Month Twenty-eight

Dear Henry,
You are 853 days old today! But that's not the only number we've encountered lately, and that other number is far more exciting - Magic 7800! Not only do you have a few extra neutrophils roaming around your bloodstream, you're swimming in 'em! Your bone marrow has gone into neutrophil-producing overdrive. All I can say as your parent is WOOT! and possibly Take that, mutha &#^#@! But of course I cannot say that because you repeat things, quite frequently and usually when I think you haven't been paying attention. (This explains while a recent incident of mama's road upsetness had you saying "Get off road, dick," from the backseat. Whoops.) Alas, I still find it humorous when you repeat something you shouldn't. I do not set a good example, don't follow it. Anyway, the end result of your abundant neutrophil supply is that Doc canceled your bone marrow test. THANK ZEUS, Bean, because that needle is not friendly to anyone and the thought of it being drilled into your little toddler bone, it's just too much.
DINO-SAURS! You love 'em. Like 'Seriously cannot get enough of' love. And it's charming and adorable because you now will take two dinosaurs, handing one to me and keeping one for yourself, and we'll have pretend conversations and go on dino adventures. The conversations are pretty short, for example, Me (as dinosaur): Oh, hello. How are you? You (as dinosaur): Hi. And scene. This love of the dino has been further fueled by the introduction to Dinosaur Train. Yes, I said DINOSAUR. TRAIN. It's a train with a dino aesthetic that carries a group of young dinosaurs on journeys to discover other dinosaurs. Your head nearly explodes with anticipation whenever you hear the theme song. Along this line, you are quite fond of the ROAR! game in which I pretend to be a dinosaur and then I roar "ROAR!" at you. It sort of frightens you, but I get nervous laughter followed by cries of more every time. Sometimes you'll even ROAR! back.

On the developmental front you currently have the 'I do it' mentality towards pretty much everything. When I finish reading you a book you want to read it for yourself. You take the book into your lap with your long legs stretched out in front of you and carefully (most of the time) flip through the pages reciting what you've memorized or sometimes summarizing what you've heard. Just last night we put you to bed and gave you ten minutes of reading time by yourself before lights out. You say "Was dat?" constantly and typically repetitively. This new found ability to question delights you in a way that would drive your parents crazy - Was dat? Was dat? Was dat? Was dat? - if it wasn't so cool. You caught us by surprise when, about two weeks ago, we were going down the stairs to the garage and you started spontaneously counting in Spanish, and you didn't forget the number four! (Note: You still forget the number four in English. We're working on that. You: One, two, three, five. Your father or I: FOUR! Three, FOUR!, five.) You've figured out not only how the zipper works but that you can remove things I put on you at will. We're making it part of the routine when we get home that you remove your own coat and shoes once inside. Also, you learned that socks make it too slippery to climb the slide in your room so you'll remove them whenever the mood to do daredevil stunts comes over you.

You are speaking in more complicated sentences and you add 'es' endings to plural words. For example, 'dinosaurs' becomes 'dinosaurses'. But none of this is as hilariously impressive as listening to you critique the size of your poo. Quite often I'll hear "It's big, mama," or "It's a baby poop." The latter is usually heard only if there happens to be two floaties of varying sizes in the bowl. You initiate putting your toys away - awesome! - and are quite proficient at completing your puzzles. You like to close and open doors and are industrious when it comes to coloring outside the lines. We've had a few scattered days of no cry drop-offs at daycare and you're eating more. Berries continue to be a favorite, you really enjoyed the berries that topped the pavlova (and, of course, the actual pavlova), but you wouldn't eat your brussel sprouts. I'm hoping it was just the preparation method and that you'll come back around the next time we make 'em with bacon.

Sleep eludes us at the condo. You rarely go to bed at a reasonable hour. When you do, you're up at 4:30A.M. When you don't, and it's 10P.M. or later when you finally wind down enough to sleep, we have to wake you around 7:30A.M. You often resist being put into your pajamas but you love the Boing! Boing! game we play once the p.j.s are on. The higher the boing, the better. There is beach ball madness in our house nearly every night. It's the perfect indoor ball to throw around because if it hits something, it's too light and fluffy to break it. Good thing, too, it normally hits everything while it's being bandied about. Let's face it, prohibiting ball throwing in this condo is not an option.

And finally, you adore the cats, Mabel in particular but that's probably mostly because Ellie bolts when she sees you approaching. Not only does Mabel accompany you to bed nearly every night, she'll stay still when you come up to touch noses with her. But, word to the wise, it's never a good idea to enthusiastically and somewhat frantically wave your arms up and down in front of a creature with claws. Just sayin'. Because you like it so much, I'll end this one with a ... ROAR!

Love,
Mama