Catching up

Blogging has been the last thing on my mind lately. Survival is pretty much the name of the game these days. I should be thanking my brilliant genius for making us go to Paris last month, because it will be awhile before we roadtrip again! Let me recap the 3 things that have left me a little unhinged:

1. We got back to London from Paris on a Friday night and Mark left for Tokyo Saturday morning. He was gone for a week, and during that time I totally killed it. Did some job research, meal planning, started reading 2 different books (The Invisible Man and Nora Ephron's Heartburn), and planned a fun activity every day to do with Henry. It was a good week, but I was ready for Mark to come back on Friday evening and be my husband and Henry's Dad. :)

2. The following Monday, Mark was a little late getting home from work, and I hear a knock at the door. I open the door and it is Mark with his bicycle, and blood and scrapes on his legs, hands, and arms. He'd crashed his bike in the rainy commute home, and after a trip to the emergency room, found out he broke his right thumb and his left arm. So. That was about a week ago. He had surgery on his hand on Friday. It's basically been a crazy mess around here for the past week. Henry always reminds him - Dada fall down, Doctor fix it. Mark couldn't even open anything or dress himself or feed himself the first few days, but his arm is slowly healing (luckily it was just a radial head fracture, and not the radius itself) and he's devised some funny ways to feed himself and brush his teeth. I admire his tenacity and creativity, I really do.

3. The biggest and dumbest thing of all: I've been talking with Henry about giving his pacifier to the baby animals at the zoo, or the baby fishies in the river (he is 27 months old and we try to just keep the pacifier to naps and night night time only, but he's been more insistent about it lately during the day and has lots of tantrums all the time. I'm over it!), so Thursday morning when we were standing in front of the Globe Theatre watching boats pass by us, and he chucked his pacifier right into the Thames. And I thought, well this is it - it's time to get rid of Henry's baba. He used to go straight down for naps and sleep for 3 hours, but now there is weeping and wailing and down to only about 2 hours of nap time. And night night time has turned into an epic excuse factory to keep him from bed, and I basically have to put him down laughing or he will be too sad and just cry cry cry. It breaks my heart! But we are 5 days in now, and there's no turning back. It's getting better now.
Whenever he asks me for his baba, I ask - where is your baba?
In the river! Threw it off the bridge!
or
At the zoo with baby animals!
It doesn't help that my dad has totally laid the guilt trip on me for taking it away from him - comparing it to someone throwing my iphone into the Thames. Rude.

Anyway, it's been a crazy past week, and I'm ready to turn a page. I have a few things on my radar that are just for me, which help me feel more like a human and less like a caretaker with nothing left to give. Taking care of a toddler and a broken husband is a lot of work and I have not taken care of myself at all the past 2 weeks. I really need to learn the art of balancing taking care of others and not letting myself fall by the wayside. It is a complete mystery to me.

Henry, the Gentleman.

Honestly, I've never met a more delightful human being than this little guy right here. He is the perfect blend of silly, happy, and opinionated. The only way we can get him dressed most Sunday mornings is with a cookie in his hand, and you know what? I can't blame him. The other day I was cutting up some vegetables for dinner and I hear from the living room...H, I, J, K, LemmoP...all the way to Z. I looked in at him and he just smiled back at me while he played with his cars, and I asked him to please sing it again for me, and of course he wouldn't. But I heard it! All 26 letters, give or take an M and N, he knows his alphabet. I'm calling it, at 26 months. Another achievement I want to log here is he can count to 10 and we are working so hard on his colors but he just doesn't care to learn them. With Henry, he will hardly ever willfully repeat something you ask him to, but when you least expect it, he'll demonstrate his knowledge. On the way home from church this past Sunday, I heard him singing from his stroller Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. And when he finished, he clapped and said YAAAY! And I need to capture this on video because it's too funny, but every time he hears a song with a good beat, he smiles and looks at me and starts bobbing his head up and down and swaying side to side. It's a really good dance that I can't see improving too much over time. It's the perfect dude dance.

A man and his dog.

Henry is completely obsessed with his little doggie. So much so, that this weekend he uttered his first sentence: Doggie walk outside?

So you better believe we took that doggie outside for a walk around the block.

For the past week or so, he has also been saying More...(insert word here of whatever he wants more of). Like in church, after sacrament, he'll say more...bread? He also says it when he just wants something, that maybe he hasn't already been eating. More cheese? More eggs? It's cool that he's able to communicate what he wants, but boy you'd better get it for him right away and not tell him we don't have any and we need to go to the store because darnit that answer is not good enough!

Milestones: Henry's first haircut

Well the big news around here is that we gave Henry his first haircut. We dressed him up for church on Sunday and he looked so cute, but when I was watching him toddle around the aisles of the chapel, I realized - my baby has a serious mullet. I woke up Monday, resolved to fix the problem, i.e. cut off his blessed sweet curls!! Don't worry I saved some curls, it's one of those gross mom things I never thought I'd do, but alas. He was a superstar during the haircut. I just sat him on my lap while we watched Cars and Mark buzzed and snipped away.

Doesn't he look dashing!? Bonus - this haircut really makes it easier to tell that yes, he is a boy, strangers in the grocery store and in the park.

I love you.

On Monday night, we were putting Henry to bed. Take the bath. Read the books. Drink some water. Read another book. Sing the songs. Then put in the crib, and we say, I love you! This time, he looked back up at us and said "I wuv oo".

If you need me, I'll be mopping myself up off the floor the rest of the week. Major love-puddle territory.

Henny kisses.