A Sweet Son

Henry drew me a picture today.  I'm holding Clementine and the circle next to us is the earth.  We talk about the earth like it is part of our family.  Henry is still obsessed with throwing littler away and is always shocked when he sees people "messing up the earth".  Reminds me of the day he ran after the garbage men yelling, "you're messing up the earth!" when they let stray garbage fly away as they collected the trash.  I really love my boy! He's been so good with Clementine too. 

Here's a close-up

Introducing.....

http://clementinerebecca.blogspot.com/

Critter Heaven

Ever since it warmed up we've been enjoying the outdoors and Henry and Bea have had so much fun outside finding all sorts of bugs and animals.  The other day a toad hopped past me so I caught it to show Henry.  He was so excited about it that he played with it too much which caused something inside of it to hemorrhage and it eventually died.  It's still in our tomato garden, totally shriveled and Henry still insists that he's just sleeping and shows all his friends.  Poor little thing.  Henry also discovered a tiny wasps nest inside our deck umbrella when he observed a wasp going up into the cover.  We opened it up and found the nest with ten or so little larvae inside.  We kept it for days and those gross little maggots were still moving in there with their little alien mouths begging for food.  It was pretty gross and entertaining.  Then, one morning I noticed that the ants that have invaded our kitchen were piled massively over the little hive, which I left on top of the microwave, and I guess they had finally died and the ants were desperately trying to get what they could from them.  (shudder).  We're working on the ant problem but I don't want to do anything toxic! Any suggestions? 

Just yesterday we caught the most beautiful moth.  It's a Giant Leopard Moth and I think he's on his way out because he put up no struggle when we caught him.  He's the most beautiful moth I've ever seen and he just hangs out on my finger, hanging on for dear life.  He's still alive, but shows no signs of vitality.  One of the most fun things Henry likes to do is take his tennis racket outside and swat the wood boars.  They have such crazy personalities! They love to come right up to your face and hover, checking you out and egging you on like an annoying sibling.  They when you try to swat them away, they skillfully avoid you and then fly right back into your personal space as if to say, "haha, you missed me." Henry's oversize tennis racket, however, is tough to avoid and he hits them quite often.  I always see little wood snowflakes falling down on me as I'm gardening by the deck as they dig their way through the only pieces of real wood on it.  A real bumble bee landed in our pitcher of water the other night as well and after we flicked him out and sent him on his way with a fork, Henry and the other kids were excited to drink the "honey water". 

So far it's all been fun and games but when the Japanese Beetles come to eat my raspberries, the war begins and now I have an organic defense option! I can't wait to use it.  Muah ha ha!

Henry's Mother's Day gift

For Mother's Day the primary put together jars with slips of paper in them with thoughts about all the mothers.  This is what Henry said about me....

My mom's favorite sport is......baseball
My mom's favorite thing to do.......go home
My mom's favorite place to go......playgroup
My favorite meal my mom cooks.....candy
My favorite thing to do with my mom....watch a movie
My mom's favorite color......blue
My mom's favorite food.....everything

 I think he may have me confused with someone else. lol. 

T Ball Drama

Henry is on a T Ball team this year and so far, we've had some pretty interesting experiences.  His first practice was filled with tears and frustration which was mostly my fault.  I really had no idea what he was supposed to wear and I forgot to go get him a glove so we show up in shorts and a tee shirt when all the other boys are wearing mini professional uniforms with gloves.  Henry would not participate or focus and when he finally did, he cried every time he didn't get the ball and when all the boys dived into the dirt, Henry's legs got all scraped up and he cried even more.  To top it all off, when it was his turn to hit, which he actually wanted to do, he had no idea what to do after he hit the ball and decided to run after his own ball which he picked up about 20 feet from the T and all the other boys stood there, confused, and one boy said, "uh, you're out".  All the parents thought it was hilarious, as did I. It was pretty painful though and I wasn't sure if he was ready to play. 

Since then he's done better and has generally participated and has enjoyed it.  The games are really fun because every child gets to run the bases every inning and no one counts the runs and even if the kids manage to get the ball and throw it to first base before the runner gets there, they're still not out, so no one feels bad and everyone scores.  This is the way Henry needs to play a game: no winners or losers.  Last weekend he went to the father and son's campout with Justin and didn't get to bed until midnight and woke up early to get to the game the next morning.  He was understandably cranky and distracted.  He sat on each base to rest, came in from the outfield when he saw our friend's daughter eating candy, wanting some, didn't focus at all and the last time he hit the ball, he dropped the bat, lowered his head and slowly walked to first base with his hands hanging down to his sides.  I thought it was hilarious, but Justin said that it just stresses him out to see his son so distracted and clueless.  Well,  it's hard to teach your son every sport during residency so we're just going to have to deal with it!

All in all, he's having fun and learning a ton and I'm glad we signed him up!