Month Forty-two

Dear Henry,

Your favorite word of the month is no. Oy vey. When we tell you not to do something, you might also respond with a "I used to but now I don't" or "we do but we don't". It's very cute but annoying as I'll get out to have a three year old - dare I say it? - disobey you. That's right, little man. We hope for complete obedience. But in your first concerted effort to assert your independence, you will often consider the request we've made, evaluate it and its impact on your life, and then, typically, say no. So we're forced to explain ourselves further. Yes, I have actually said that I, in fact, make the rules in the house. I'm not sure you believe me, though. We shall see in the coming months and years how this plays out, my little firecracker. By the way, if I had actually just called you a firecracker out loud, you would have responded with a "I'm not a firecracker, I'm a Henry."

But I shouldn't complain. Overall, you are a pretty great kid. You now will look into the camera and sometimes even (gasp!) pose for me when I ask you to. You are busy figuring out time and the beginnings of mathematics. For instance, we'll set a time for you to do something - such as cleaning up before we head to bed - and you'll increase the number we've set by fifteen and ten and one and four minutes worth of time, convinced this is a very long time. You know that such things as tomorrow and yesterday and last night and next week exist but the concepts are a bit shaky. This means that when you're telling pops about our day, you'll say that something we did that morning happened next week or that when it's your birthday (in October) last week, you want an Iron Man superhero toy from the store we went to yesterday this morning. Say what? When was that again?

There used to be this show on t.v. called Kids Say the Darndest Things. I'm sure this would have won you some prize because your response to the comment that I was freezing my butt off was, "No, you're not. I hooked it on for you." Thanks, Bean. After hearing the Dinosaur Train theme song, you turned to me and wistfully said that you wished you could ride the dinosaur train when you were a dinosaur. But my all-time favorite is the word mash-up of "you're breaking my heart" and "you're killing me," which comes out as "you're killing my heart". I occasionally hear this, usually after I have just told you that you can't get a toy at the store. Or that candy. And you can't have a jellybean until after you finish your lunch.

In the skills department you're kicking some major, wait - not appropriate. You're doing very well. You use the scoop to feed the cats their food and when a nugget happens to fall on the ground, you pick it up, put it back in the scoop, and then dump it in their bowl. No shortcuts for you. You used to stop your scooter by dragging your foot along the floor. This worked fine until you used this technique in the carpeted hallway of our building without socks. (Can you say, "rug burn?" Yikes.) But then you figured out the breaking mechanism built into the design of the scooter and now use that, although dragging your shoe on the floor is also popular and surprisingly effective. We now make you put on socks when you ride in the hallway.

I want to say that you're sleeping better, or rather that you're going to sleep better but I feel that is just tempting fate to prove us wrong so I'll not do that and instead explain that you still love reading seventeen and two and four and three and eight books before bedtime. And you adore sea creatures, particularly your narwhal. What's not to love about the underwater unicorn, eh, son?

Love,
Mama