On a Roll

This morning, before Veronica came, I had Henry on his tummy facing me at the edge of the bed. I was on the floor with my arms extended on either side of him, so that he would be forced to spend a little time on his tummy. Well, Henry isn't one to be told what to do. He managed to roll right over my arm on to his back. Henry had a lot of fun today rolling around the living room. Veronica said that he started off at one end of the room and ended up at the other.

I think that it was today that he was making a Da sound. He also said Hi to Jeff when Jeff said Hi to him. He is expanding his vowel sounds. Heh was used a lot today. But variations of Ba, A-Ba, and A-Bu are his favorites.

A couple times today, Henry reached out for me to hold him when he was in someone else's arms. I confess that I loved his attention. Incidentally, it isn't always the case that he prefers me. A good deal of the time he is a Daddy's boy. And he has special smiles for his grandparents. Yesterday, a colleague (Michael Dues) who is a positive, upbeat person asked me if it felt good to be back. I've been spending more time at school this semester than last. I pretty sure that the answer was supposed to be an enthusiastic "yes!", but I hesitated. I had just come from teaching a large lecture of undergraduates, who are already complaining that they can't possibly remember everything I have covered since the start of the semester for Monday's exam. I've never been good at lying. The truth is that while I like my job and enjoy the company of my fantastic colleagues (and I really do have some special colleagues), when I think about the time spent listening to undergraduate excuses knowing that Henry is at home making new discoveries each day, I really hate the thought of missing those discoveries. At least when I'm working at home on data analysis (which is my favorite part of my job), I'm just a few steps away when Henry doesn't something new.

Grammy came this afternoon. Jeff and I took Henry for an evening walk after Grammy left. We ran into Yvonne, and Henry gave her a big smile. We gave Henry another bath tonight in the big boy tub. He loves bobbing up and down in the water. He had a great eating day. I weighed him at 16 lbs 5.5 ozs. We are pretty sure that some of the current weight gain is actually real gain (not just water weight). Henry is beginning to get little ringlets around his wrists, which we haven't seen in a while. Good thing too. He is such an active child. He'll need whatever fat storage he can muster. Once he starts crawling, he is going to be burning up calories like crazy!