Feeling better

Today, H woke up much more like his normal self. It is amazing how quickly a baby can bounce back from being sick. He was still tired and needs to regain fluids but we seem to be headed the right direction. As I was driving home from work today, I called J to check in. He and H were busy laughing loudly over the book they were reading. Who knew whale tails could be so funny?

So, it seems all is well again. Let's hope that it stays that way...

Sick Day

Today was H's first full scale stomach flu. The morning started at 4:30am with a frightened little boy awoken by vomiting. It was so sad and alarming to hear his high pitched, scared cries. It breaks my heart to see such a tiny human so sick. J was a real trooper and spent the day with H since I had to go to work. (This time of year is the busiest for the work that I do and I was not able to be home.)

J and I are both sincerely hoping H feels better tomorrow because sick days are a rather hair raising event. You forget how fragile a 10 month old is until such a day.

First Contact

Hendrick is very cautious when making first contact with an unknown object. He gingerly extends one finger as he reaches out to touch the new thing (think ET). Generally he will either immediately pull his finger back or he will hold his finger on the object and poke the item a few times before deciding what he should do with it. In this case the decision was that the item was safe and to be consumed. We spend a lot of time exploring new items at the Farmer's Market on Tuesday afternoons. It is one of the highlights of H's week.

(Thank you to Kate for the wonderful pictures! These were taken of Hendrick eating his first cupcake at a birthday party for one of his friends at school.)

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone! We celebrated the coming of the new year in two ways. First, we put together a wish tree. Those who were here with us on New Year's Eve, which includes my mom and my sister, added a wish for themselves and a wish for others. It was really fun to read people's thoughts as we all prepare for the coming year. (If anyone wants to add a wish feel free to send them along and I will add them to the branches.) Second, we decided to celebrate the event with an east coast New Year's Eve party, which basically means that we rang in the New Year at 9pm west coast time (12am east coast time) and then went to bed early -- absolutely lame, absolutely wonderful. To finish this joint post (by K and J), we hope that everyone experiences great peace and happiness in 2010!

Crawling toward Christmas

December was busy as we prepared to spend the holidays with family. J and I worked hard to finish out the semester and get our little home ready for guests and H spent much of his free time either tagging along on errands or working out.

H's December workouts focused on lots of squats, pull-ups, bicep curls, and some light weight lifting. He has become quiet adept at these various exercises after spending endless amounts of time perfecting each motion.

H found the easiest place to do bicep curls was with his bedroom door. He spent hours pulling the door open and then pushing it closed. When he was looking to take it up a notch he would angle his body in such a way as to get a good crunch going with his abs while doing his curls.

Pull-up and squats have been some of my favorite exercises to watch. At the beginning, each pull up was accompanied by lots of grunts and then a shriek of joy once H was standing. Then we would watch up as he slowly and deliberately squatted down to a sitting position. Sometimes you would see H very slowly lower himself but then abort the mission before sitting because he decided it was not going to work. He would quickly stand back up again and then start the whole process of sitting all over again. Pull up, stand, shriek, squat, sit, swim to a new piece of furniture and do the whole routine again.

Despite all of this strength training H was still swimming around the floors as opposed to crawling. It wasn't until Christmas day that he decided that crawling could be useful. So, H worked out all December and then finally crawled into Christmas.

A tree in the living room

I am running woefully behind in our blog updates but I still want to mark events as time passes. The first weekend in December we went to get our Christmas tree. The past few years we have gone down to a wonderful little family farm near Pescadero to cut down our own tree but this year we did not have that much free time, so we purchased a tree precut. H has been very respectful of the tree in our living room. Occasionally he will swim over and stroke the tree or gently pull the Christmas lights but for the most part our tree seems to be a totally normal fixture for H. We will see how he feels once it is removed in January.

Crunch, crunch, crunch

Crunch, crunch, crackle. The sound of dry leaves is everywhere and H loves it. It is fall here in California (yes, it feels like fall for those of us who grew up elsewhere in the country). This means lots of nice walks outside and frequent trips to the totpark near our home. Often our park visits start on a blanket on the grass where H gently picks up and examines fallen leaves before crunching them up in his little hands. I am always surprised at the fact that they leaves rarely make it into his mouth since almost everything else does.

After the leaf exploration there is time for H to look up at the trees and watch them sway. He simply love trees. He will watch them out the window of his room, he will smile at them at the park, he just loves trees.

Then H becomes adventurous enough to leave the blanket. He will pick his way across the blanket and onto the grass. It is so funny to watch his expression as he hits 'rougher' terrain. It is clear that he is a baby used to spending his days indoors as he tries to navigate the subtle bumps in the landscape. Eventually he makes it to the sidwalk and we head over to the swings.

With each trip on the swing H becomes more brave. On his first turn on the swing several weeks ago now, he was rather anxious and gripped the handles as hard as he could. The next time he gripped the seat as hard as he could, and so on until our last trip to the park when H got into the swing and just leaned back 'no hands' and enjoyed the ride.