Morning Talks with Henry

In this pic, he's telling me he loves me in sign language. :)

So we think we've beat the waking up at 4:50 am battle. He sleeps like a rock from 6:45 pm until 5 am, and then is the lightest sleeper ever. But, if all goes well, he sleeps until 5:30 or 6. Now we just have to break the habit he's enforced on his sister by waking her up each morning at 5. Thankfully though, she knows how to lay quiet in bed till I get up. In her own words, "When Henry wakes up he is loud and cries (from my trying to get him to go back to sleep). But when I wake up, I'm quiet."

I'm a morning person, so I can handle the early morning wake ups. It helps that my children give each other the sweetest hugs in the morning. Jason can't handle waking up early, so we let him "sleep in" till 6:15 where he awakes to hot coffee and breakfast on the table.

P.S. See his little molars coming in??? All four of them!!! We think that's why he's been so fussy lately...

Afternoon Walks With Papa

Yesterday, Jason took the kids on a walk outside while I cooked supper. They had a ball! They played baseball, soccer, attacked "dinosaurs" with sticks and ran around like crazy. The kids, esp Henry!, were exhausted by the time I made it outside with my camera.
These pics came out overexposed because the sun was right behind my sweet family as I was trying to capture them. Picasa (a free picture editing software by google) has this 1960's editing feature that really helped to balance this overexposed look and threw a little vintage spin on them...enjoy!

P.S. Jason is currently writing a parody rap about "mom blogs," and has given me the nickname "mama-ratzi" because I'm always chasing everyone around with my camera. I think its worth it. I'm so thankful to have pictures that capture the moment!

The Dino that Wont Die

Tammy (Jason's Mom) gave Jason this electronic walking, roaring, dinosaur for his birthday. What we love most about it is how it entertains the kids; it really is an amazing babysitter. When Jason and I want to sit back, talk and drink our coffee together, we turn this sucker on and the kids are fascinated for about thirty minutes. The run from it, attack it back, sit on it, feed it baby bottles, raisens and apples (I literally have found every kind of snack shoved in its little mouth). But what is most amazing about this toy is its ability to resurrect itself. It will die (aka run out of batteries), only to start roaring and walking from its spot in the living room a couple of days later. It will then die again and then randomly awake itself and provide us with a couple more hours of fun before it dies again. As I type with Henry looking on, he's making his roaring dinosaur sounds. Its frighteningly realistic, but the kids love it.

Our Henry

When he's older, I doubt Henry will like us telling people that he's "sensitive," but that truly is the word to describe him. He needs time to adjust to change, and adjusts very hesitantly, and with a fight. When it first got cold here, Henry COULDN'T STAND being outside. When it got windy, he would scream and scream. When he is sick, or in any kind of pain, he has a hard time coping and becomes super fussy. He still is very picky about who holds him, and he has to be in a good mood to even consider being held by someone other than Mama or Papa. Even as a baby, he had a hard time tuning the world out when it got chaotic. I would have to cover his eyes, nurse, and bounce him on a ball to get him to relax enough to go to sleep. It sounds crazy, but that was Henry. Super sensitive and super aware of his surroundings.



But, we are discovering the other side of sensitive. Henry's super awareness of his surroundings has an extremely sweet spin on it. When he gets corrected, he won't rest until he has reconciled with you, even if it was just a stern "no." He will follow you around and then hug you as if to make up. When Margaret Mary or I am upset, he is by our side hugging us and trying to kiss us. He snuggles non stop when Jason gets home from work and already has formed an amazing relationship with his father. Today he found a pic of Jason, identified him "muh MUH" (how he says papa), and then walked around hugging it. As I said earlier, I have never seen a boy his age have such an amazing awareness of relationships and such an understanding of how they function.



So this sensitivity that is so hard to figure out and plan for, is becoming what we love so much about Henry.




For more about high needs babies and toddlers, read this.

My Margaret Mary

As you can tell, I have been posting A LOT of pictures of Margaret Mary recently. I can't help it. My little girl is growing up so fast that its hard for me to take in. I love to sit with the camera and just take pictures of her as she talks to me and tells me all about her little world. What she likes, what she wants to do, how she gets upset when Henry knocks over her towers, how she loves being a big sister... She talks all day long with the most intricate, run on sentences that are extremely hard to follow, but at the same time, most delightful.



And then she looks at you like this, and despite how old she is acting or how much she is talking, you are reminded that she is still sooo little. (But don't tell her I said that)


My sweet Margaret Mary.


Just over 2 1/2 years old, and we are already so captivated by her.

A little example of how she thinks:

MM: Mom... (thinking hard)...planets. Do you sit or stand on them? (in her defense, all the pictures we were looking at were tiny).

We love Saturdays

Since sleeping in on Saturday mornings isn't an option, we have had to discover other ways to relax and unwind. Today we took a long walk down to a local restaurant (Toast), split a breakfast burrito (THE thing to eat in Denver), and then walked to a nearby park. It's amazing how fast the morning flies when you are with the people you love...





And here I am, almost 28 weeks pregnant, enjoying the last day of my second trimester. I am already soooo in love with the little baby inside me. Every time I feel him or her kick, love just swells up in my heart. I can't wait till April!

Henry's Pic of the Week

Playtime with Margaret Mary

First, she will tell you with A LOT OF WORDS what she wants to do. It will involve either you being the baby or the Margaret Mary, and her being either the baby or the Mama. Henry is always assigned the role of "Papa Henry." This will go on for a while, but sooner or later, she will begin begging you to put on her ballet or dress up costumes...


And if you put on her ballet costume, she will then (with A LOT OF WORDS) beg you for ballet music. And then she will dance...



and dance...

and perhaps beg you to dance with her and/or throw imaginary roses at her...

You will swoon. I promise. She's that sweet.

Then, she will want to settle on the couch with a good book.


I love my daughter's feminine heart. Her love for beauty. Her desire for goodness.

And of course, her dirty socks under her beautiful dress up gown.

Ties

Today, Margaret Mary helped me take pictures of some of Jason's treasures from his last thrift store haul. He then sells these to bring in a little extra cash for our family. I think they came out pretty cute...it helps to have such a sweet model! In case your wondering what she is wearing, she is in her newest hand me down dress up dress.

Funny thing, she kept on pointing to the pink tie and saying it was for Aunt Morgan. :) Maybe she knows that we still owe Aunt Morgan a birthday present!

Today

So, I have a really long post about some beautiful rock formations we went to see the other week, but I had so much fun with my camera today, I couldn't help but post these first. (For other camera geeks: I figured out how to capture the natural light in my apartment today by shooting in S mode and adjusting the shutter speed to the light situation. I have never gotten such light pictures with such a great shutter speed. I think most of my success was in 1/80. The camera kept the aperture lower (about 5.6) which made me happy as well).

Today was a sweet, but tough day as both the kids were really grumpy. No one wanted to share and my two that play so well together were getting really frustrated with each other. Henry went to time out multiple times today for hitting and pulling hair; Margaret Mary was just tired, refusing to wear a shirt and refusing to sleep. But amidst the chaos, there was sweetness. Coloring on the kitchen floor, making paper airplanes and trying to fly them; looking back over my pictures while my kids are sleeping, I'm realizing that maybe it wasn't such a bad day after all.

(yes, that IS leftover oatmeal on her face. I swear I wiped it all off...)

Looking back over my post, I realize that all my great pictures with natural light weren't posted (because MM was half naked). But I promise to show them to you when you come to visit!