Henry is easy to love.

I, Henry's mom, love Henry and find him easy to love because he:

eats (even when I try to feed him nasty homemade rice cereal that looks more like cottage cheese)

sleeps (even when we're being selfish and try to hold him all night long)

and laughs (even when we're not that funny).

I hear some babies don't do that, and for Henry's diligent attention to these details, I thank him.

Profusely.

(Because I hear they're not like this forever.)

A Word

Henry would like a word with you.

And his dolly.

And the couch, window, and squirrel across the street while he's at it.

That word is: 'mama'

His first word is mama! While it may not be 100% directed towards me, you can betcha I'm doing everything I can to reinforce the connection with that word to me, like dropping everything and running in when he blurts out anything remotely sounding like mama, or bribing him with pizza crusts or pinching him whenever a 'dada' sound slips out of his mouth.

Just kidding on that last one.

Henry turned 6 months old yesterday and the day rocked for us. We capped it off with a taste of a milkshake for Henry, which turned into almost half the shake when he took it upon himself to smash it like an empty can on his face.

Here are his first sips:



And as much as he loves his half birthday milkshakes, even greater is his love for pizza crusts from his dad's pizza, as we found out this past weekend. This baby is a party in every bite!

In the immortal words of Mr. T, "I pity the fool who takes away my pizza crust!"



Please excuse the extremely unedited nature of these (and all) videos. Hank thanks you.

Toilet Paper, Cheesecloth, and Diapers

Toilet Paper. Cheesecloth. Diapers. Today, these powers combined to create one heckofa cupid.

Being the kept woman that I am these days, any gift I have to give Hank really is coming out of his cash stash, so I decided to up the ante by creating this little scene:



It really helped make the presentation of my "gift" to Hank more of a momentous occasion than what it otherwise would have been, which was a massage, paid for by his hard-earned money.

Henry is such a good sport. He woke up early out of his nap, let me strip his warm clothes off, gurgled at me as I wound stuff around his toes (which he hates to have touched), only spit up once on the props, and managed to look super cute as he tried to poke his own eye out with his bow and arrows.




(In case it's not obvious, those white blobs at the bottom are clouds, and the sticks are his arrow quiver-quiver of arrows?)



Happy Valentine's Day, everrbody!

Henry's Neighborhood

Here's a not-so-awesome-completely-unedited video from Henry's 'hood. I thought this was going to turn out way better than it did, but the rain, snow, umbrella, shopping bag, baby, wind, puddles all kind of got in the way of me realizing that half the video is of the umbrella pole whacking Henry in the face.

But if you've read this far, I'll bet you're still going to watch the video, regardless. This is real life, people! In Queens, no less!

Still laughing...

First off, I know I'm really good at keeping up on this blog of mine, so there's no need to tell me, thanks.

But now that over a month has gone by, I feel the need to keep the masses informed that Henry is still cracking up. It seems like the prospect of getting his face eaten up by larger life forms is a favorite catalyst to laughter, as you'll see here:



On the flip side, he really hates it when I make him roll over on the floor, which is what we were about to do when I shot that video of him. I'm pretty sure that Henry the Tank would be perfectly content to never learn how to move around on his own if I let him get away with it. Which I don't, so we've been practicing our rolling-over skills, much to his dismay. I mean, come on...he's nearly 5 months old already!

He'll be running up the side of snow-capped mountains in Russia with a giant railroad log across his shoulders in no time, Rocky IV style...

Henry's got a real laugh

Ok, so the boy has been smiling accompanied by sharp intakes of breath that resemble a laugh for some time now, but it wasn't until yesterday that he perfected the art of laughing. So far, he has only laughed for Hank, and that's cool because that means I get to enjoy the show. The sound of his laughter is probably THE most joyous thing I've yet experienced in my life, and I'm including the day he was born in there, because the day he was born was painful, gross, traumatic...

Sorry about that.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, Henry's laughter. It makes my heart jump for joy. And here's a little video documenting his 2nd time really laughing. It's sideways, and has a bit of footage of Henry not quite laughing,but rather being distracted by the phone that was filming him, but it's worth watching.

Enjoy!

Henry and his jury rigged play yard

Nothing exciting, just my boy, some hand-me-down rings, and half the toys he owns. He loves his crib gym that I made!




Try not to fall out of your seats with excitement as you watch this clip.