banana?

From the "language development" files... Here's how Henry is saying banana. He does that finger gesture every time and we have no idea why. Guess it's a sign he made up?

Seventeen months!!

It has been a while. A few days after our last blog post, Henry came down with croup, which was awful. It stuck around for about a week, and involved four doctor's visits, an ER visit and subsequent hospital stay, breathing treatments and three rounds of steroids. He's over it now, of course, but it seemed to throw us off track for a while there. He still coughs at night sometimes, but now I'm wondering if it's just springtime allergies. We still sort of brace ourselves for that croup-y cough when we hear him wake at night, but so far, so good.

It's been a while since we've done a birthday post, so here are some things about Henry at seventeen months -

• He finally got his first haircut this week. The hockey mullet, as Adam affectionately called it, is no longer. He was really good, a little apprehensive but didn't fuss or squirm at all.
  
• We're loving the spring weather, when it comes. There have been just enough sunny days to break up the spring rain, and we get outside as much as we can. He loves walking outside, picking up sticks, splashing in puddles, and exploring the playground.
  
• For a while there, his appetite seemed to be diminishing, but it is back in full force. The kid loves to eat. New and continuing favorites: yogurt (sometimes I buy him the YoBaby yogurts for a treat, but usually he eats plain), any kind of fruit, edamame, Joe's-Os, eggs, toast with mango butter, roasted seaweed.
  
• He's still "talking" all. the. time. He has more recognizable words now - mama, dada, addie, cracker, shoes, go, up, hot, bye-bye... We've also taught him the sign for "help" and he's pretty good about using it rather than yelling/grunting when he needs help with something.
  
• He's finally using mama and dada in a way that shows he knows what they mean. He does this thing we call taking inventory, where if he's with Adam he'll randomly ask about mama and addie, and vise versa.
• He loves that dang dog.
• It took a few weeks after his illness, but he's sleeping well again. He wakes up around seven most days, and will sit up and babble for a while.
• He's kind of obsessed with giving kisses, and receiving them when he gets hurt.
  
• He's more and more of a little boy every day!
  

All smiles after dinner

Under the Table Boys' Club

For no explainable reason lately, Henry has liked to climb under our dining room table. For yet again no obvious reason, he then took to dragging me somewhat insistently under the table with him. Most of the time, we just sit in silence (him with a goofy smile on his face) until we ask Val to find us. Val will ask out loud, "Where are Henry and Dada?" He'll sort of get excited, but I tell him to be quiet or it'll give us away. When Val finally looks under the table, he thinks it's really exciting and scary all at once. It also works to do it when Val is sitting right there, but she reaches under the table and touches Henry's face, whereby he explodes in giggles.

Today was a slight departure from those routines and he brought me "If you give a Moose a muffin." By the way, don't do it, that Moose will never leave your house! Addie joined us, since it was 4 minutes past her dinnertime and she wanted to convey that she was about to die of hunger.


We went to a birthday party this past weekend for the daughter of one of my co-workers. It was pure chaos, but in a fun way, and it reminded us of his birthday 3 1/2 months ago. Even more so, there were kids of all ages there, including a 6-week old, and it's really hard to imagine him being that sleepy, small and still. He's changing fast these days and it's fun to be able to interact in new ways now that he's communicating more and more every day. The weather is breaking even here in cold, gray Pittsburgh and I'm looking forward to putting his bike seat on my bike for some rides.

I'll end the post with a picture of Henry wanting to show his birthday party friends how climbing under the table is properly done.


-Dad

More "Say What?"

Sorry for the strange vertical format, but I was more concerned with the road at the moment.

"He's tremendous"

That's what Henry's pediatrician had to say about him at his fifteen-month visit. And really, who could argue?

At 15 months, Henry is 32.5 inches tall and weighs 28 pounds. At long last, he's solidly in the eightieth percentiles for both - 84th for height, 87th for weight (though his big head is still hanging around in the nineties). We got a print out of his record, and it's amazing to look at his growth - especially around seventh months, when he was recorded in the 101st percentile.

The doctor was also able to get a good look in his mouth, and pointed out that he's cutting approximately four new teeth, in addition to his molars. That kid does not play around when it comes to teeth.

Adam and I tend to think of ourselves as pretty laid-back, but we're certainly not immune to the paranoia and uncertainty that plague first-time parents. Our pediatrician does a great job of addressing our concerns and reassuring us that everything is as it should be, and we always leave Henry's appointments thinking - huh, maybe we're figuring this out after all. And we have one tremendous boy to show for it.

Day in the Park

We had a nice day here, weather-wise, though Henry really wanted to play in the snow that had collected at the bottom of the slide at our local park. Cold hands be darned, we worked it out...Spring is just around the corner, right?!?

Fifteen Months

Just like that. Some notes about life at fifteen months:

• The morning nap is officially dead. For a few solid weeks he was reliably taking a good morning and afternoon nap, which was pretty amazing. But then suddenly, one day, he just wouldn't do it. I'd put him down in the morning, and he'd spend an hour rolling around, sitting up, playing with his stuffed animals. Not crying, but definitely not sleeping. So, this week we scrapped the morning nap and shot for one afternoon nap, and it has gone surprisingly well. I had hoped the afternoon nap would get longer, and maybe it will, but for now it's about an hour long. Henry has a long troubled history with naps to begin with, so we feel like we are getting through this change pretty easily.
  
• He is very chatty. We have "conversations" (like the one in the video I posted) all day. He sits in his carseat and "reads" books to himself. He talks to the librarian, the cashier at the grocery store, and anyone I'm talking to. It's pretty cute, because he's very expressive. Not too many recognizable words yet, though. He does say "light" and point at the lights, and he says hot. He's kind of obsessed with things being hot.
  
• One molar is almost completely through, two are about halfway through, and one is still hiding.
  
• His new favorite breakfast is oatmeal (regular rolled oats or steel-cut oats) with frozen blueberries mixed in. And he loves sardines, which I share with him because they're good for us, even if they give me the willies a little bit.
  
• I don't know his weight/length yet, because I rescheduled his fifteen month check-up so that we could go to the zoo on the nicest day of the week. Bad mama, or best mama ever?
• He's really into leading us around by the hand right now, which is cute, if a little bossy.
  

Say what?

Children's Museum

This was a little more Henry's speed.

It's a tree sweater!

A giant Lite Brite!

I'm still finding blue glittery sand in our house.

New hippo shoes!

Mattress Factory

Though winter backed off just a bit today, the Mattress Factory (a museum of installation art) was opening its doors for free to bring people to a book signing by a curator. We'd been before, but not with Henry. He ended up getting pretty fed up with it, but this was before the angry eyes.

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend.

Here we go!

Fourteen months

Fourteen. Months.

Here's what's going on:

• The molars, they do not quit. As of last check (mama's tired of being bit!), three of Henry's one-year molars have broken the surface, and the fourth is right there. This maybe shouldn't surprise us, because all of his teeth have come in four-at-a-time so far. Efficient, I guess?
• Despite the molar mayhem, he's been sleeping better than ever for the past few weeks. It's not uncommon for him to sleep from 7-7 (I never thought we'd sleep until 7 again!), with two one-hour naps during the day. This is remarkable - though he's generally been a good nighttime sleeper, naps have always been a struggle. No idea what's going on in that little brain of his, but we'll enjoy it while it lasts.
• We've kept up with the baby signing, and it's really fun. We haven't showed him any videos or anything, we just use the books we have to teach him signs one at a time. He'll pretty reliably sign the following things: more, eat, drink, all done, wash hands, hot, bath, towel, milk, sleep. He also waves, claps and blows kisses.
  
• He's saying mama and dada, as well as dog. I guess dog was his first word? He's also sort of into animal sounds right now. He does this really cute "arf" whenever he sees a dog, and he likes to roar. Yesterday he pointed at the tiger on my RIT shirt and roared. He also likes yelling, especially in restaurants.
  
• Walk walk walk walk. Now that he knows how to walk, he loves doing it. Back and forth all day. He has even started running a bit.
• He's eating really well. I think he has a pretty good diet for a toddler. He pretty much eats what we eat at this point, and he rarely gets baby food anymore. He has liked some surprising things: sauerkraut, pickled ginger, chicken liver, Moroccan-spiced chicken. Yet a tomato made him gag. His favorites include all kinds of fruit, cheese, sweet potatoes, and toast. And whatever that is that you're eating.
  

Teeth

After a few blissful months where Henry seemed content with the teeth he had, we're back on the teething train. He's been acting differently for a few weeks now - more grumpy, not wanting to nap (though that's fairly common overall), more drooly and bitey. Today I was finally able to get a finger in is mouth (he clamps down pretty fiercely every time I try) and I could feel that one of his top molars has broken through. Apparently, molars are even more painful because of their flat surface. Good times in the Cummings household once again!

(Also, the words "erupt" and "shed", in reference to teething, sort of give me the shivers.)

First snowball

He ate it.

beep beep

Ok, so it has been a while. There's lots to talk about - Thanksgiving, a nasty stomach virus, Christmas, walking, sleeping, and general hilarity. But for now, a video. Henry rocking along with one of his favorite Christmas presents, a truck that plays a rather jazzy version of "Rockin' Robin" with a little "beep beep" at the end.



More soon, promise!

One year ago today

We were sitting in Magee Women's hospital, very excited, very humbled, and very tired. We checked in at roughly 7 p.m. the previous night and Val did an amazing job through a trying labor that lasted until 9:34 a.m. Of course we were excited to finally have Henry here, but it was quite intimidating to hold your first child not really knowing what to do with him. He was very sleepy that first day and mostly slept after he ate and was swaddled. I think we'll elaborate more on that day later, but we marked today by opening a couple presents and thinking about how far we've come in one year. He's a pretty amazing little boy and I'm sure we'll be astounded at how far we've come by this time next year. Happy Birthday, Henry Leo.

Birthday boy!

Due date

One year ago today was Henry's due date. Astute readers will also recognize November 10th as the birthday of the Marine Corps, which made Adam hope the little guy would show up right on time. But alas, that was not the case. We reported to my forty-week appointment with the midwives only to learn that Henry was showing no indication of wanting to be born. So, we went home and then out to dinner. Then we came home to a very sick dog, who got progressively sicker as the week went on and landed herself in surgery on Friday night - just as I started having contractions. Her timing is impeccable.

Adam has been nudging me to get some semblance of a "birth story" down in writing before we both forget some of the finer details. Henry's first birthday seems as good an occasion as any to get it started, so we'll work on it this week.

Until then, we'll be enjoying our last week with an "almost one-year-old" baby boy...

Pittsburgh

We were out to dinner last night with my boss and a prospective new hire, so we were doing a little convincing of why he should relocate from the Southwest to Pittsburgh. As we talked about why we chose Pittsburgh and what has made us happy to stay here, I didn't view it as a sell job at all. Hopefully our sincerity was obvious, because we have lived in Pittsburgh for four years now and we have no intentions of leaving anytime soon.

Four years and a month ago, we had just returned from the Peace Corps and wanted/needed a place to settle down and stop being transient for awhile. We didn't have jobs, we weren't accepted into grad school and we had never darkened the door of Pittsburgh, but we made an appointment with a realtor and drove West. Much like others who haven't been here, we had visions of a run-down Steel town with not much going for it. We read statistics about how it has such a large aging population and wondered if it might not be a place for young-ish people like us. After two days of looking at houses, we put an offer down on a house (and got a loan thanks to all those high risk no-income loans that haven't worked out well universally) and moved the wagon here a few weeks later.

I could go on and on about why we like the city, but many of my reasons have to do with our points of reference, which may not resonate with others. For example, it's not as crowded or as hot in the summer as D.C. It's not as hot or full of garbage in the streets as Mauritania. It's not as cold and grey as Rochester, even though Pittsburghers want to claim it is. It's got more character and common folk than San Diego. Plus it's got three professional sports teams. Well, two and a half anyway, with that half being a great place to watch other teams play baseball.

Lest this post have nothing to do with Sir Henry, one thing that we think is pretty cool is that Henry will be FROM here as long as we stay here. After having lived so many places in so many years, we don't really feel like we're from anywhere anymore. But we'd like to think he'll grow up with an appreciation of all this city has to offer and claim to be a "yinzer" with pride. He did go to a Steelers and Penguins game in utero, so I think he pretty much bleeds black and gold...