Beach

The beach was simply perfect this week. The weather was warm, but not too hot with a wonderful breeze down by the water and a breeze with the sweet aroma of Gardenias when you were swinging on the villa porch.The waters were clear and calm. We could easily swim past the breaking waves and enjoy the gentle rock of the ocean waves. The water was pretty warm, which made for nice swimming. The sealife also put on a show for us that we did not expect. The first morning that we ventured out to the beach a group of dolphins came swimming by. It was fun to see the dolphins jumping slightly in the water. As is that was not enough of a treat a few days later the rays arrived. First, there was a group of four rays that just glided around the beach area for about an hour. They were quite close to shore and we were less than 10 feet away from them at one point when we were swimming out in the ocean. Then all of a sudden a pod of almost sixty rays glided by. It was so beautiful to see this large group of rays just gliding through the ocean. They were on their annual migration as explained here: article, wikipedia, and video
The links show the rays passing through Destin and a very similar to what we saw.

I was a little worried that the ocean might scare Henry, but he is in love with it. After his visit to the ocean, he began to point from the villa to ocean and saying 'ocean go'.

Henry loves the sand too. He sees the beach as his personal sandbox. He likes to dig in the sand and I mean dig. He enjoyed the holes as deep as him that somedays even were below sea level so, that they had a little water at the bottom. He often requested steps to get out and in to his holes. He would roll around in the sand and shift it in his toys.

Henry enjoyed sitting where the waves came ashore and letting them cover his legs. He also loved going out past where the waves break. He would hold on very tight and go out in the deep water. He would point to the waves and say more wave as each passed him. He laughed and smiled so much as we jumped over waves. He even played ball out in the ocean. He was very happy in the water and was not always excited to leave.

Peanuts

From Peanuts

We just might have an elephant on our hands. Henry discovered peanuts on our trip. He works hard and patiently peels the nut shell apart to find the nut. He needs a little help cracking the shell, but otherwise happily works at the shell to find his little bite.

From Peanuts

Baking

For a while now Henry has really enjoyed all things cooking and baking. He is actually a big help in the kitchen most of the time. Right now one of his favorite things is baking pretend cookies for us. He has a whole little routine he goes through when preparing the cookies.

First he sits at his play table and slices and arranges his cookies on his baking sheet. Then he dons his oven mitt and takes the trays in the kitchen where he ask, "oven op tooctie " oven open cookie. You must open the oven so the cookies can be baked and upon opening the oven Henry warns "Oven hot" so, you know to be careful and use oven mitts. We place the cookies inside and turn on the light so he can monitor the baking. They are quickly ready and again Henry says "Oven Op" and warns "oven hot". Then he carefully takes them with his mitt on one hand and his bare hand on the other side to his table to cool. (He has not realized that if the tray were actually hot you would need a mitt on both hands.) Then he will offer you a cookie to enjoy. He will do this multiple times and really has fun with the play.

We have enjoyed watching the pretend play begin and enjoy all the steps he puts into his play. He can really focus on an activity and seems to catch even the smallest details on how things happen. I look forward to finishing his play kitchen and seeing if he continues to enjoying playing with cooking and baking.

18 month check up

Henry went for his 18 month check up a bit late at 20 months, but oh well. She said he was doing great so, really not a lot to report. He is 32 1/4 inch tall which is a little over 50 percentile and 23 pounds 4.5 ounce which is about 30 percentile so, he is sort of tall and thin or just perfect.

He was very sweet during the checkup and enjoyed talking to Doctor Helton. He sat up on the table and let her exam him with no fussing. I think he was sort of interested in what she was doing. She is a very nice doctor too.

New Words 5/25/2010

So I think this might be the last post I make on new words for Henry. His language has started to grow so quickly I can’t keep up with the rate at which he gains new words. I can not even guess how many words he is gaining per day right now. He is building sentences and expressing ideas with multiple words. I am just in awe at his ability to communicate.

Here a few new ones that I can remember
Astronaut
up-down
in-out
open door
soap hand
soap hair
help
push-pull
all done
oven
pool
hot
neck
arm
stool
outside
kiss
work
ocean
more waves
hippo
monkey
elphant
giraffe
have it
henry have it
key
and anything else he wants to say and many different combination of words
HENRY

I remember

For the first time last week Henry told us about an event he remembered happening. Of course we know he has memory and an ability to recall things he has done. He shows off his memory all the time by continuing to use words he has learned or going back to an activity that he enjoyed in the past. This however was the first time he verbally expressed about an event that he had participated in in the past.

He climbed into bed to wake up Daniel the other morning and told him all about Gdada, Meme, ball, pool, no. From these words and the way he repeated them in certain orders Daniel was able to figure out what he was talking about. He was telling Daniel about going to the pool in Atlanta with my parents where he would throw the ball between pools, but could not go in the hot tub. Of course Daniel had to know about the event to put it together, but it was still lots of fun to see that he is beginning to be able to tell us about things that happened in the past.

Update:
I have to add, the word ball was often followed with Henry making the throwing motion with his arm.

Gardening is growing

We have been enjoying our little plot at Meadowbrook that Henry and I visit almost daily. It is so much fun to finally see things growing. We have onions, sugar peas, potatoes, lettuce, kale and kohlrabi already showing up.


We even had our first harvest this week when we thinned the lettuce a little. Henry enjoyed picking the lettuce or just that I finally let him pull something out of the ground. The lettuce made a nice little salad for dinner.

This week we also planted lots of new things. We added spinach, chard, carrots, and radish seeds. Henry of course loves to add the seed to the ground and cover them up. We even added tomatoes today. The plants were huge and were starting to take over our house so, it was nice to get them in the ground. They seem much happier there and we just hope for nice weather for them.

Henry's absolute favorite part of each garden trip is watering. He can't squeeze the trigger yet, thankfully, but he likes to help hold the hose. He even showed off a new skill of drinking out of the hose, which was lots of fun.