Henry's world

A few of Henry's favorite pics from his camera.

Already?

H: Today at school Elsa asked me to marry her. She asked to kiss me on the lips but I said no, she can only kiss me on the finger.
M: Well, that was probably smart, with germs and all.
H: Here smell my finger. Can you smell Elsa?
M: Yes, it smells like a very sweet friend.
H: I think I will marry Elsa. I like her because she always holds my hand. And I like holding her hand because it is small like mine and it is soft and smooth and because she always wears dresses, everyday she wears dresses. And because she always smells good.
M: Those sound like good reasons. I like Elsa too.
H: Yes. But I will not marry her now Mama, because I am too small. I will marry her when I am old. Like 15 or something.

And another

"Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day, I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return."

I read this the other day on a blog that I recently discovered thanks to my friend Kenna. I don’t know who said it, but it resonated with me. I’ve noticed, since becoming a Mom, that much of my time is spent doing mundane, every day tasks and it is easy for me to get fed up with the “Normal day” routine. But time goes by quickly. Henry is 4. He started taking showers and is washing himself. Our days of taking baths together have passed. He is starting to read and some day soon I wonder into his room and find him with his face in a book and no desire to snuggle up for our bedtime stories. Pretty soon he will sleep in on the weekends and our Saturday mornings together watching cartoons and eating cheerios will be over. Soon he may not be interested in baking cookies with me or painting our faces like cats or pretending that we are being chased by pincher trucks on the ride home from Gigi's house. But for now he still holds my hand and buries his face in my thigh when he is nervous. And he still likes for me to rub his feet after we turn the lights out at bedtime. He still likes to sit on my lap whenever we eat dessert and he still calls for me at night when he has a nightmare. With all my might I am fighting the tendency to go into autopilot on a Normal Day. I’m pretty sure, in the end, they will be the days that mean the most.

LOVE

Happy Valentines Day to all our blog friends! Our Valentines Day celebration started on Thursday night. While I made dinner Henry sat at the table and wrote the names of all of his friends at school and his own name on each of his 21 Valentines. He made his Valentine envelope at school on Monday and, once again, the teachers told to us that he spent the most time of all the kids creating his envelope. He loves art and will spend all of his center time (the time at school when they do art) creating beautiful paintings. He was very excited to get Valentines from his friends at school.
This year we are celebrating by spending the whole day together, doing some of our favorite things-like baking, painting and bike riding. We are starting the day out by letting Papa do one of his favorite things: sleeping in. Henry and I are making heart shaped waffles, fruit and facon-bacon for breakfast...we are hoping the smell of good food will wake our late sleeper. Last night I made Henry a choo-choo train sweatshirt for Valentines Day. Papa gave me a delicious German Chocolate Cake (my favorite). And Papa is getting lots of rest, his favorite dinner and a beautiful painting by Henry.
Yesterday we made cupcakes and cookies...


We hope your Valentines Day is full of sweet treats, warm snuggles, your favorite things, lots of rest and, most of all, that you are surrounded by love. Lot's of love.

Back log

I'm not going to lie, facebook has made me neglectful of the Bean blog. It's just so easy to post a picture from my phone with the click of a button. Most of you are facebook friends, if not here are some of the pictures I've posted over the past few months. I call this, What we are up to-

Laughing:

Eating (kind of):Enjoying sunny days:Baking:

Reading:

Playing:

Playing in the snow:

Sledding:

Helping: Freezing:

Building:

More Building:

Getting into trouble:

The good stuff

Last weekend as we sat around our dining room table eating dinner, Wade was what we call in our house "actin' a fool", which basically means slapstick humor, funny faces, falling out of his chair...if you know him then you know exactly what I am talking about. Henry was cracking up. Pink cheeked, food leaking out of his mouth, incredibly loud laughter...if you know him then you will also know exactly what I am talking about. It was one of those wonderful moments as a parent when you look around at the life you are trying to create and feel a sense of pride and immense joy. Of course, Henry then began the difficult task of trying to follow-up Papa's jokes with some of his own, which mainly consisted of him mimicking the things that Papa did. One of his jokes was "You know what's a good joke? You are." Of course he did not mean it in the way that grown-ups take it, which is what made it so funny. The best part was every time he would make a joke he would throw his slice of pizza down on his plate in victory. Like -"Yeah, I know that was a good one". Awesome.

“Will you scan that?”- H, to the check out guy at Target after putting a booger on the conveyor belt.

And a little overdue birthday fun

I made a wish. I wished that we would all be friends forever. -Henry

Post snowman-building

Rosy cheeks, stocking cap hair, and hot cocoa...leads to silliness.

SNOW!

We spent the morning digging the house out of the snow and attempting to build a snow man. Tomorrow....sledding....

Merry Christmas

H: Aunt Kelly has red hair. Gigi has silver hair. I have blond hair. And Grandpa has skin hair.

Mama dat ambleeance might be going to help someone with a heart attack. Their heart might be broken so they don't know how to love anymore.

H: What did I say when I came out of your tummy?
M: You couldn't talk yet. But you cried a lot.
H: Oh. Really? I think I was crying because it was comfy in there.

I was just looking at this picture of Papa. You know, the one where he thinks he is a superstar.-H

M: Henry why do you have your pants pulled down like that? I can see part of your bottom.
H: Because Mama, I am pretending that I am Papa.

M: Henry are you cheering for the guys in the white shirts or in the blue shirts?
H: Um, I think I am cheering for the guys in the black and white stripes.

Weeds

Are you ready for this? Because I'm not. But I learned over the past 4 years that you can't slow it down so you just have to try to pay attention and enjoy every day. So...our boy is almost 4. I'm a little sad about it because I have just LOVED 3. I could do 3 for years. 3 is good. I'll probably feel the same way about 4 when 5 comes, but for now I am just missing 3. Henry is tall! 89th percentile in height according to his check up today. In his typical style he answered all the nurses questions, sometimes a little too thoroughly. For example he showed her that he could hop on one foot. When asked if he could throw a ball he went into a 5 minute story about hitting a home run into the street earlier today. "Does he know 2 or 3 colors?" was met with Henry pointing out every color in the room (and it was a colorful room). She chuckled and said "Okay so he is definitely using 4-5 word sentences." Since we already had the swine flu there was no need for shots even though Henry was prepared for a flu shot. He told me in the car on the way to the doctors office- "Mama, "I would rather get a shot then have the flu." In the end we decided not to get the flu shot even though he really did have a compelling argument for it.

This week we also got a wonderful report from his teacher at parent teacher conferences this week. Henry is doing great. He is really growing confidence in his social life. He has several new friends- Murphy, Sophia, Charlie, Ruby and Oren and brings home piles of beautiful artwork every day.

This fall he is really interested in collecting fallen leaves (he refers to himself as a leaf fiend), reading, drawing pictures of machines, building machines around the house, riding his bike and pretending. We live in a magical world right now. Every day, every activity, involves some imaginary play. It is amazing to see how quickly and with such ease children are able to move into the imaginary world. How do we lose this as adults?

We are really looking forward to the holiday season. Hopefully we will get to spend it with some of you guys. Lots of love. :)

Make up trip to the zoo

We could not have asked for better zoo weather. Henry had a great time. He was supposed to go to the zoo with his Grandma and Grandpa Benda a couple of weeks ago but H1N1 kept us at home. We didn't make it to see everything at the zoo so when Grandpa Benda is here next spring we can go again. Only thing is, Henry wants to ride the train 15 times...so we'll have to get there early :)

Quick Gigi, drive fast to the bathroom. Grandpa has to pee so bad that I'm afraid he is going to wet MY pants.

Mama, I am going to put the phone down now and you can listen to me as I build a machine as big as the house.

M: Well Henry, it looks like it is just me and you for dinner tonight.
H: Oh Mama, can't we invite Grandpa Benda or Uncle John. Someone that is a little more interesting to me please.

Oh Mama. There's nothing better than love.

H: (to the pharmacist at Jayhawk Pharmacy) I do like to watch KU basketball. But...only on the big bed, in my comfy clothes, with a pizza and no underwear on.

And it begins

You know a costume is good when you want to wear it the next day :)

And then there is all that candy....

I think I like Halloween more than Christmas *

*we'll see if he feels that way after Christmas. :)