Friday, February 26, 2010

Let the celebration begin!



Today marks the one year anniversary of my due date and it is also the day that we had H's one year birthday celebration at the Nido! After watching all of his friend's turn one it is finally H's turn!


The celebration was wonderful complete with balloon fun, singing, and cupcakes. I had only heard tell of H's cupcake eating skills and so today I got to see them in action. That boy is amazing! He managed to finish off an entire cupcake by cramming it into his mouth in about a minute and a half! All of his other friends were politely licking frosting and biting their cupcakes daintily. Not H, he went full throttle and then began reaching for the cupcake of the person next to him.


This was just the beginning of our celebration of H's first year and our first year as parents. We look forward to the coming festivities!

Saturday, February 20, 2010

The shriek

Today, while H was intentionally not napping when he should of been, we heard a shriek of joy from H's room. We had left H in his room a little while earlier and instead of sleeping he decided to play. We were listening to the normal playing noises when H let out one of his trademark shriek's of joy. Generally we hear 'the shriek' when he has figured out he is capable of something new (such as standing), has a what he considers to be a particularly good idea, or has discovered something absolutely fantastic.

So, today we hear the shriek and sit in the living room wondering what it is that H is shrieking about. We guess it must be a good idea. After a few minutes it has been very quiet. Normally this means H is focused on something intently. Generally such intense focus is directed at something he shouldn't be doing (such as playing with ever exciting extension cords). When we peek into his room, H is sitting on the floor happily sucking on an old bottle he found. Earlier that morning he had a bottle and instead of putting it in the kitchen I forgot it on the window sill behind the curtain. During naptime H was tooling around his room and made one of his favorite stops at the window sill to lift up the curtain and peer out. To his great surprise and joy today he found a bottle! So, the shriek we heard that we thought was due to a good idea was in fact a shriek of joy at the discovery of the bottle. You would have thought H had struck gold.

In order to allow H to enjoy his discovery we gave him a fresh bottle so that I could stop cringing as a mom watching my child suck on a dirty bottle. And we all felt very happy with the compromise.

Stepping on up!

So, it seems as if H took his first steps today! This was nothing huge in distance. It was more of a lurch from me to J with several steps involved and no assistance from either mom or dad. H was standing and holding onto my hands and suddenly decided he wanted to be with daddy so he just stepped on over a few feet. Of course, after this event he had no desire to repeat the action. I think he considered the whole thing to be a little risky and will stick with crawling for a little while.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Shelling beans

H's dad is a big fan of fava beans and was thrilled to find them at the store this weekend. So, H got his first lesson in shelling beans. Although J showed him a traditional way to shell, H was more interested in an alternative approach that involved chewing the beans out of their shell.
 
 

He crawls, he climbs, he slides!

We are regular visitors to the tot park a few blocks from our home and this weekend was a big one for tot park firsts! This weekend H decided to climb up the stairs of the play structure and slide down the slide all by himself. He was so pleased with the whole thing that he did it about 10 times before then climbing up, crawling through the tunnel to a different slide and slid down that slide about 10 times. All in all it was much fun and H's friend D joined us about half way through the visit and cheered H on! Needless to say, H slept very well that night.