Christmas is Upon us...

As soon as Thanksgiving was over I started thinking about the Christmas preparations I had neglected to think about all year long. I was usually so good at buying things for people months in advance, but since I haven't been walking around the streets of New York City looking for the best sales every day, I haven't run across as many opportunities to buy cool gifts. I've decided to make things this year instead of buy them, so Henry and I have been busy making things to send to our friends and family. Today we made chocolate suckers and chocolate molds, candy canes and I also made a huge amount of gingerbread dough to make cookies out of tomorrow. We're going to decorate them when Grandma comes. So fun! I also have a cookie cutter for gingerbread houses too, so we're going to have a party.

Henry hasn't been himself lately and I think it's because I've allowed myself to take my third eye off of him while family was in town and while we get together with our friends for our culinary exploits. He isn't obeying like usual and doesn't say thank you or sorry very often. It's amazing how quickly they revert to primal behavior when we aren't there to remind them of what to say and do. I hope this week it gets better while my mom is visiting. She'll learn him all she knows:)

Henry is getting bored of his toys. I think I'll clean out his playroom tomorrow and take out the baby stuff since there's no baby to play with it.

Thanksgiving Mayhem

I am in the middle of Thanksgiving preparations right now, so I don't have that much time to write and I'm not paying that much attention to Henry either, so I don't have a lot of fun stories.

Today we went to the store for a couple of things and Henry found the big bags of candy, so he picked up a couple and threw them in my cart, then when we were all the way at the other end of the store, he ran back to the front of the store, screaming "candy,candy!". He took a couple more bags and instead of putting them in my cart, he started putting them in random carts passing by. People were so nice and let him throw the candy into their carts, which is good because he probably would have cried if they put them back right away. He put about 10 bags of candy in people's carts by the time I dragged him away. Then, I thought he lost his hat and I couldn't see it anywhere on the ground, but after a little while I saw that he had hung it up where there were some outfits hanging for sale. He cracks me up.

Also, Henry is saying some really funny things, like he finally said "Thomasin", who is one of his good friends. He used to say "Tabas" all the time, and I would try to get him to say "sin" at the end, and yesterday while driving past Thomasin's house with Justin he finally got it! He started saying "sin, sin, sin" and then he said "Thomasin"!. Justin also taught him to say "pistachio" and I taught him to say "recycle" today too. He is getting pretty good with the tricky words.

Road Trip!

Henry and I went on a road trip this week to DC this week to visit our friends Christi and Dave and go to the baby shower that was thrown for her. The drive down and back was significantly improved by a DVD player that we borrowed from a friend. We seriously have to get one of those. We had a fun time at the shower. Henry played with the family dog in the basement with the father of the mansion we were in. We painted bibs for Christi and I made one that said "tax refund" on it and Henry made one with his hand print in tie dye colors (for Christi's little hippie baby:). We spend the next day exploring Leesburg and the surrounding area. We found a fabulous baby shop, a bakery that charged us $2.00 for a sugar cookie. We also went to a farmer's market and discovered some Thai religious retreat ranch place with huge statues of Buddah surrounded by children and some other Thai lady. There was also some kid play equipment, so we let Henry play for a while. We left when Henry tried to climb up the religious statues yelling "jump?, jump?" haha! Um, no.

After his nap we hung out in their five acre back yard where they have a horse, a trampoline, and a killer raspberry patch. Henry was feeding the horse and the horse mistook his finger for a carrot and munched it a couple times. Henry's finger was totally flattened and I thought it might be broken, but five minutes later he ran back over the the horse and wanted to touch it again. When he hurt it, I kissed his finger a million times, so now when he notices his swollen and bloody finger, he runs over to me with a concerned look on his face, holding his finger up whining "horse, horse." All I have to do is kiss it and he goes on his merry way. This morning I caught him in his crib kissing his own finger. lol! After the horse we jumped on the trampoline and I WISH I could have had a video camera on my head because I have never seen anything cuter than Henry on his back being bounced by me standing over him. His hair was getting all fluffy around his face and he was laughing and loving every minute of it. He really loves a trampoline. Too bad we'll never get one since Justin sees kids with broken skulls from trampoline usage all day long. I also have weak ankles:) Then we strolled over the the underpicked raspberry patch where Henry gorged on raspberries. His face was smeared with them and we all got to eat our fill in raspberries. I can't believe they were so neglected! I don't think Henry and I lost one single raspberry off of our four bushes this year. So basically, our trip was a success and now I feel like I can go anywhere as long as I have a portable DVD player (hint to grandparents for a Christmas/Birthday present). hehe.

Henry's first real sentence...maybe

Today Henry was climbing on our bed, which is probably at least 3 feet high, with an apple in his hand and the apple came loose and hit him in the head as he fell back down to the ground. He cried a little bit and as Justin was carrying him down the stairs he whined, "Apple fall off the bed". haha! Justin and I both looked at each other, totally stunned at the complexity. I also think it may have been an accident that he said it so perfectly, but he has said all of those words before, but just not all together like that. He continues to amaze me. The "experts" say that 20 month olds learn about 10 words a day, so we really need to be careful what we say around him, not that we say bad things, but there are just some things you don't want a toddler repeating over and over in public.

So, I don't know if anyone has really internalized the lyrics to some of the Winnie the Pooh songs, but some of them are hilarious. My favorite line is during the song before they finally pull Pooh out of Rabbit's front door hole in which he's been stuck for days. They line goes, "think heave-age, think ho-age and out the Pooh will go-age". I wonder how the writers laughed at getting "out the Pooh will go-age" published and recorded by a professional choir.

Henry and I are going on a road trip to DC tomorrow to visit my friend Christi, so we'll post the details when we get back.

What do we do when Daddy's home?

I'll tell you what we do...Play! Yes, Justin was home all afternoon and he got many things done with the computers while Henry napped and then we all went to the Pitt Basketball game. We actually arrived really late, but the game was such a blow out that we didn't mind missing most of it. Henry loved the loudness of it all and couldn't wait until the crowd clapped and cheered so he could join in. He really loves to cheer sports teams on. We then went with our good friend Venkat to his temple for the Indian festival of Diwali. We ate some great Indian food, listened to some live music and saw many beautiful women all dressed up in their sauris. Henry didn't really eat much, but had a great time spooning the yogurt/pickle mixture(not my favorite thing on the menu) from my plate to his plate. He also played in the water jug. People were very entertained. He ended up eating some of the pickle sauce that was actually really spicy and he immediately looked at me and said "spicy!" and sucked in a bunch of air. haha! We had a lovely time even though we had to walk all the way up a huge steep hill just to get there. We saw it as our pilgrimage and our duty to work hard to finally make it to the temple where dinner was awaiting. Plus, I may have worked off that brownie I ate.


Earlier today Henry and I made gourmet apple pies. I found a really fancy recipe online and we all agree that it does have something special about it compared to other pies. I had bought some tiny ABC cookie cutters for Henry to play with in Tahoe and I broke those out and let him play with the spare dough. He was in heaven eating buttery dough as he recognized and yelled out every letter he saw. He learned how to make cut outs and we ended up writing "Henry Jackson Hohl" on one of the pies. I should have taken a photo of it before we ate it, eh? I'll make another one later. I also made lemon and lime curd yesterday, which turned out fabulous. Henry even loves it! What a good little eater!

Sleepy Sounds and Bare Bottoms

Henry loves the "snore and whistle" sounds of sleeping. Every time I go into his room in the morning and after his naps, or if he's on our bed or I tell him that Justin is sleeping in our room, he makes the sounds. He doesn't understand that the snoring sound is made from breathing in, so he makes it while breathing out which makes it sound more like clearing phlegm from one's throat. Yuk! He was doing it this morning when I went in, but he soon stood up, holding out his bottle from the night before and he said, "mommy, milk, yucky." He also frequently says "mommy, poo poo, eeewww." that's when I run to get him from his crib since he has recently been interested in fully undressing himself if he is uncomfortable in his diaper or clothes. I have to admit, though, that I love seeing his cute little naked body hopping and bounding around the house as he laughs and screams for me to chase him. haha!

He has been so good lately. No tantrums or problems sleeping. He doesn't throw his food anymore and he picks things up when he drops them. He throws garbage away and helps me wipe up his messes. He's gentile with babies and is friendly with everyone. He lets me comb his hair and put on his clothes and shoes without much trouble and he's finally starting to listen to reason, which means that I can finally start using the skills I learned from "Parenting with Love and Logic"! Yes! I really hope this keeps up because there's really no sign of the "terrible twos" in him at this point:) We connect with each other so much and we really have fun together. The other day I put on a DVD for him and he looked at me and patted the couch a few times next to him so that I would sit down and watch the show with him. I seriously felt so honored to have been invited and I left the cleaning and cooking for later so I could be close to him while he wanted to hang out. I'm glad we're becoming such great friends.

Walking Backwards and S's

Henry has learned to walk backwards and today at the Children's museum he walked right back onto the lap of an unsuspecting little girl sitting cross legged during story time. Luckily, she and her friends just giggled. He gets himself into trouble with that backwards walking. Henry has also figured out the difference between words with and without S's. He is now saying "books" and "ex"(for the letter x instead of "ek") and many other words. He doesn't say it very smoothly though and there's usually a pause between the word and the "s" sound, which is really funny.

Henry, Justin and I played together tonight and Henry was acting so cute and funny. He really craves our attention and loves to play staring and looking games as well as wrestling, horsey, and his new favorite toy, the old school cube with blocks of different shapes that fit in the holes. He is constantly laughing and smiling which brightens our day. I finally broke down and bought Henry a DVD of the old school Winnie the Pooh stories that we used to watch as kids. He loves them and walks around saying "Pooh" and "Tigger" all day long. I hope he really loves it as much as I remember loving it. I remember that I memorized all the words to all four movies when I was about 10 years old and I still remember most of the dialog as I'm listening to it after almost 20 years(I'm old). Nothing beats Pooh Bear.

Small Talk

Henry has been talking more and more lately. He even puts together two to three word sentences. He loves copying what I say and sometimes it really shocks me when he says something I think would have been too difficult to say. Today he was saying "nuts" when he saw my cinnamon sugar toasted pumpkin seeds and I told him that they were actually pumpkin seeds and he said it! "Punkin seeds" is what he said! He also says things like "farm book", "happy boy", "daddy seeping", "baby, mommy, daddy + (any animal) and "socks and shoes". It really seems like he's communicating more with me and not just copying words just to say them. He really loves to talk to me and hear what I have to say back.

You know by now that he loves the letter "W". While he was in the tub, I showed him that a W upside-down is also an M. He was so intrigued by it. He is so amazed that he now makes me turn all W's upside down to show that they make M's. When he sees it, he says "woh" under his breath. haha! He also walks around the house muttering to himself "W, M, W, M" and sometimes "ABC, W" or "AB, M". When he catches me watching him, he gets embarrassed and usually does something goofy like flop all over the floor like a rag doll screaming nonsense.

Henry also loves to say animal words like, rhino, giraffe(which he can say now), horse, zebra, panda, and others. He also loves it if they're on his PJ's or his clothes. I can't believe how much easier it has been to get him dressed if there's some sort of animal on his shirt. Even Ralph Lauren's shirts with the tiny polo player on them is enough for Henry to let me dress him.

Henry's Celebrity Look-alikes

Apparently Henry looks like a supermodel or a Japanese girl. Did anyone else pick that up? You have to check out this site. It's so fun!