekah!

Henry got himself dressed this morning as usual, and picked out a gray t-shirt with "Texas" and the state flag on it.  I asked him, "Who's in Texas right now?" thinking he'd say "Gran."  But he said, Rebekah!"  

Sleep

I've noticed that the other cousins' baby blogs don't talk about sleep much. I am pretty much obsessed with sleep.  It seems like adequate sleep is the root of all family happiness, at least for our family.  Most of my friends and family know that I am a devotee of Marc Weissbluth's "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby," and it has really worked well for us.  Henry is just now transitioning out of the afternoon nap, but he still takes at least a 2-hour nap on the four days a week when he isn't in afternoon preschool.  Plus, every night he sleeps at least 11 hours, contentedly in his own bed, without waking. It is amazing to me how he can sense time even without being able to read a clock.  He'd been getting up a little too early the past couple of days-- 5:30 or so, so I asked him to please try to sleep a bit later.  This morning he got up at 6:10 and proudly said, "I slept later, Mom!" even though Michael and I were still in bed and the house was dark.  How did he know that he had made it across the crucial 6 am threshold?  Somehow he senses it. 

The reason we were still in bed at 6:10 am is that Aggie slept GREAT!  I did a happy jig this morning when I woke up on my own and saw that the clock read 6 am.  She's been waking to nurse at around 10 pm and 2:30 am the last few nights, settling into a good schedule, but today, for the first time, after the 2:30 feed she slept straight on through till 6:30 am, without waking irritably at 4:30 or 5:30 and maybe or maybe not going back to sleep.  With some experience as a parent, I can really see her growing and changing into different phases--more or less right on Weissbluth's predicted schedule.  So, whereas she used to sleep happily in the Bjorn, now she really sleeps best on her own, in a quiet room.  And she falls into a deeper sleep at the naptimes, even if she still dozes at other times.  I guess I should be enjoying each phase, but it is a lot easier to enjoy a phase when I am not massively sleep-deprived!

This Christmas was the Year of Rudolph-- Henry watched the animated classic a zillion times and sang the song over and over.  I did make a video of him singing-- if I can figure out how, I will post it!

Things Henry Says

This should be a running series.  

One comment from a month or so ago: when Michael was explaining that he (Henry) didn't have school because of teacher training, Henry asked, "Don't the teachers know how to use the potty?"

Today, when Michael said he was going to wash his hands before dinner, Henry said, "I will do the same."

Peace, Man

These are the cool new peace booties from Tim & Kirsti.  Thank you!

Happy New Year!

It's 2009, and I decided to get with the times.  My younger cousins are way better at this than me, but at least I am going to try to keep up a little bit.  Here's my attempt at a chronicle of our little family this year, 2009. 

It's January 10th.  Henry is 3 and a quarter years old, Agatha is four and a half months, and I'm ... well, I don't even like to see it in print.  Today was a great day.  No tantrums, no freak-outs, good food and lots of time together.  We didn't even leave the house today, because a snowstorm was predicted (although it never really arrived).  Aggie woke up at 5, happy and smiling, and we groggily started the day.  Michael made the fire in the kitchen wood stove, and started the oatmeal.  Henry was thumping down the stairs at 6 am.  I read the Elmo book to him at least 3 times today, the first time with my coffee.  Henry's first idea of the day was that the fish were cold and he needed to go outside and break up the ice on the pond, which he did, with his miniature snow shovel.  After breakfast Henry and Michael worked on stacking the wood we'd just had delivered.  We did lots of house chores today-- dusting and wiping and tidying and organizing.  Michael did loads of laundry, too.  Agatha took a real nap at 7 am, then again at 10:30 am, each time for about an hour.  Then she napped again in the afternoon, from about 1:15- 2 pm.  She continues to be an easy, by-the-book baby.  I realized today that I haven't put her in the Bjorn to fall asleep in several days-- I think that phase, that newborn phase, has now passed.  She now falls asleep nursing or even can be put down awake.  Henry also napped today, for about 2 and a half hours.  What an improvement in the mood from Sleepless December!  In fact, there was about 30 minutes when all four members of the family were quiet in their beds, if not quite all asleep.  When he woke up, he and I made a cake, and we ate white beans with tuna and kale for dinner with our chocolate cake for dessert.  We watched the first part of The Incredibles, and then laid both kids in their beds by 7 pm.  So mundane, but such a triumph at the same time!  A simple triumph to have an orderly, quiet day with lots of playtime, household tasks done well and together, good meals and rest.  

I am so, so grateful for this simple, boring, wonderful life.