Henry's House: First words?

We think that Henry is beginning to say some words. Now if you asked my mom, she'll probably tell you that his first word was "poop" and his second word was "book." We, however, haven't heard those words in context, so we haven't counted them as words.

Yesterday, it sounded like Henry said "Dada" twice before turning to Jeff and crawling up him. I'm pretty sure that Henry knows that Dada is Jeff, but yesterday was the first time that I thought he was vocalizing in context. If you say "Henry, where's Dada?", he'll look at Jeff for sure.

It's a toss up because I thought early this week or last week, Henry said "Boo" in reference to Bitsy, whom we often call Bitsy Boo. He said it repeatedly when Bitsy was around, but it is also true that B syllables are his favorites. If you say "Henry, where's Bitsy?", he definitely looks right at the right cat. He also knows Roger's name too.

I think it was last week when my mom said that Henry had used Mama when I walked into the kitchen. I heard it too, but I haven't heard it since. The M sounds are few and far between.

We had a nice morning. Henry woke up around 6AM or so. We decided to have breakfast near the UofA. We went to Cafe Paraiso, which is pretty empty on weekends, except for the occasional cyclist that stops by after his/her workout. We got there around 8AM and ate outside on the patio. We gave Henry some tiny bites off our plates. He had some pieces of banana from Jeff, and I gave him some potato bites and avocado. He enjoyed eating off of the grown up plates. The one downside of the morning breakfast was that he had his first major diaper leak. I'm actually surprised that we haven't had one before. I seem to recall having to deal with several diaper incidences when Carolyn and Erin were babies. Jeff was the recipient of the youthful essence leak. It could have

been worse. After breakfast, we visited a nice grassy area near the turtle pond. I'm not quite sure why the UofA has a turtle pond, seeing as it doesn't exactly fit the climate and it is the only "pond" on campus that I know of. But in any event, I love turtles, so it is a favorite spot of mine. It was the first time that Henry sat on grass. He wasn't a huge fan of it, but he seemed to get used to it the longer we stayed there. He had fun climbing all over Jeff and stealing Jeff's glasses (one of Henry's hobbies).

We came back to the house around 10:30AM. Henry had fallen asleep in his carrier. We put the carrier on the bed and both fell asleep next to him.

In the afternoon, I was going to grade papers, but Jeff had 1 hour of work to do that ended up taking all afternoon after he got several requests to do just one more little thing. I'm rather annoyed at his work at the moment.

We did manage to have a family lunch around 2:30PM. Henry had some level 3 baby food, but he also tried several things off our plates. I gave him tiny, tiny pieces of bagel, a few grains of quinoa (high protein rice), banana, and vegetable masala burger. He enjoyed trying new things.

Around 5:30PM, Henry had a bottle and crashed in my lap. In fact, it's 11:15PM and he is still a sleep. He had a second round of bottle around 7:30PM, but he didn't feel like getting up after it. He took about 1/3 of the bottle, then crashed back on the bed, tossed and turned, got up for the second 1/3, and did the same thing. I do hope that he manages to sleep through the night until about 5:30AM tomorrow.

Before signing off, I just wanted to show off some more Henry pictures.

Here is a contrast of Henry then (11/14/07) and now (5/21/08) in the white and blue knit hat that Jamie made him. He was wearing a knit hat the other day, because the weather had suddenly turned cold. I suspect that it will be the last time that he wears the white and blue knit hat. As you can see from the picture, it is now a snug fit. It is a hat that has gotten a lot of use through the winter and spring.