We asked Henry what his speech bubble should say this month.
He is really into trains right now.
This pregnancy has been rough and while Henry watched almost no TV at all before he turned 18 months old, he has had his fair share over the past few months.
He has fallen hard for Thomas.
That show is seriously strange and I can't believe how much it grabs his attention.
He knows all of the characters' names.
I do believe that I've mentioned here that I am not a fan of odd numbers.
The past two family updates have fallen on odd numbered months, which drives me crazy, but it was eased some by the fact that both Baby J 2.0 and Henry are 21 weeks/months.
Here's a little update on both of them.
Baby J 2.0:
We got to see this little guy (or girl--but for the record, my vote is boy) at our 20 week ultrasound.
He (or she) was sucking that little thumb.
I remember that Henry looked to be sucking his thumb in his 20 week ultrasound but the tech said, "No, they can't do that this early."
Well, this time there was no denying it.
You could see the sucking action of the mouth around the thumb.
It was so cute I could hardly stand it.
All along, I had told Christian that I kind of wanted to find out the gender this time.
He very strongly felt that we should not and kept saying, "You're being silly. You don't need to know. Come on! It will be so worth the wait!"
So, imagine my surprise when he showed up at the ultrasound appointment, sat down next to me in the waiting room and said, "Hey, I've been thinking and I want to find out."
What?
Just then, they called my name.
I felt panicked.
I was so caught off guard.
All along I wanted to but suddenly, I was trying to talk him out of it.
We went back and forth throughout the hour long ultrasound and the poor tech kept saying, "So, I'm confused. You do or you do not want to know?"
She was sort of pro-waiting to find out and we ended up settling on her writing it down for us and sealing it in an envelope so that we'd have a little more time to think about it.
After the ultrasound we went to see the doctor and when we left the office about an hour later, I asked Christian, "So, how are you feeling about that envelope in your hand?"
"No desire to open it," he said.
I totally agreed.
I know our friends think we are CRA-ZY.
We really just don't feel tempted now that we are past that moment in the ultrasound.
I was overjoyed to see the baby and have some of my fears eased since I was not feeling movement, and that was enough to fill me up for now.
I have a plan for the little envelope.
Last time, I bought clothes for both a girl and a boy, and that was really fun except that taking back the girl stuff was kind of hard, (and to be fair, I loved the boy stuff too so even if it had been the other way around, I still think it would have been hard).
This time, I plan to go to a couple of my favorite stores just a week or two before the due date and pick out some boy stuff and some girl stuff, then tell the person helping me that I am going to leave all of the clothes, my payment and the envelope with him or her and head to lunch.
When I return, they can have the clothes bagged up with the receipt inside (in a non-see through bag) and stapled.
He or she can hand me that bag and the re-sealed envelope and I will try my best not to read his or her facial expression.
I think it will be fun for everyone involved and that way I won't have any clothes to return.
Why do I think it's a boy?
Well...I just trust my instincts.
I was pretty sure Henry was a boy and, of course, he was.
The feeling is even stronger this time around.
I knew Henry was a boy once we picked his name because it just felt right and I kept involuntarily calling the baby "Henry".
It's the same story this time around.
We agree on a boy name and it feels just right to both of us and (just like the last pregnancy) we can't seem to reach an agreement on a girl name.
On one hand, I have been waaaaay more sick this pregnancy and I am just now starting to have a few days with no throwing up and no migraines at 22 weeks, so everybody says, "Oh, it must be a girl!"
BUT I have three different examples of friends who experienced much more severe sickness or complete opposite symptoms with their second pregnancies and all three of them have two boys, so I am not using that as a measure of anything.
Oh, and did I mention that Christian and I both think we saw some boy parts on accident during the ultrasound?
About the sickness...
Let me be clear:
I am thankful beyond thankful for this pregnancy and the hope of bringing another child into this world and into this family.
We REALLY wanted this and it didn't come as easily as the first time.
I am just surprised at how beat up I feel.
It's like every symptom that I ever had throughout the course of my fairly easy first pregnancy came back ten fold with this one, and all at the same time.
I was laying in bed the other night wondering, "What is wrong with my body?"
Sometimes I feel like it is just not managing this pregnancy the way that it should be.
But then, a thought came to me and I have been trying to reflect on it whenever I feel discouraged.
There is life being formed from nothing inside of me.
It is a complete and total miracle that no amount of science could ever fully explain to me.
Now that I know Henry, it is even more amazing.
So really, my first pregnancy should be the exception, not the rule.
How could the creation of life feel "easy"?
That was like a special period of grace or something.
I'm trying to ignore what my pregnancy app tells me about how great I should be feeling by now and just take every ache, every pain and every wave of nausea as a reminder of the complexity of creation.
Henry James Lately...
He is talking up a storm: lots of full sentences and "conversations" initiated by him.
The funniest things that come out of his mouth lately?
He occasionally calls me "Heather".
Every time you ask him a question, he says, "Well...".
He loves big words, like "delicious".
He has started talking in third person, referring to himself as "Henry"... I mean, "Hemry"... and pointing to himself proudly.
Oh, and this one: "Yes sir, Mommy!"
He loves to sing songs.
He mixes lyrics together into one big jumble that sounds something like this: "ABCB...Itsy bitsy...la la...pio pio...Jesus!" (clapping proudly).
He really loves to request songs and have me sing them.
He likes to dance and play the harmonica also.
He recently made up this hilarious "song" or rhythm that he "sings" in the car using my mom and my nieces' names (so random that he chose those two together).
It goes: "Mi-a (tongue click), Ro-bin (double tongue click), Mi-a (tongue click), Ro-bin (double tongue click)..."
His mannerisms are starting to look more and more grown up.
He does this new thing where he crosses his arms and rests his chin on them.
I couldn't quite get a picture of it, but my attempt left me with this picture:
Ahhhh! He looks so old!
What happened to that baby I used to tote around?
I desperately wanted to photoshop those sores off of his face but if I am being real, those have been a really big part of the past couple months.
They are a total mystery to us.
One showed up on his cheek a couple days after he cut his nose open when he fell off an indoor slide.
Over the next few days and weeks, more popped up.
After about five weeks of skin colored bumps showing up, scabbing, turning into little craters, then looking like they were going to heal completely...only to be back the next day, we finally gave in and took him to the doctor.
She treated him for an infection (similar to Impetigo), although she noted that it didn't seem quite like Impetigo since the sores stayed so tiny and weren't being spread to anyone else.
After ten days of very strong (and expensive) oral and topical antibiotics and a bleach bath, nothing had changed, so she referred us to a pediatric dermatologist.
The earliest appointment was about a month away.
Therefore, it's now been almost nine weeks of these mystery sores.
We will go to the dermatologist next week and I am praying she will have an answer that will involve full healing and no scarring.
I am so sick of explaining myself to everyone.
No, he doesn't have chicken pox.
No, we don't think it's a food allergy.
Yes, of course I have asked all of my friends, searched for answers online and taken him to a doctor.
For now, we are treating them with Neosporin, which seems to help (at least it makes his face greasy and harder for him to scratch/pick at them), but new ones continue to pop up.
In other news, we are starting to see small signs of the terrible twos with testing boundaries and dramatically "crying" (covering his eyes with his hands, falling to the ground and gently banging his head on the ground) when he doesn't like something, but for the most part he is still very agreeable.
He wouldn't even take them off in a restaurant the other day.
My mom and I could not stop laughing.
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The winter and early spring were long here.
Henry still loves reading more than anything else, as well as coloring and playing with his toys, so he can be entertained inside easily, but I was going crazy.
He loves it when we build him "tunnels" out of blankets, (that's train talk for forts).
He also likes to play hide and seek with his toys.
I hide something and tell him to look for it.
We have been working on spelling his name
He can almost do it.
He usually says "H...O...N...R...Y!"
We can't get him to turn that O into an E.
This was another fun idea from my friend Erin:
Fun for a short period of time anyway...
It always ends wildly with beans being thrown everywhere and me saying, "All done!"
Since the weather has been nicer lately, we have had lots of fun adventures and play dates outside.
Hallelujah!
(It's hard to feel nauseous when you're in the fresh air).
The zoo with Lucy, Hank and Quinn (not pictured):
Conner Prairie:
(I am so thankful my friend Laura introduced us to this place. It was so fun!)
He's saying, "Sheepy...baa!"
Sucking thumb in an animal barn.
Yum.
He kept calling that baby goat a bunny and jumping up and down saying, "Hop, hop!"
Backyard play dates:
Henry and Quinn look like twins...
except Henry has curly hair and a little more meat on his bones.
I put that size 12 months swimming suit on him and said, "It still fits!" but now that I see that muffin top...
At home, Henry still loves to draw with sidewalk chalk, (which means running down the sidewalk with a piece of chalk making single lines all over the place).
Jo-Jo always rolls in it and doesn't seem to understand that we are all laughing at him.
He learned to blow bubbles this month!
What a ham.
He JUST started requesting that I take his picture.
He will do something funny and say, "Picture, Mommy, picture!"
Then, when I hold up my phone or camera, he makes this ridiculous squinty fake smile:
After word, he runs up next to me to see the picture, exclaiming "Cute!"
He is so humble.
Dear Henry,
Last weekend was Mother's Day.
Daddy got up early with you and let me sleep in.
About an hour later you two came through the bedroom door with my breakfast.
Daddy placed the tray in my lap and you climbed up on the bed with me, exclaimed "Yummy!" and (even though you had already eaten your own breakfast) dug right in, grabbing a piece of bacon and smiling huge at me as you chomped on it.
You continued to eat my breakfast until Daddy took you to get me another surprise.
I heard your little bare feet coming back down the hallway and as you entered the room in your dinosaur pajamas, and time moved in slow motion.
You looked so tiny behind the wrapped silhouette of the camera bag you were carrying in to give to me and I desperately wished I had my camera in hand to capture the moment.
It was a beautiful reminder to me that you are still so little, despite your high percentiles on the doctor's growth chart, your huge vocabulary and all the new things you learn and do each day, which completely amaze me.
In fact, today you are the littlest that you will ever be again.
I cherish this time and these memories.
I am so proud and lucky to be your mommy.
