Henry was happy to see Jeff. He was bored, however, of sitting in the car seat for well over an hour. Over a half hour to the airport from my parents' house. Then another half-hour in the car on the ride home from picking up Jeff. But Henry was entertained by Jeff singing every children's song that he could think of. Perhaps Jeff will quit his job and become the new Raffi.
On Saturday morning, we ate at Cafe Paraiso. While Jeff ordered our breakfast, I walked around with Henry. Henry wanted to say hello to two little girls (I'm guessing about five years old). When he went over to the steps to say hi, I was informed by Princess Snot that Henry wasn't allowed on the steps because that was their castle. I was shocked that kids can become so bossy and mean at such an early age. The tone of this little girl's voice was just...well...bitchy. So I told Henry that the girls were being mean and didn't want to say hello. It was a stark contrast to the sweet little girl that Henry had met the weekend before at the same location. That girl was about 7 or 8 years old and came over to Henry and said hello and was genuinely kind.
I am curious about human nature. Is the need to exclude and be mean an inherent characteristic of some people, or is it something they learned from their parents? I have suspected for a long time that Henry is a sweet child at his core. He certainly receives tons of love, which I'm sure influences who he is becoming, but there are times when he says or does loving things that I can't explain as an outcome of social learning. I was quite peeved at the little girls for being such snots. I know that they are still little themselves, but nobody talks down to my son. Henry, of course, didn't care, because he was busy and simply ignored Princess Snot's demand to get off her steps. Then, Jeff took Henry around the courtyard, and Henry did a lot of walking around.
After breakfast, we went to the turtle pond. There were less turtles than usual. We couldn't find Jeff's favorite turtle. We are hoping that they are OK and that the campus frat boys haven't done something asinine. Henry managed to tromp through some muddy grassy without falling in it. I was impressed. He likes walking around the grass. I suspect that he'll be running sometime soon. He is doing excellently on his squatting skills. He has a lot of control...except when he gets really tired. We returned home. Jeff and Henry took a long snooze while I went shopping.
In the evening, we gave Henry a bath. Before running the water, we broke out the color soaps that I bought at the suggestion of Cuyler. She said that before children learn to write with the pen, it helps for them to be able to understand the idea of color and movement at the large level. Then, the fine motor skills slowly become refined to smaller areas, such as with pen and paper. He had a good time. He let me kiss him on the lips after seeing me give Jeff a kiss. Then he let Dada kiss him too. He has also been doing really well with blowing kisses. He's learned Mmmmmphaaah! from Alicia and the "If You Are Happy and You Know It" song. One of the verses is "If you are happy and you know it, blow a kiss." I noticed him blowing kisses a couple weeks ago. The kiss blowing is becoming more refined.On Sunday morning, we went to the zoo. We forgot Henry's shoes, which meant that we held him most of the time. There were a few grass spots where Jeff let Henry run around. Henry and I bought a biscuit and lettuce leaf to feed a giraffe, one of Henry's favorites. They are really amazing and gentle creatures. They have become one of my favorites as well. In the afternoon, Henry visited my parents. I stayed home and went through receipts. I've mentioned before that our file system became in disarray when Henry was born unexpectedly. And yes, over a year later, our house is still in disarray. For those of you who know me well, you'd probably describe me as a bit of a neat freak about order on my desk. I immensely dislike horizontal stacks. And yet, my home office especially is well...utter chaos. I've even been late on paying a couple bills. Not because we don't have the money, but because things got loss in the abyss. So, I spent Sunday afternoon going through stacks of ignored mail. Then we went to my parents' house for dinner. Henry was quite upset to be leaving Grandma. He didn't want to be parted from her. It was quite touching. He was ready for bed when we got back home. Then I stayed up until 5AM continuing to try to organize. Still got a ways to go, but we are headed in the right direction.
On Monday, we had quite an adventure. The day part was the same as usual. In the evening, Henry had round 1 of dinner while I was at work. He went for a walk with Dada and the dogs. I came home. We had a sit down meal. Jeff had made him chicken with garlic and carrots. The carrots were very tender, and Henry loved them. He was mad, though, that we didn't automatically share our chips and bean dip. So we did let him have tiny pieces b/c he was quite insistent. Then, I took Henry to the living room. Henry and I were reading a book on the couch. In the background, I heard a noise that kind of sounded like running water or something of that nature. I looked over to Bitsy who was batting at something in the corner of our ceiling to floor windows. It was a rattle snake, and a very pissed off one at that. Its rattle was shaking. That was the noise. Its body was poised defensively. I yelled for Jeff. Jeff came out. He shoed Bitsy away. Henry crawled over to Jeff and put his hands out on the window and the snake struck the window quickly and firmly. Jeff pulled Henry back from the window. We told him that the snake was mean, but Henry wasn't distracted. So I took him and distracted him, and then decided it was best to call the fire department.
The fire department handles snake removal. Rattle snakes are a protected species. They aren't moved terribly far from where they are found. We certainly don't want to waste government services, but this snake was (a) clearly invading our turf...we want them to stay 20 feet away from the house (alas, they don't seem to have agreed to this understanding), and (b) obviously willing to strike. It took the fire department about 20 minutes to arrive. The snake shook its rattle defensively the entire time. In all my life as an Arizonan, I have never encountered such a peeved creature. It did make me fear for Henry's safety. Four gents from the fire department arrived. They opened the sliding glass door, used their snake tongs, grabbed him around the neck and put him in a box. They were obviously pros at doing this. I was a bit nervous that they didn't close the door before grabbing him. I could envision a peeved rattle snake having fun in our living room. Once in the box, they closed it up, and traipsed back through the living room with the snake in the box and left. They did this all in about 3 minutes. An impressive operation. Jeff's hoping that the snake ate our resident pack rat before he was removed. The pack rat lives under our jacuzzi and has removed the wiring so that it no longer works.
We gave Henry another bath last night. Played again with the soap paints. I think that he's getting the idea more and more about how to move the color around. He had fun splashing us. And he was soaping his own head with the wash cloth. Then, we headed to bed. I was exhausted having stayed up the night before.
Henry got up this morning around 7AM. I had to take Princess to the vets for an endoscopy. She's been bleeding. The procedure went well, but she has some issues that need attention as she is a senior kitty cat. Henry has an appointment with Elsa at 3PM. Then, we'll head over to Grandpa's later in the afternoon so that he can spend some time with his grandparents, while we pick up Miss Princess.
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