Play Date

A couple weeks ago Henry and I went to a play date at his friend Mari's house. I tried to get some pictures of Henry and his friends Mason and Mari together, however they all played in their own areas of the room, that is until the goldfish were brought out, and then they all came together! Although they are not yet able to play together, they certainly enjoy exploring with each other's toys and at times will yell back and forth with each other. Mari, being the only girl of the group, has a lot of interesting babies and strollers that Henry and Mason are not used to. Henry really enjoyed the baby!

Here is a man secure with his masculinity!

Kissing/eating the baby.

Not sure, CPR maybe!

And, when all else fails, use your mouth when your hands are occupied!

Getting Around

So it is official, Henry no longer does the army crawl, he can now crawl on all fours. Along with this new success came added trouble for me! Henry can now get anywhere and everywhere his little heart desires. This often means pulling up on me while I'm cooking, "helping" me load the dishwasher and watching Kevin snow blow. He is also walking along furniture and getting more steady on his chubby legs to stand alone for quite a while. He has all the courage in the world, but will cry at most falls, usually because he is frustrated. Along with this new sense of freedom came a new side of stubbornness and a great need for Independence. Although Henry clearly understands the concept of "no," he does not like to listen and HATES not getting his own way. We are consistent with trying to teach him the difference between right and wrong and safe and unsafe and I'm sure he will eventually understand and hopefully will listen.

The purchase of a gate is coming soon!

Isn't this outfit great, Papa got it in Alaska!

Watching Dad snow blow.

Luke's Birthday Outing

Instead of buying gifts for the kids, for their birthdays Kevin and I decided to take them out to do an activity of their choice and for a meal, also of their choice. Luke chose to go to Nomad's, which is an activity center similar to Chuckee Cheese. Kevin had a great time playing all of the games with Luke and Henry and I stayed close by watching the two have fun. Here are some pictures from Luke's day. Happy 4th Luke!!

Basketball was by far the favorite game, even Henry cried when we left this area.

Luke demonstrating how he can balance a potato chip in his teeth.

Luke making a silly face and Henry attempting a silly face.

Concentrating hard on staying on the road!

Luke was really good at the snow mobile game, I think he came in 4 out of 8.

Nine Months Old!

On January 1st Henry turned nine months old. It is hard to believe that in a few short months he will be one year old! In the last few weeks he has grown up so much. We went to the doctor this week and made out well. Henry continues to be healthy and is growing on target. He is weighing in at 20 lbs. and 12 oz. and is 27 1/2 inches long. This puts him in the 45th percentile for weight and 15th for height. I think Henry's doctor was impressed with the amount of rolls he has around his knees. Since he is growing well Henry will be able to start on milk (which made us very happy with the cost of formula!), which I'm not sure will go well for Henry since he likes his bottles extremely warm. Time will tell. Here are some recent pictures of Henry with all of his new accomplishments, he is now crawling (and worming) everywhere and pulls up on everything and anything he can find.

He continues to be the happiest baby ever!

Kevin was wondering why his socks were so long, maybe to cover the rolls on his knees?

Henry is fascinated with the computer, probably because it is one of the few things we do not let him touch. We decided if we let him play with it for a short time maybe it would take some of the appeal away, it did not work, he still loves the computer, as you can tell.

I left one of the cabinet doors open and Henry decided he would poach some eggs!

Henry's favorite new room is the dining room, so he can pull himself up on the chairs, here he is trying...

And he's up!!

Fun in the Snow

Last weekend after it snowed and the sun was shining we decided to take Henry outside to play in the snow for the first time. For a child who loves being outside no matter what the weather, it came as no surprise to us that he loved the snow. I tried to keep mittens on him, but he kept taking them off so he could eat the snow.

He especially liked me running up and down the driveway with him in the sled.

Getting Bigger and Bigger!

So as anybody who has children knows, they grow up so fast. Henry is already 9 months old and he is doing new things every day. As amazed and excited as I am to experience all of these milestones, it also makes me realize that my baby is growing up. In the past two weeks I feel like he has grown more and accomplished more new things than he has in the first 8 months of his life. Although he continues to prefer the "army crawl" to a traditional four point crawl, Henry is now able to get himself from a crawling position to sitting. He also recently surprised me and was almost standing in his crib when I went to get him up from his nap. I really think he would be able to do it if his knees didn't have so many rolls!

This is how I found him, he was laughing at me as I was yelling to Kevin to get the camera!

So then we decided to prop him up standing to see how he would do, and he ate the crib with his one tooth.

At our Christmas dinner with Kevin's grandma and Aunt Carol, Henry made the discovery that if he throws items on the ground somebody will come running to pick them up, well they will at Grandma and Grandpa's anyway!

Making a phone call, probably to "Charlotte" (see below).

Henry meeting and Kissing "Charlotte" for the first time. He was a little apprehensive at first but quickly overcame his fears and proceeded to open mouth kiss Grandma's doll Charlotte. Charlotte is several inches taller than Henry but that did not stop him.

Christmas Morning

Sorry for the delay, but I almost didn't post these pictures from Christmas morning since I already posted some from Christmas Eve, but when I came across them I realized they were too cute not to post. There are about a million other great Christmas shots, but they will have to come out in later random posts. Henry thoroughly enjoyed his first Christmas. I think he is still feeling the excitement of Christmas morning as he is just as excited to see his toys in the morning as he was to receive them in the first place. The joys of being a baby!

Checking out his new cell phone Santa put in his stocking!

I think this was the only gift he actually "opened."

This is a small pile of the gifts he received, keep in mind this is before celebrated with both sides of the family, needless to say the pile continued to grow and we now have 2 toy baskets!

Henry checking out his new friend good old Teddy Rukspin! We still can't figure out if Teddy shrunk or if we all just grew, but he seems a lot smaller than he did when I was a kid. Hopefully Henry will enjoy playing with Teddy the older he gets.