Notes from the Crib

Well, about a week and a half worth of activities to blog about now. But first, we've noticed a somewhat worrying change in Henry in that our little sponge with the memory of an elephant is starting to forget things. Is the infantile amnesia kicking in? For example, for many months after his 2nd birthday Henry could tell us about all sorts of things that happened at his party at Underwood Farms. When asked the other day about his 2nd birthday party, he couldn't even remember where the party was held. When Mummy reminded him where it was, he wasn't able to offer any information about what happened at the party. There have been a few other incidents lately and also the loss of memory about certain things he used to know, but that one was the most surprising.

Anyway, the day after our return from Wisconsin, last week Wednesday, we spent getting groceries and mainly relaxing at home.

On Thursday Henry had his second summer session class of Music Rhapsody, but the first one held on the day he is scheduled for the class (we had done an early make-up class on June 30 in advance of our trip to WI). The surprising thing to find was that the class was made up of all boys. Teacher Amy was substituting for Teacher Jessica; she seemed to do pretty well. Henry was more subdued in class than usual. On Thursday afternoon Henry had his first summer class of ballet/tap at the Hermosa School of Dance. He enjoyed it and did really well following the instructions during class. It is amazing how flexible he still is -- like he can bend forward with the soles of his feet together and touch his nose to his feet. Enrolled him for the 2 1/2 to 3 year old class, but he is definitely ready for the next class up (3 and 4 year olds), which we will do in the autumn. Of course, he is the only boy in the class, but that doesn't seem to bother him.

Friday we were back to Spanish class, this time with Ms. Marysol. Henry was a little hesitant to go into class, but in the end he joined in and did fine. Afterward was another thing. Mummy could not get him to leave, so we were there about a half hour while Henry got into all sorts of things. We stopped briefly at Snear parkette after the class, but only stayed a while because it was hot and Mummy was getting hungry for lunch.

Saturday morning he was back to French class and there were a couple little girls in class with him. He also was at the Little Gym again.

Sunday morning Mummy took Henry on his tricycle over to Townsend parkette. Was REALLY annoyed to get there and find cigarette butts and empty beer cans and a lot of litter lying around the park. Luckily they left behind a plastic shopping bag too, so Mummy cleaned it all up, but the experience left Mummy feeling irritated the rest of the time we were there. When we got home, Daddy had filled up the Rainbow Pool and Henry splashed around for a while. We went out to Red Robin for lunch. Then Henry took an early and long nap right after lunch. We had left the pool out for him to play in again in the afternoon, but he didn't get into it again until about 5pm.

On Monday Henry went to The Little Gym for his first camp day there. The theme was "Who is Your Hero." They did various activities in the gym. Henry really liked whatever activity that Randy led on the little balance beam (he told Mummy). At the end of the camp, two police officers visited with their patrol cars and talked to the kids and demonstrated some of the different noises the cars could make. Henry took away from it that the "bad guys sit in back of the police car." He got a police/safety themed coloring book featuring McGruff to take home as well as a Junior Officer sticker shaped like a badge, which he wore on his shirt.

While Henry was at camp, Mummy headed down to the Lakeshore store and bought a bunch of things, including a few toys to help aid our next project, which is on "size and measuring". Mummy got to buy those multi-colored, multi-sized bears that Henry so enjoyed playing with in Wisconsin. Also found a nice set of measuring cups, spoons, jugs, and jars. In the discount section Mummy found a set of balancing scales with little gram weights ranging from 1 to 50 grams; it was marked as discounted because it was "scratched". Mummy cut the tape open and opened the box to check on it and could not find any sort of scratch and all the pieces were there, so Mummy bought it. Great buy at about $15 off the regular price. Mummy also bought a wooden tool bench with screwdriver, hammer, wrench and screws and nails to play with. That was the first thing that he got and he had a great time playing with that.

On Monday afternoon we went to the library. Henry and Mummy have already read 26 books together for the summer reading program. Henry got all sorts of little prizes...pencils, stickers, gift certificates. He was thrilled. We checked out a bunch of books related to our new project and Henry chose three board books from among the pile of board books he read at the library.

Tuesday morning was our Food Fun class. The kids got to make a cold pasta salad for lunch. There was Mickey Mouse shaped pasta (which actually didn't look much like Mickey Mouse) and lots of little bowls of things to try. Henry put shredded carrots, cheese and soy beans into his pasta. Was impressed that he tried a soy bean -- he didn't like it though. One of the Moms had brought Italian restaurant style bread as a side and Henry really liked that. Henry seemed really tired and class and spent nearly all of the "circle time" pulling on Mummy's ears. Then Mummy had to practically drag him away from the water table at the end. In the afternoon, Henry had a dentist appointment because Mummy wanted his teeth cleaned to remove some stains from his front teeth. He did a great job at the dentist this time, no problems. He picked out a little set of plastic ocean themed figures. We were later amused to find that the octopus has 10 legs. That evening, had a guy come over to make an estimate on cleaning the windows of the house. Picked up an email that Henry had an audition the next day.

Wednesday morning we drove up to Henry's audition. He got to go in with another pretend Dad. When they came out the "Dad" said, "Henry did great." Played at a park across from the audition place afterward, but not for too long. Henry clonked his head on a railing while we were there. When we got home Mummy gave Henry the bears, measuring kit, and scale. He was thrilled and we played with that stuff for most of the afternoon.

Thursday morning, back to Music Rhapsody. Teacher Jessica was there again. They are doing farm songs for the summer and Teacher Jessica was wearing a hat. Henry spent much of the class trying to get Teacher Jessica's hat and various other things being used in the class. Mummy took him out of the room twice to try to re-focus his attention. Didn't help much. Well, it looks like we might not take Music Rhapsody in the fall as the class schedule for Henry's age group doesn't line up well with the openings we have. Mummy is going to try to work on music with Henry at home and if that works, think we'll stop going to Music Rhapsody for the school year.

Thursday afternoon was dance class again. They spent so much time on ballet they literally had only about two minutes for tap, which is a shame, because Henry really loves tap. At 30 minutes, the class is really to short for us. Really looking forward to the longer class in the autumn. Henry got upset with Mummy after class because he didn't have a stuffed animal of his own to jump over in class. This was the first that Mummy had heard that the kids were to bring their own animals to jump over. We'll have something next week.

Friday, back to Spanish class. They are studying camping right now, which has an interesting new set of vocabulary. Henry brought back a nice art project with pictures of different camping items that he had colored pasted on to a sheet of paper. He was really excited about that one, which is nice, because usually he couldn't care less about the art projects. After class Mummy drove him to General Eaton parkette, another small neighborhood park Mummy discovered on a run in the last two weeks. It has lots of stuff for climbing on, so it is perfect for Henry. We ran into Alicia, who we had seen at the Art Zone two or three times before. She is 4 years old and very friendly. She and Henry played together for a while, so it made it a really splendid trip to the park. They had fun telling knock knock jokes but what get only part way through and then they would laugh hysterically, such as:
A: Knock, Knock.
H: Who's there?
A: Boo.
A & H collapse in fits of laughter.

Friday afternoon the window washers came and a crew of 4 or 5 guys cleaned every window, screen and sill in the house in the space of about an hour and a half.

Saturday morning, Henry was off to French class and Little Gym. Mummy went to the movies (!) to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (Daddy got to see it with work on Tuesday). After their classes, Henry and Daddy had lunch at Red Lobster, then Henry fell asleep on the way home. And he just woke up right now!

Henry and Daddy are off to French class and the Little Gym this morning, so finally Mummy has some time to blog about our trip to Wisconsin. Won't bore you too much with the details of our traveling on July 1. Henry was amused at riding in the taxi without a car seat. At the end of our flight, the pilot, Captain Pierce, invited Henry to join him in the cockpit and actually let Henry move the steering wheel, push buttons, and move a lever. There was one button that he didn't want Henry to press, but then he explained it probably wouldn't have worked anyway -- it was the button to control the fire extinguisher system on the plane, but he said it should only work if the button is flashing. Here is Henry "flying" a Boeing 737.



We arrived at Grandpa Lloyd and Grandma Ruth's house shortly after 8pm. Cousin Alex was also there as he had been staying for his annual week at the grandparents' house.

The morning of Thursday July 2, Mummy, Daddy, Henry and Alex drove out to Woodland Dunes in Two Rivers. They have a nature center and some trails to walk on. Spent quite some time in the Nature Center looking at turtles and also playing with some of the interactive exhibits they had. Mummy, Henry and Alex put together a big insect puzzle. We also walked out on the Cattail trail, a large boardwalk through a meadow and cattail marsh, which was quite enjoyable. We saw a lot of red-wing blackbirds.



We tried walking on the Willow Trail in search of the "largest tree in Manitowoc County", but were thwarted by swarms of bugs and mosquitos and turned back before we reached the tree. Back at the Nature Center shop, we bought one of those cube puzzles with animals of North America on it and a bug examination jar for Henry.

We also looked briefly at their butterfly garden, to see what kinds of flowers they had. They day was overcast and a little too cold for the butterflies -- we didn't see any. We did see a few American robins and some goldfinches.

In the early afternoon we headed to the Manitowoc library along with Grandpa Lloyd. We checked out a stack of books along with 5 toys from the toy library: a toy toolbox, a doctor's kit, 3D plastic dinosaur puzzle, a Maisy board game, and a measurement themed box which included a clock, toy measuring tape, measuring cups and spoons, scales, and multi-colored, multi-sized bears. Henry played with all of the toys during the vacation, but he seemed to like the doctor's kit and the bears the best. He liked to fill the measuring cups with the bears and mix them together to make desserts, including bear cake, bear banana blueberry bread, and bear ice cream.



On Thursday afternoon Aunt Sarah, Uncle Al, and cousins Ellie and Cass arrived for an overnight visit. When Ellie arrived she was excited to see that she is almost taller than Mummy. She probably will be taller by our next visit. Anyway, in the evening the kids all went outside and drew with chalk on Grandpa and Grandma's pathway.

On Friday morning Mummy headed out for a run around the neighborhood. In the late morning, Mummy, Daddy, Henry, Alex, Uncle Al, Ellie, Cass all headed over to the Schuette Park community-built playground, which is a wonderful thing. Everybody had fun playing there. It was funny to watch Henry getting led by the hand around the structure by his cousins and getting picked up and moved around by them a lot. Here is a picture of Cass pushing Henry in a swing, Ellie on the big red swing, and Alex watching.



For lunch we picked up food at the new A&W in town. Uncle John and Aunt Sue arrived soon after lunch and Uncle Al took some photos of the extended Gosz family. Then Mummy, Daddy, Henry, Uncle Al, Ellie, Cass, Alex and Grandpa Lloyd headed out to the Lincoln Park Zoo. Spent several minutes watching the prairie dogs, then headed into the Nature Center. Here is a picture of Ellie, Mummy, Henry and Grandpa Lloyd watching prairie dogs.



Henry was very excited to see a tarantula and two scorpions in the Nature Center. The also had some aquariums with fish, a few turtles and a handful of birds. Then we looked around the rest of the zoo. We found the brick in the sidewalk that the Gosz family had bought in memory of Henry's great Aunt Mary (Grandma Ruth's sister) near the white-tailed deer enclosure. We were really impressed to see that they have a snow leopard at the zoo. There are only about 5000 snow leopards in the wild and around 700 in various zoos, it seems amazing that there is one in Manitowoc. Next we headed over to the big red barn where we saw some farm animals, including three calves that had been born in April right around Henry's 3rd birthday. Then the kids played on the playground outside the barn, mostly sticking to the swings. Even Uncle Al went on a swing! Uncle John and Aunt Sue appeared at the playground to join us after their lunch. Here is a cute picture of Henry on Daddy's shoulders twirling Daddy's hair. Shortly before Henry got his haircut he started twirling his own hair as a sort of comfort mechanism when Mummy's ears aren't available.



Grandma Ruth made a big dinner for us all that evening, it was sort of like Thanksgiving in July, with the whole extended Gosz family there. However, the DeVries family headed back to Minnesota that evening, so there wasn't a crush of people in the house that night.

Saturday was the 4th of July. In the morning we watched part of the Wimbledon women's final match. Shortly afternoon Mummy, Daddy, Henry, Grandpa Lloyd and Grandma Ruth headed down the street to Washington for the Manitowoc city picnic. The Marine band was playing. Henry was immediately interested in the bouncy castle, so we bought a couple tickets for him and he bounced around for 5 minutes. Mummy bought a really horrible hamburger to eat (the meat was not very tasty) and she was only able to eat it because she was really hungry. We didn't stay for very long at the picnic.

Later in the day we headed out to the Elks' club for their July 4th picnic. That was much nicer. We chatted briefly with some relatives on Grandma Ruth's side of the family. They had a free bouncy castle, which Henry spent about 15 minutes in before some bigger kids came in and took it over. Then Henry decided he wanted to be on Daddy's shoulder and made Daddy run out to a line of trees that must have been about 800 feet away. Here they are arriving back.



Then Henry decided to run all the way out to the trees with Mummy, thankfully Henry ran on his own two legs and didn't have to be on Mummy's shoulders. After that, Henry ran to those trees and back ALL BY HIMSELF! So much energy that day.

Then we found some old games to play, including a beanbag toss, throwing ping pong balls into little fish bowls, and a baseball bingo game. They had a "go fish" area set up where the kids put a fishing pole over a curtain and some ladies hooked a bucket of little prizes on the end. Henry got a big glow stick (which didn't really glow), some bubbles and a hackysack ball.

That evening Aunt Sue, Uncle John and Alex lit some small fireworks in the driveway. Mummy, Daddy, and Henry headed down to the mouth of the Manitowoc river to watch the city fireworks display. We got there around 9pm and they started around 9:30pm. Henry had a very hard time waiting and kept saying that he wanted to go, something like, "Let's get in the rental car and drive to Grandma and Grandpa's house." He didn't like the loud bangs of the fireworks, so Mummy spent another July 4th evening with her fingers plugging Henry's ears. However, he did like looking at them and by the end he was very excited by the whole thing. He especially liked the finale when they sent quite a few fireworks up at one time. When we got back home, Uncle John had bought some more fireworks and they set those off once we were there (Henry watched from the safety of the window inside the house).

Sunday morning we spent watching the Wimbledon men's final match. Who would have thought it would go on for so long? Uncle John, Aunt Sue, and Alex headed back to Minnesota. Grandpa had some guys from a polka radio station come to interview him about Henry's great grandfather, Romy Gosz, who would have been 99 in August. That afternoon, Mummy, Daddy and Henry went to Red Arrow Park and played on the playground, examined the WWII guns, and visited the beach. It was the hottest day of our vacation, in the mid 80s, but the humidity in Manitowoc makes that feel hotter (or more uncomfortable) than the mid 80s in California. We went for a drive in the countryside afterward to get Henry to fall asleep in the car, which he did. When he woke up from his nap we headed to Beerntsen's for ice cream. Daddy had a "Hog n Dog", Mummy had a "Turtle Sundae" (for the first time) and Henry had a dish of Mint Chip. Yum! Henry ate all of his, but Mummy couldn't finish hers because the butterscotch made the whole thing just too sickly sweet, even for Mummy.



On Monday morning, Daddy, Mummy, Henry and Grandpa Lloyd took a drive out to Sherwood, WI to visit the cemetary where several Gosz ancestors are buried, including Johann Gosz. Johann is Henry's 4th Great Grandfather who moved to the United States from Bohemia in the 1860s. He is the end of the Gosz line as far as we can track it as we don't have any information on Johann's parents. We also found Gosz Memorial Park, a small green strip of land circled by a housing development. We suspect, but do not have confirmation, that the park may be located where Johann Gosz originally had his farm. The family history states the farm was at High Cliff and the park is near High Cliff (or may even be in High Cliff, not clear of boundaries). Here are Mummy, Henry and Grandpa Lloyd posing next to the Gosz Memorial Park sign.



In the late afternoon, Mummy, Daddy, and Grandma Ruth drove down to Sheboygan to visit Henry's Great Aunt Gracie (and her dog Molly). Henry fell asleep on the way, so was a little groggy when we arrived. He perked up soon enough though and had a wonderful time playing with Molly. He especially liked taking her toys and dropping them down the laundry chute! Here is Henry petting Molly while Aunt Gracie holds her.



Not much happened on Tuesday. Daddy walked with Henry to the nearby Pulaski park (and some time during this vacation Mummy, Henry and Grandpa Lloyd had walked to the park, but can't remember which day, maybe July 4th). Mummy used the free time for packing. We watched a lot of house shows on the TV that day and just played with Henry in the house. Debated going out for lunch, but then decided to eat in as we would be eating supper at the airport. Left Manitowoc around 3:30pm for the drive down to Milwaukee, dropped off the rental car (a Toyota Corolla S, which was a pretty nice drive compared to the rental cars we usually get), and got into the airport. A funny thing happened there. We went into a store to buy some bottled water after going through security. Henry saw some stuffed animals that had Wisconsin stitched on them. He started going on about how he wanted one and that they were his friends and we couldn't leave without one. Mummy wasn't going to buy one for various reasons and was working on talking Henry out of it and into leaving the store, when an older lady (bound to be someone's grandma) came up and said, "Did you call him Henry? I love the name Henry. It is a very special name to me. It would make me happy if I could buy one of those for him." Mummy hesitated and then said,"Ok," so this lady gave Henry some money and he bought a little stuffed monkey with Wisconsin on its chest. Well that made him very happy. Henry slept most of the flight home, cuddle in his seat with his monkey and Charlie, his teddy bear.


Last night Mummy and Henry had a short conversation that went like this:

Henry: Do you remember when we went to Wisconsin?
Mummy: Yes.
Henry: I liked it.
Mummy: Good. What did you like about it?
Henry: The organ.



This photo looks like Henry is behind glass, because, well, he is behind glass. The organ is located in the enclosed porch area at Grandpa and Grandma's house and there is actually a window between the living room and the porch. Grandpa got this Hammond organ from a church since the last time we visited. Henry really loved it and we were so excited to find the song "If You Knew Susie" in a book (though the lyrics are different than the ones in "Anchors Aweigh").

Henry did a photo shoot for Yak Academy a few weeks ago. Yak Academy is the new name for Early Birds, where Henry goes for French and Spanish classes. You can see a couple pictures of Henry on the web site. There is a wonderful photo of him with Ms. Blanca in the Programs section. In the other one, you can only see his back, but if you want to look you can find it in the Our Story section.

UPDATE: Went back to the Yak Academy web site and most of the photos were in different places, so it looks like they have some sort of random photo display thing happening from a pool of the photos. The nice one of Henry with Ms. Blanca was gone, but I found in another place a photo with Henry sitting in a group with one of the Chinese teachers. So if you are interested in seeing photos, you'll just have to go to the Yak Academy web site and click through the various menu links to try to spot Henry (he is wearing a dark brown shirt).

2ND UPDATE: A super cute Henry is now on the Yak Academy home page sitting on Greenland. That is not him actually saying hello though.

The photos from the Wisconsin Trip are now available in a new Flickr album, July 2009 Wisconsin Trip.

Also, check out this YouTube clip of Henry singing and trying to play the song, "If You Knew Susie" on Grandpa Lloyd's Hammond Organ. Sorry the organ playing drowns out the singing a bit.



Also, we were pretty busy the week before we went on vacation and Mummy didn't get to blog about it. If Mummy ever gets around to an update, it will be in the previous post that has the link to those photos for that week. Note that we added some photos to the Henry's Photos 2009 (April to June) set of Henry at Ryan's birthday party and playing with Gisella on the last Sunday in June.

We have been pretty busy this week:
Father's Day on Sunday, we went to the South Coast Botanic Gardens
Art Zone Camp for Henry on Monday
New Food Fun Class for Mummy and Henry on Tuesday morning
Meeting up with Layla and Rebecca at Noah's Ark and Superhero exhibits at Skirball Center on Tuesday afternoon
Visiting the Wild Animal Park on Wednesday, particularly to see their new Dino Mountain exhibit
Thursday morning, ballet/tap class for Henry at Hype Studios
Thursday lunch at the Euro Cafe in Claremont and then on to the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in the afternoon

Check out all of the photos at Henry's Photos 2009 (April to June). Also, started a flickr album for the Dinosaur Project, though there is some crossover there with Henry's Photos.

Last weekend when we went to Townsend Parkette, there was a family of three really nice boys, (two teenagers and a 5 year old). The two teens were practicing their La Crosse skills. Henry got interested and the older one taught him how to throw a ball using a small La Crosse stick (which they had presumably brought a long to teach the 5 year old, who wasn't showing much interest). Henry spent a good 15 or 20 minutes playing with the boys and learning La Crosse skills. It was fantastic. When Henry left the park he made sure to say good-bye to each of them. At one stage they asked him how old he was and Henry said he was three and they were like, "Wow, you're really smart." This incident made Mummy feel like Henry needs some older kids to play with.

Already wrote about Monday (end of Art Zone preschool) and Tuesday (Disneyland and California Adventure). Wednesday we took it easy and stayed home. Though we did walk/trike over to Townsend Parkette in the afternoon.

Thursday we went to Hype Studios for a drop-in ballet/tap class. This was the first dance class in which he could wear his new ballet and tap shoes. Here he is at home just before class modeling his tap shoes and demonstrating an alligator step.



He had a great time in class. Most of the class was ballet and just a few minutes for tap, but Henry stretched it out by tapping in the room after class was over and then spending about 10 minutes at the studio trying to avoid Mummy taking his tap shoes off.



Friday morning was his last Spanish class of the spring semester, which was being taught by Ms. Karina. Henry did a great job in class that day and did well during the brief presentation. After class we headed to La Romeria park where Henry did lots of climbing. He climbed on "The Green Foot Thing" and the "Blue Ladder Thing" for the first time. Here is a picture of him on "The Green Foot Thing", the second time he went up. He really loves to climb things now.



Saturday morning was Henry's last French class of the spring semester and both Mummy and Daddy went to his presentation. His French sounds good. He really knows the vocabulary pretty well. Also, Mummy managed to get him to review his French and Spanish at home during the week this week, which we have not done for a long time. There was an ackward moment after class when we went to get Henry's shoes on and he saw an overweight woman sitting on the bench in the lobby. Henry asks to Mummy and Daddy, "Is she a giant?" Mummy and Daddy trying not to laugh, "No." Henry says matter of factly, "She is big." Mummy turns several shades of red and hopes the lady has not heard him.

Saturday was also Presentation Day at The Little Gym, where the parents are all invited into class and all the kids showed us their warm-up and then perform set routines on the balance beam, low bar, and the floor. Henry was the first one to go on the 6-inch wide high balance beam and did a good job, though he got a little nervous about doing things unsupported. Still, he got through the routine. Afterward, he had no qualms about walking across the 4-inch low beam on his own.



He did well on the low bar routine and then had to show us a trick he made up called, "The Sloth." Here it is. He is holding that pose, by the way, not swinging (much).



Finally he did the floor routine. Missed the first part on the video, but here is the short clip of him doing a forward roll (which goes sideways, which is odd, because he normally is pretty good on the forward roll and does lots of them at class voluntarily), monkey jumps, donkey kick and ends with a big smiling ta-dah.



At the end they had a medal ceremony, where the lead teacher Randy said something about each child. He remarked how Henry had just joined the Funny Bugs class in the middle of the semester and that he did a great job remembering how to do the routines.

After class Henry got very upset because he couldn't have one of the balloons from the front desk, which were there as a decoration. So on the way home, Mummy stopped off at Trader Joe's so he could get one of their balloons and we bought a few things that we needed at the house.

More pictures from Disneyland, California Adventure, Hype Studios, La Romeria Park and The Little Gym can be found in Henry's Photos 2009 (April to June).

Just wanted to note, that we are currently doing a dinosaur project, so we have been spending a lot of our time at home reading about dinosaurs, playing with dinosaurs, making a stegosaurus out of construction paper, and doing dinosaur puzzles. Henry got really interested in what caused the dinosaurs to be extinct. We've talked about the main theory of the asteroid hitting the Yucatan Peninsula and he is very taken with the idea of a "big rock falling out of space".

Also, Henry is getting to be such a big boy now we decided it was time to retire the high chair. Yesterday he used his high chair for the last time. We bought a Kaboost Portable Chair Booster to put under one of our dining room chairs. Mummy made a temporary chair cover out of an old sheet that had gotten some holes in it. Here he is sitting at the table! You can see the Kaboost at work under the chair.

Yesterday, Mummy and Henry went to Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure. It was the last day that we could go on our passes, before the blockout dates started. Henry and Mummy are here to tell you about the day, not necessarily in chronological order.

Henry says, "I did Minnie's email and I pretended to be Minnie." That was in Minnie's house after Henry had his photo taken with Minnie.

Henry says, "Goofy got chased away by a hammer in Mickey's barn. Remember the movie Mickey put on with Pete and then Goofy got chased away by a hammer?" That was in Mickey's house before Henry had his picture with Mickey. Mummy asks Henry, "What happened when you met Mickey?" Henry says, "Mickey kissed me." Henry said to Mickey, "I'm a fan. I really like you so much."

In Disneyland we went on King Arthur's Carousel, It's a Small World, Autopia and Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters. Henry says of B.L.A.B., "I liked shooting the targets and I liked them lighting up. I shooted the robot target." He also says, "Autopia cars had no roofs. It was a really bumpy ride. It was really fun for Mummy. Mummy laughed." About It's a Small World, Henry says, "There were magic carpets in the air. It wasn't the scary one. You know, the scary ones have bangs and booms. That's a car ride." Here's Henry on It's a Small World, just before our boat went into the building.



At lunch time Henry played in Goofy's Playground while Mummy ate her usual turkey sandwich from Clarabelle's. Henry came back every minute or two to take a bite of his sandwich. Henry says, "In Goofy's Playground I went to play when I was not hungry and I came back when I was hungry." "I went, joot, joot, joot, joot," he adds while waving his hand back and forth.

Henry fell asleep in Bob as we crossed back through the park and headed across the way to Disney's California Adventure. He slept for a little while, while Mummy cooled off in the Animation venue. When he woke up we went to the Playhouse Disney show. Henry says, "Mickey called, 'Oh Toodles.' We said, 'Oh Toodles' when we needed a mousketool. Little Einsteins came up and Tigger and Pooh came up. Handy Manny came up too, with his tools - Dusty, Pat. I helped Rocket ship go super fast. Then Roo lost his kite in the tree in Tigger and Pooh. And Tigger bounced and then he blowed the kite down and then Roo caught it. Pat went in and hammered that nail. The bubble machine was broken in Handy Manny. They sang a song, a really fun song. I liked that song. It was fixed and then bubbles came out. Then we called, 'Oh Toodles' again. And then we went, 'Oh Toodles.'" He got to see Minnie Mouse as we left the theatre.



We watched the Pixar parade. Henry says, "There was a huge giant tarantula and then a man waved a stick, moved a stick all around and the tarantula's foot moved. It swang all around and squirted water. Then a robot came and he squirted water. After the robot, here comes all sorts of kind of insects. Grasshoppers and fireflies and flies and bees. There's a man pretending to be a bee."

After the parade we went to "A Bug's Land" and rode on one of the rides, Flik's Flyers -- designed like a hot air balloon made of leaves with different food boxes for the basket. Henry wanted to be in the raisin box, which we were lucky enough to get. "We got the raisins on the balloon ride and we went backwards. That was fun. I liked that one. We didn't get the sun in our eyes, because we went backwards, that's why." Henry says, "It's tough to be a bug," which is actually an attraction that we did not see.

Then we went to the Brother Bear Redwood Creek Challenge Trail, where we played while waiting for Daddy to arrive. Daddy arrived and we ate at the Taste Pilot's Grill. Reminder to Mummy, don't eat burgers at Disney, the meat is not nice.

Afterward we headed to the Toy Story Midway Mania ride and waited in line for about 45 minutes. The ride was really fun -- you get to shoot targets projected on huge screens by pulling the string of a little cannon. Henry says, "It was just like Buzz Lightyear, but a tiny bit different, it had a string to pull. The plates broke when we shooted them and I didn't like the air blowing at me." Sometimes when you hit your target, it flies toward you (the 3-D effect) and there is a puff of air in the face at the same time. Henry managed to score 24,000 points (Mummy scored 64,000 and Daddy around 130,000). Here's Henry wearing his 3-D glasses when we were queueing for the ride.



Next Henry and Mummy went on King Triton's Carousel. "I liked the fish and the seals and the whales and the dolphins." As we left we saw the end of the electrical parade from a bridge. We left the park about 15 minutes before it closed at 10pm along with just about everyone else and it was really difficult to get out of the place with the crowd and trying to push Bob. Eventually we made our way out and got home just before 11pm. Henry was asleep by then, of course.

Today Henry is at his last day of Art Zone Preschool. It seems like only a few weeks ago that I took him there for his first day and could not bear to leave and ended up staying for the whole first session. Was it really as long ago as September? Of course, we will keep going to Art Zone. Henry is scheduled for 6 one-day camps sprinkled throughout the summer, the first one starting next week Monday. But the art camps will have a different set of kids (including kids older than 5) and a different feel. They'll be a little more structured, with a different art theme each week. He's going to go to these camps: 1. Summer Mosaics and Sand Painting, 2. Summertime Clay Play All Day, 3. A House for a Mouse & Other Fantasy Homes, 4. Drums, Dragons and Drama, 5. Black and White, 6. Super Science Spectacular. The camps run a bit longer too, from 10am to 2pm (instead of 9:30am to 12:30am) and Henry will be served pizza/pasta for lunch. We hope that some of the friends he made at preschool will participate in some of the camps.

Once the summer is over, Mummy night send Henry to Art Zone once a month for the Friday Night Parents Night Out Party, because we love the Art Zone so much and feel so comfortable about him being there. It is not only a great place for him to go when Mummy needs a break, but also because he has benefited by being there. I feel like it has been really good for his social interaction, because he can play with other kids without being told too much how he should play and without Mummy there as a crutch. The Art Zone was so supportive with helping Henry adjust to not having Mummy around. They were great when we were working on potty training and finally took the leap to stop using diapers. Think he had more accidents during that transitional month while at Art Zone than he had at home. They did a great job of supporting what we were doing and encouraging him to continue on that path despite having to change him out of wet clothes for 3 or 4 weeks in a row. Mummy knew Henry was pretty well potty trained when he stopped having accidents at Art Zone. Finally, a fine motor skill benefit has been how well he can use a scissors since he started at Art Zone. When he started he could barely hold the scissors properly, but within a couple months was cutting things pretty well. We love the Art Zone. Sad to see the preschool chapter ending, but looking forward to the next chapter in our Art Zone relationship.

Last Saturday was crazy. Daddy had a cold, so Mummy took Henry to French and Little Gym classes. He had fun at Little Gym, where the theme was dinosaurs, so they pretended to be dinosaurs throughout the class. Immediately after class we drove up to Santa Monica for a callback from the audition he had the previous week (in the end he didn't get the part). We were pleased to see the "pretend Dad" actor (Jay) he had auditioned with the first time there too, though they didn't get to go into the room together this time. When Jay was done he came out and talked to Henry and Mummy a little bit. He said to Mummy that Henry was smart. Mummy said something like, "How did you figure that out after only five minutes with him?" Jay said something about being able to "see it," for example, Henry "thinks about things before he talks."

On Monday Henry was back at Art Zone for his penultimate preschool class there. He brought home a lot of paintings this week. Teacher Laura told Mummy at the end he had been climbing around on a high railing that he shouldn't have been on. She also mentioned that he helped sort the kids' artwork into their bags at the end because he was reading the names on the pieces and matching them up with the right bags.

On Tuesday morning, we tried to go to Fort Lots of Fun to meet the playgroup, only to discover it was closed for maintenance. We headed over to Beverly Parkette instead. In the afternoon Mummy and Henry headed out to the valley to go to a DePaul Theatre School Alumni/Graduate mixer at alum Chip's house. Henry enjoyed playing with some of the graduates, especially a woman named Tasha. We also saw a three year old boy named Kai, and his Mom, Lynn, who we had first met when Kai was 12 months old and Henry about 5 months old, at the last mixer we attended. Henry and Kai sort of played together but mostly fought over one of those ride-in car things.

Wednesday morning Mummy took Henry to the Adventureplex to play. Sometimes he climbs around in the structure all by himself now. Before we left we played in the basketball court with basketballs, soccer balls, volleyballs and footballs. Henry is pretty good at kicking the soccer balls around.

Wednesday afternoon we went to Target and Henry fell asleep on the way there. He then proceeded to fall asleep in the cart, so Mummy took a little extra time in the store to buy a few things we wouldn't normally get like bedsheets, a new water filter jug, and a new iron. Also got some new sand toys for Henry to use at the beach or Seaside Lagoon.

Thursday morning we drove down to the South Coast Botanic Gardens for the monthly children's garden program, this one on Hummingbirds specifically, and all birds generally. Henry took 45 minutes to get ready (getting ready meaning brushing teeth, using the potty and getting dressed). That made us about 10 minutes late for the program. Lots of other people had the same idea to go to that program and they actually had already run out of stickers for the program (which ensure you get to do the craft and pot a plant). Henry was sad (and said so) that he didn't get to do the craft or get a plant. Mummy pointed out that this was a consequence in his taking so long to get ready. We enjoyed the gardens otherwise, he still got to play with the little well and water the plants. He looked at some different types of birds nests and got to pet a racing pigeon. We walked down and around the lake, ate a snack and watched the ducks.



Friday morning Henry went to Spanish class and Mummy headed to Whole Foods Market to do some grocery shopping. That was his last class with Ms. Blanca as she is on vacation next week and will miss the last class in the spring session. I guess it was a really tough class with Sarah and Hattie both having trouble staying in the room and once they started going out, then Henry wouldn't stay in the room either. Ms. Blanca also reported that during class Henry managed to push every single one of the other kids, except the tallest girl. Henry later also said that he ate Julianne's graham cracker, which made her cry. Ms. Blanca talked with Mummy after class and we tried to figure out what might work better for Henry. Ms. Karina is going to substitute in the class next week, so we'll see how she gets on. If things go better than they have been going, then we will probably move Henry to her class for the summer. If he stays in the Friday morning class, Ms. Marysol will be teaching it, so that might also change the dynamic. However, Mummy thinks Henry might do better in an afternoon class, when he doesn't have quite so much energy as he does first thing in the morning.

At lunch time, Henry watched the movie Toy Story. Afterward he was pretending he was Woody and Mummy was Buzz Lightyear. Then he changed his mind so that Mummy had to be Little Bo Peep and that Daddy should be Buzz Lightyear.

We had been scheduled to go to Seaside Lagoon with the Moms Club (and also meet some friends from Culver City there), but cancelled the event at the last minute because the weather has not cooperated (it has been pretty cool here, with temperatures in the low 60s and overcast). While not exactly cold, not the kind of weather where you want to be playing outside in water down by the ocean. Promised Henry we would got as soon as it got warm enough. He was pretty upset when he heard we weren't going.

That afternoon we headed to the South Bay Galleria to try to find a second set of summer pajamas (T-shirt/shorts combo) for Henry. We picked up a T-Rex themed set at Gymboree. Also bought some khaki/almost off white trousers there, which were on sale. Then we went to Gap Kids and bought three pairs of shorts with elastic waistbands so Henry can pull them up and down himself, as well as another swimshirt that he can use when playing with water or in the pool.

Not too many pictures taken this week. Our camera is having trouble dealing with the automatic flash and focusing, which means that we have to shut the flash off to take a picture (usually resulting in a somewhat blurry photo) or take a picture with enough ambient light that the flash doesn't want to come on. Maybe time for a new camera.

On Monday morning Henry woke up crying. Mummy went into his room and he said, "What happened to my balloons?" Mummy said, "What balloons?" Henry says something like, "The big one floated up in the sky and the little one popped." Poor little guy, having a nightmare about lost balloons.

Henry and Mummy finally painted the birdhouse Henry got at Gisella's birthday party, which at the time, he put about two brushstrokes of paint on. We painted the whole thing. He was really eager to do that as there is a "My Friends Tigger and Pooh" episode where they paint a birdhouse purple. We painted ours red and purple, but with the blending of the colors, there are all sorts of interesting shades in between fire engine red and dark purple. While we were doing it (we each had a brush) Henry said, "I'm an artist." Mummy is curious, "What makes you an artist?" Henry said, "Daddy. Sometimes he's a wizard and he waves his magic wand and then he turns me into an artist."

A few weeks ago we had our driveway gate fixed, so now we can open and close it automatically with a remote. Daddy left for work the other day and Henry watched out of the window as usual. Henry saw the gate open and said, "He made a nice big space for a giant." So if any giants are interested in visiting us, we can open our gate and let them into the backyard.

He's always talking about how babies can't do things, as if to differentiate himself from them. The other day Henry said, "It's hard to say Brachiosaurus [he enunciates it perfectly], it's so long. Babies can't say it." Then he thought for a second and added, "Babies say 'Sachiosaurus'."

Henry has been busy this week with some activities outside of the usual classes. On Tuesday, June 2 it was Daddy's birthday. Henry enjoyed watching Daddy open his presents. Luckily Henry only knew one thing that we got for Daddy, because he told Daddy about it as soon as he saw him after we had bought it -- Super Mario Party 8.



Daddy headed off to work and later that morning Henry had an audition. Following the audition we went to Disneyland. Daddy was to meet us after work for dinner and a couple hours in Disneyland, as you get in free on your birthday. Now that Henry is three, Mummy bought him his yearly pass to Disneyland and also paid for a parking pass. So essential we are now prepaid for parking and entrance for a year (though Mummy needs to renew her yearly pass in December).

Henry loves going around to meet the characters and when we arrived we got to see Pluto, Mickey, and Chip and Dale in the Town Square area. Though Henry really only got to take pictures with Pluto. Everyone else was headed off for a break. We headed over to Toontown and bought lunch (the yummy turkey sandwich from Clarabelle's). Then very cleverly headed over to to Goofy's Playground where Mummy got to sit down and eat lunch while Henry played and ran back and forth to take bites of things. That worked out really well and Mummy must remember to do that in the future. Then we saw Minnie Mouse, but the queue for pictures was really long, so we didn't bother to get a picture. Next it was into Mickey's house to get the picture with Mickey Mouse. Henry really loves meeting all these characters.



We spent some time doing the rides in Fantasyland: King Arthur's Carousel, Dumbo (really long line) and Casey Jr. Train. Mummy asked Henry what his horse's name was on the Carousel. He didn't know, so Mummy suggested he give it a name. He named the horse "Gene Kelly". Then headed over to Critter Country to go on the Winnie the Pooh Ride, then on to Adventureland to play in Tarzan's Treehouse. Around that time it was time to head out for dinner, so we walked over to the Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney to meet Daddy for dinner. Henry managed to get hurt twice while there, once by being tripped by a lady who wasn't watching where she was walking as Henry made his way to look at the big aquarium, and the other time when he was messing around near our table and fell over on his bottom and then hit the back of his head against a wall. The second time was just as the waiters were bringing Daddy his free dessert, so that was kind of sad that he didn't really get to enjoy the song. We headed back into Disneyland after dinner and went on the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blaster, Pirates of the Caribbean, King Arthur Carousel and Dumbo ride. Henry was cute, telling Daddy all about the rides. We finally left around 10:30pm and Henry slept on the way home and then went straight into bed.

On Wednesday we had the AquaTots class at the Aquarium of the Pacific. Henry really liked making a maraca/octopus (a maractopus) and of course getting to touch all of the critters. He doesn't enjoy the guided tour part so much as once he is out in the aquarium he wants to do his own thing.



We went to the "Wonder Red" park Thursday after his last Music Rhapsody class of the school year. He was crawling up a step to a platform when a two year old girl fell down a step on top of his head and slammed his forehead onto the platform. Ouch!

He was absolutely crazy at Spanish on Friday, kept popping in out of class and playing with the lights. Then after class he narrated the whole scene in Anchors Aweigh that directly precedes the dance with Jerry Mouse, sang part of "The Worry Song" and then part of the "Susie" song. Ms. Blanca was extremely entertained by all of that.

We bought tap shoes and ballet shoes later that day. Henry is so excited by the tap shoes. It is so cute!

A few more pictures at Henry's Photos 2009 (April to June).

On Tuesday, Mummy and Henry went to a lot of stores to find a dress to wear for the L.A. wedding reception party of our friends Emily Kosloski and Padraic Duffy. Dragged poor Henry around stores for most of the day not finding anything. The plus for him was that we got to eat at the mall and he got a toy telescope in his Chick-fil-a kid's meal, which he has been playing with a lot since then. Mummy went out in the evening again once Daddy was home and found the perfect dress at Nordstrom's and some shoes at Target.

Wednesday was quiet in the morning, but the afternoon was insane. Henry had an audition out in Sherman Oaks. We got there around 1:30pm, but weren't finished until 2:15pm. The audition was only a few minutes, but we had to wait a long time to get in and he went in with two other kids. He doesn't seem to audition well when he has to go in with other kids. He told me they asked him to "do a happy dance" at one point and he didn't do anything. Not going forward this time, the callbacks have already passed.

Henry then had a rehearsal in Manhattan Beach for his Music Rhapsody concert. We were about a half hour late, but they had only practiced two and a half of the six songs. Following the rehearsal he played for a few minutes on the playground outside the auditorium (the concert was held at Manhattan Beach Preschool). Then we headed over to Early Birds for him to do a make-up French class for the one that wasn't held on Saturday. Mummy stayed at Early Birds and read a book.

On Thursday, we didn't have Music Rhapsody class in the morning as usual, because we had another afternoon rehearsal and the actual concert that evening. Instead, Henry opted to go to Hype Studios for a drop-in ballet/tap class. We got to see our neighbor Tanya again, there with her three kids -- Demi and Aidan were doing the class. It started with tap and Henry did a great job doing alligator walks. When the kids came out to change into ballet shoes (or for Henry to just take his sneakers off as we don't have dance shoes yet), Henry remarked, "We need to get tap shoes just like Gene Kelly." Tanya heard that and was all over it. She had to make sure the teacher Krissi heard it. Krissi said, "Gene Kelly? You know your dance history." We will be getting tap and ballet shoes some time in the next month because he is required to have them when he starts dance classes in July at Hermosa School of Dance. Henry did really well with the ballet part too, though toward the end he was doing some of his own dancing around the room and having a hard time just watching people take their turns to do certain moves across the room. He is really great at trying the dance moves though. They played a fun song at they end which had the kids moving around (for example jumping), then stopping and lying down, then popping back up and moving another way (spinning). Henry got into that.

We went to Ralph's to shop, which Henry really didn't want to go into, as it "is too cold around the edges." Mummy brandished his hoodie, but he still wasn't persuaded, he didn't want to wear it ("I hate hoodies" was the comment). In the end, finally got him to be happy with going in by having him use his hoodie like a blanket. He was the fine in the store, tried to get him to be active in helping choose things and kept talking to him. We left the store and unloaded items in cart into the car. Put Henry in the car, told him to sit in his car seat, closed and locked the door, put the cart away in the cart return. Got back to the car, Henry still not in his seat. Mummy sings, "Henry in your seat, in your seat Henry." That doesn't work. Mummy counts to 10. That doesn't work. Henry climbs halfway to the front and fiddles with the rearview mirror instead. Then, Mummy lets Henry close the door himself. Doesn't work. Mummy gets in the front and says she's just going to leave without him in the seat (not really, of course). He panics (cause he clearly doesn't want that to happen, he knows that he should be in the seat when the car is moving). Instead of going in his seat, he opens the door. Mummy panics that he is going to fall on his head. Mummy has had enough. Mummy stuffs Henry into his seat while Henry screams and flails. Then Henry is upset because he wanted to get in himself. He spents the whole drive home asking for Mummy to drive back to Ralph's so he can get in the seat himself and Mummy spends the drive telling him that isn't going to happen. Argh! One of those really frustrating horrible parenting moments. At least we both calm down and cuddle upon arriving home. Except Henry decides he wants to go to a restaurant, preferably Islands for lunch. There are so many reasons that wasn't going to happen. Henry is close to another meltdown having barely gotten out of the last one. Instead we have a long talk and come to the agreement that Henry will go with Daddy (alone) to Red Lobster on Saturday.

After lunch we go to the rehearsal for the concert and this time we get there on time and get to rehearse all of the songs. Henry has a great time playing conga drums. He gets a drum to himself. Here is a picture of his class at the rehearsal. From left to right they are: Andrew, Emilio, Sophia, Ali and Henry (teacher William is in red in the back and the girl in white is not part of their class).



In between rehearsal and the concert Mummy tried to get Henry to nap, but it wasn't happening as he had fallen asleep for about five minutes on the way to rehearsal, he wasn't about to sleep again. We relaxed in his bed and read some stories anyway.

Finally time for a snack and change into a white shirt and blue jeans for the concert (starting at 6:15pm). Got there just in time to find a parking space (barely, had Daddy move someone's trash bins out of the street so we could park, it was the last space around), use the potty (Henry came off the stage to use the potty during both rehearsals), and get him on the stage -- one of the last few kids to get up there. The concert went pretty well and glad to report that Henry did not run around the stage and did not fall off the stage either. It probably was good that teacher William was hanging around the back of the drummers and helping them to focus and stay in place. Henry did like to drum while walking in a circle around the drum. He also played with his elbows a few times during "Come Through in a Hurry", which was kind of a long song as they sang it about six times inserting different instruments to the tune, e.g., "Let's hear the skin sounds." Really enjoyed the dance to "Carmina Burana", though unfortunately Henry dropped one of his scarves at the end of the first section and spent most of the second section getting off the riser, picking it up, and climbing back onto the riser (teacher William had to be off stage to turn on the pre-recorded music). Anyway, Henry recovered and was in full force for the third section. We made a video of it, but it is kind of shaky and Henry disappears in the middle as described, so won't post it. Plus there is evidence that he shakes his scarves in Ali's hair a few times (amusing for us, but not so much for poor Ali).

Mummy had been feeling a little sad that Henry didn't get to go to front and do a solo on the mic for The Gardener's Bench song (around eight kids were chosen, each sang something like, "I have a tulip"), because we missed that part during the first rehearsal. Ali and Sophia from our group, both pretty good singers, got solos. Anyway, the last song of the concert is the Good-bye Song, which is sung to music from Brahms' Symphony No. 1. They sing that song once at the end of every class, but Henry almost never sings along as he is usually crazy and bouncing around the room or we are clearing up after using the Orff instruments. Mummy noticed he didn't sing it with the group during the two final rehearsals either. During the concert, the whole group sings the song, but completely at random (it seems, they didn't do anything like it in rehearsal of the song) teacher Ute puts the microphone in front of Henry's mouth at the beginning of the song, so we hear his voice broadcast over the speakers above everyone else. HE SINGS THE WHOLE SONG! "Good-bye now and thank you, with songs in our hearts we go, good-bye now and thank you with music and dance we're going, with music and dance, with music and dance, with music and dance, we're going. Bye-bye." He actually sounded pretty good too. Unfortunately, we didn't have the video on, though snapped a quick picture of Henry trying to completely take over the mic. Not many photos posted from the concert because they didn't come out very well, with most of the kids having glowing eyes.



Henry said he liked doing the concert and he was pretty excited afterward. He played on the playground for a little while and we couldn't get him to sleep until about 10pm that night.

Friday morning Henry went to Spanish class. Mummy went home during class to get some chores done. Apparently Henry was a little crazy during class such that Ms Blanca actually had him leave the room and talk to Susan in the lobby. Henry later told Mummy that Susan had told him that he needed to concentrate in class and listen to Ms. Blanca and repeat what Ms. Blanca says. He was still pretty wild when Mummy picked him up. He has so much energy and he is so curious and getting into everything. After class we went home to relax. Mummy did some cleaning around the house. Henry played and watched some TV.

That evening Daddy came home early and we headed up to the Home Restaurant in the Silver Lake area for Emily and Padraic's informal wedding party (Emily and Padraic were actually married on May 16 up in Oregon). Henry slept on the way up there and was rather groggy and clingy when we arrived. He insisted on being on Daddy's shoulders at one point. Sorry, you don't get a picture of Mummy wearing a dress. We were outside so Mummy had a coat on anyway and then Henry managed to get ketchup on the front of Mummy's coat.



Congratulated Padraic and Emily, then talked to Emily briefly and then we decided to take a booth and order some food. Henry had pancakes and sausage and Mummy had a super yummy Chicken Pomodoro sandwich. Daddy wasn't hungry, but picked at a few things on Henry's plate. Later on, Emily came over to chat with us and Henry demonstrated the Carmina Burana dance to her using sugar packets in place of scarves and singing along in some parts. We had a rather nice evening. Here is a picture of the happy couple.



It's Saturday morning and Daddy and Henry are off at French class, the Little Gym and Red Lobster, thus allowing Mummy to bring this blog post to you.

TGIS! So, let's roll the clock back to last Saturday. French class was cancelled at the last minute when Ms. Joelle called in sick. Daddy and Henry were in the car in the garage about ready to leave when we got the phone call. So they stayed at home and played upstairs for a while to stay out of the way as we had a handyman here to put a screen door on our side door entrance. Now we can leave that door open and not let the bugs in and not let the Henry out and get the cool breezes blowing in off the ocean. Hurrah!

Later that morning Henry and Daddy headed off to Little Gym. In the afternoon, Henry got on his tricycle and we all made our way to Townshend Parkette to play. Once again we met Brett and his almost one year old son, Finn, and talked for a short while.

Sunday, as you already know, we attended two different birthday parties. We headed to Culver City in the morning for Isaac's 2nd birthday party. Henry had an especially good time in the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Moon Bounce (or Bouncy Castle for our British readers).



It was also nice to see Finn and Lila at the party. Henry especially enjoyed eating cake. He loves cake!



Then we drove to Hermosa Beach to the Art Zone for our neighbor Gisella's 4th birthday party. Yes, straight from one party to the next (Henry slept on the way). Had a really fantastic time at Gisella's party. He especially enjoyed making handprints and playing with goo. Also, making Mummy nervous by using a chair to climb up to a high place, stand on it and then maneuver across the rope handles of the little bridge (with Mummy holding on to him) and then jump onto the bridge. He is really turning into a climber. Note little ledge on the left, just wide enough for him to stand on.



Here he is stamping shapes into goo. Note the scissors on the table. Within a month of going to Art Zone preschool Henry became adapt at using scissors at the age of 2 1/2. Pretty sure it was from cutting goo.



Here he is doing the handprints with Melissa. Love that he does this stuff at Art Zone. Mummy always feels uncomfortable if he has hands covered with paint at home. The funny thing is that he actually stays amazingly clean when he paints.




They had a piñata at the party, which instead of bashing with a stick, the kids were to pull one ribbon out of the bottom at a time, and then one of the ribbons would be the one to pull open the little door at the bottom of the piñata and let the candy and toys drop out. Four or five kids pulled out a ribbon each. Then came Henry's turn on he pulled out a whole handful, but managed to not actually get the one that opened the piñata. He probably did everyone a favor though, because there were like 20 or 30 ribbons in the thing and would probably have taken forever to open otherwise. In the end there were only three ribbons left when it opened. Henry was happy to get some M&M minis and Skittles as well as a spinning top and a little "balloon" maraca (he called it that because it looks like a balloon).



Shortly after that the sugar from the cake kicked in and he was bouncing all around and generally looking mischievous.




Monday was Memorial Day, so Daddy was off from work and Henry didn't have Art Zone preschool. Instead they spent quite a lot of time at home. In the morning we headed to Lowes to look at sinks to replace the one in our downstairs bathroom. Found one that might work and decided to order it online and maybe look around for something else online. We stopped briefly at La Romeria park to play, but there was a cold wind blowing and it was pretty busy, so didn't stay too long. Mummy went out to the stores later to do some shopping and bought a pair of black trousers.

Not much time to blog lately. Photos from Isaac's 2nd birthday party




and Gisella's 4th birthday party



are now available in Henry's Photos 2009 (April to June).

Totally neglected to mention that last Sunday night we arrived home from Sarah's party just in time to feel the 4.7 earthquake centered about 5 miles away from our house. It was pretty loud and shaking and our house was pretty noisy about being shaken up, particularly the cheap shower doors in the downstairs bathroom. A few pictures on the walls were put out of alignment and a small number of things on shelves were were knocked over or off, but no damage.

Henry had a good time as usual Monday at Art Zone. Mummy asked Henry who he played with that day and he said, "Maddie." Mummy asked, "Him what did you do?" He replied, "We walked together by holding hands."

Tuesday was a busy day. In the morning we met some of the Moondust playgroup at 8th Street Park in Manhattan Beach. They have two climbing panels on the play structure and Henry climbed up the easier of the two (it is slightly included rather than vertical) several times. He is becoming increasingly interested in climbing.

After the park we headed to Van Nuys to renew Henry's work permit in person. Dropped it off and the office and then had lunch at "Le Cafe Fun" across the street. Mummy had a very yummy chicken sandwich. Henry ordered pancakes, eggs, and sausages. He did pretty well at the restaurant until he got full, then he started messing around with the condiments and the maple syrup. He ended up getting ketchup all over his shirt. Luckily Mummy had a spare one with her. Work permit was ready by the time we finished lunch. The ladies at the office thought Henry was really cute.

Then we headed out to Underwood Family Farms in Moorpark and met up with our friends Layla and Rebecca. It was very cute to see Henry and Layla together. Layla clearly adores Henry.



She is also one of the few children of a similar age that Mummy has seen Henry actually having a conversation with. The kids had fun riding on the ponies, riding the electric train, and feeding the various animals. We also headed out into the field and picked our own strawberries. Mummy was amazed that Henry actually walked on his own to the back of the field (and back) without demanding to be carried on shoulders. Henry helped Mummy pick a few strawberries, though he mainly seemed to be on the look out for bees.

Spent some time in the animal show area where Henry put on a short animal show and we talked about the animals shows we had seen in the past. Then he and Layla and a chat while Mummy and Rebecca had a separate chat. That was nice! Followed this up by a visit to the market stand where Henry wanted Mummy to put everything we encountered into her basket. He also wanted to get out all the plastic bags to put things in. We ended up leaving with the strawberries we had picked, a canteloupe, bananas, broccoli and a Granny Smith apple that Henry wanted to buy for Daddy. After the stop at the stand, Rebecca and Layla said their good-byes. Mummy had planned to leave too, but Henry wanted to look at the bees again, which we did. Henry slept all the way home (about an hour drive).

Wednesday was a day of errands and doing some things around the house. We went to the Redondo Beach Library and checked out a new set of books. While there, Henry got onto the library computer catalog and typed out and spelled, with minimal help, "green eggs and ham". The double e and double g threw him off, but otherwise he figured out the rest on his own. We don't really work on spelling together, but he is starting to work it out in his head by thinking about the letter sounds. After the library we did a quick shop at Ralph's and then headed home. In the afternoon, we prepared one of the garden beds for tomato plants. This essential was just digging down into the dirt and pulling up weeds and grass and roots that we found. Henry liked this activity. He especially liked breaking up clumps of dirt.

We had a busy morning on Thursday too. Started out with Music Rhapsody class, which teacher Ute was teaching because teacher Jessica was out ill. Henry was a bit slow to adapt to teacher Ute and did not want to go to a drum right away. Eventually he joined in and did a pretty good job on the drum part. Once we were done with the drums and he had to stand on the green line to sing with the class, then he had a difficult time staying in one place (he kept running over to see Mummy). He especially likes to march around during Carmina Burana, which was not helped by teacher Jessica doing this during one of the class. The kids are actually just supposed to march in place on the green line. Teacher Ute did not seem happy with Henry marching around the room. She told Mummy after class that he can't do that in the concert, it wasn't safe and he could fall off the stage. Mummy listened to her and nodded, then suggested that once Henry is in a different setting (on the stage) it is possible that he will act differently. We'll see what happens in the dress rehearsal. Anyway, Mummy is pretty sure that, as crazy as Henry is sometimes, he is not foolish enough to fall off a three foot drop. Mummy also said that it was difficult for Henry to stand still for such a long amount of time. (In the rehearsals they are singing each song through a few times, in the concert, it will just be once). Teacher Ute responded something about Henry being young and that there is more movement in the 2s and 3s class (sounding like she was saying Henry should be in the 2s and 3s class). Mummy said that we had tried the 2s and 3s class and it was too young for Henry, pointed out that Henry is mentally way beyond that class, that he knew all the words for the songs for the concert and only had difficulty with standing in place for a long time. Anyway, teacher Ute really rubbed Mummy the wrong way and we will make sure that we don't take any classes where she is Henry's regular teacher.

After class we headed to Veteran's Park where the Redondo Beach Farmer's Market is held. This was supposed to be a Mom's Club field trip, but we didn't see any other moms there. Of course, we were only there for 20 minutes. Henry played on the playground equipment for a while and burned off some energy.

Then we headed over to Early Birds for a special class and photo shoot for the web site of the preschool they are forming, YakAcademy. If we hadn't already had Henry set up to go to Del Sol, then we might have considered Henry attending their Spanish immersion preschool. Anyway, Henry did an excellent job at the photo shoot. He went in the room alone with the photographer for about five minutes and she thought he was great. They spent just under an hour doing group shots as if Ms. Blanca were teaching a class. She actually led most of the stuff in English and it was only an imitation of the class, there were several stunts done to get pictures, like having the kids count to ten extremely loudly so that there mouths would be wide open in the pictures. They give little plastic toy prizes after each mini activity, so Henry came home with a ball, some bugs, a top, and a plastic firefighter. He had a really fantastic time doing this.

Thursday afternoon we headed back over to Peter's Garden Center and Mummy picked up a back of fertilzer/mulch for mixing up with the garden soil and spreading around the tomato plants once there were in the ground. The rest of the afternoon was spent in the garden transferring the plants from pots to the earth. Henry played with his sand and water table, played with a big bucket filled with water and his watering cans, and a squirty bottle. He had to be reminded several times to not squirt Mummy, but otherwise he did well keeping himself occupied while Mummy planted the tomatoes.

Friday morning Henry had Spanish class, the last day they were studying instruments. While he was at class, Mummy walked over to the library to pick up a book she had reserved (the one we are reading for Moms Club Book Club), which was now available. Also found some Ruth Chew books in the library (Mummy loved these when she was about 10) and Mummy checked out one to read with Henry. At the presentation, Henry could not concentrate. Ms. Blanca said he was fine in class. She said there were some fun moments when she taught him to sing, "We Will Rock You" and that he and Sarah had a conversation about Sarah's party. He just seemed to become wild when Mummy appeared. Everyone else left and Henry was still there. Mummy mentioned to Henry that he had wanted to sing the Susie song from Anchors Aweigh to Susan, the new Center Director, who works in the lobby. He came out quite a lot of it. It was completely hysterical. Mummy, Susan and Ms. Blanca were all laughing so hard we were in tears. He sang this part while also dancing and running up and down the lobby:
"If you knew Susie, like we know Susie, oh, oh, oh, what a gal. She's not so choosy, no not our Susie, oh, oh, Susie is a lollapaloozie" [Henry can't actually say that word yet]. We all cracked up. Henry paused a moment then started the next line, "When Susie kisses, it never fails, when Susie kisses ... lalalala [he sang some sort of nonsense at the end there instead of the line "it takes the wind right out of your sails."} Anyway, it was highly entertaining!

After class we went over to Beverly Parkette. Henry climbed up the climbing wall a few times. We were only there about 10 minutes when Henry decided he needed to use the potty, so we drove home (he was able to wait until we got home).

Later that afternoon we headed to Open Studio time at the Art Zone. We met up with old Culver City friends Ali and Julianna and Lila and Finn. We were the first to arrive for the session and we watched the place fill up (turned out that there were 30 kids there during the day, and nearly as many parents). It was a pretty busy place. Henry painted a robot shape with colored glue and sprinkled some glitter over it. That was probably his best project. Also spent some time painting, playing with clay, playing with goo and in the play room. Henry was so comfortable in that space it was like he owned the place. Had some fun moments in the play room. Henry was dressed up at one point in a pink princess dress pretending he was Princess Presto from SuperWhy!



He also enjoyed being a firefighter, a bee, and a pirate. Especially had fun with some stuffed animals at the end where he and Finn and a girl called Trinity and her mom, and another boy were flopping around in a huge pile of stuffed animals. The boy was the only one who had his dad with him. Lila asked Mummy if she thought the guy was a Culver City council member. Mummy said, no, but noted that she was out of touch with Culver City news these days. Lila later said to the guy, "Do you live in Culver City?" He said, "No. I live in Manhattan Beach." Lila said something like, "You look really familiar." The guy said, "I'm an actor." Later on, it hit Lila and she said to Mummy that she remembered him for the TV show "Weeds" but couldn't think of his name. So Mummy said, "Is it Kevin Nealon?" Yes. It was Kevin Nealon at the Art Zone with his son. Of course, Mummy had spent several moments earlier thinking that he was vaguely familiar, but just assuming also that it was from seeing him around the usual parental haunts. Mummy is now 2 for 2 at not immediately recognizing former SNL actors, having previously failed to recognized Dan Ackroyd at the House of Blues when he came up to talk to us.

We decided to head out for dinner together and as Hermosa Beach was packed, headed up to Islands in Manhattan Beach. Got a huge booth for the six of us. Julianna sat quietly coloring. Finn walked around the booth a little bit, Henry climbed up the back of the booth into a window and also on to a separate platform. Repeatedly. He was totally crazy, not interested in eating or drinking, just being completely wild. It was a very tough meal for Mummy. The burger was good, but could only eat it in spurts. By the end he decided he should be throwing his shoes around. Argh. Mummy handed over some cash and carried the wild Henry out.

On Sunday we attended two fun, but very different (from each other) birthday parties. In the morning we went to the 3rd birthday party for T.L., one of Henry's friends from Art Zone. His party was held at The Little Gym, so we pretty much knew what to expect since Henry had just had his party there last month. Henry was clearly acting much more shy at this party. He only partially participated in the different games they were leading, though he was keen as could be for "slam the cheese" and the "air track". Mummy was able to get a couple nice photos of him playing on the equipment. Here he is on the extended balance beam.



Unfortunately it was impossible to get a good picture of T.L. and Henry together at the party. T.L. missed his morning snack and ended up leaving the gym part to go into the party room to eat a bit earlier than the rest of the group. Henry did notice that he was gone and asked where he was, so we went in to see him, but then Henry didn't really talk to him. It appeared they had their lunch catered by Starbucks and T.L. had a very nicely decorated Thomas the Tank Engine cake. It was an extremely sweet cake and Henry was so well sugared up after he ate it that he skipped his afternoon nap.

We were really hoping he would get some sleep in during the afternoon as Mummy and Henry were headed to Sarah's (belated) fairy-themed 3rd birthday party that evening (her actual birthday was at the end of March). Mummy spent the afternoon making fairy wings, a crown and a magic wand for Henry.

Upon arrival at the party at Sarah's house, Henry spent some time playing with a water table that they had filled with fish aquarium rocks. There were some nice activities planned including an egg hunt (with fairy stickers in the plastic eggs), Tinkerbell story, making a little magic wand, and a Tinkerbell birthday cake for dessert. All the kids came dressed up, though the boys tended to be dressed up in other outfits. Henry made a great fairy king though. Mummy had a quick point and shoot moment with the camera, when Henry was pretending to make Mummy vanish by waving his magic wand. It turned into a pretty neat looking picture and is now one of Mummy's favorite photos of Henry.



Henry was totally into the whole fairy thing. He was excited to wear his crown and wings and actually wore them for about half of the party. He liked having a magic wand, which he identified with Princess Presto from SuperWhy! At the end of the party we watched Sarah open her gifts and then snagged a piece of birthday cake to take home to Daddy.

It has been another busy few days in a row for us. Check out lots more pictures added to Henry's Photos 2009 (April to June).

Let's wind the clock back to Friday, May 15. Henry had Spanish class in the morning and while he was at class Mummy drove over to the car wash to get her car cleaned. We were happy to see his friend Sarah, from his old Chickadees class, doing a make-up in his Rockin' Robins class. We got an invite to a belated birthday party for Sarah to be held on Sunday.

Immediately after class we headed to Beverly Parkette for the Redondo Beach North Moms Club meeting, which was already underway. We only spent about a half an hour there. Just long enough for Henry to eat part of a bagel, some Goldfish crackers, and down two juice boxes. He played a little bit on the equipment and is growing fond of those rock climbing inspired features they have at some playgrounds. He's turning into a really strong climber. Hated to eat and run, but we had things to do and Mummy wanted real food for lunch. After lunch we headed to Toys R Us to shop for presents for four different children as we now had two birthday parties scheduled for the 17th, as well as two on the following Sunday. Bought presents for all four kids at Toys R Us. Also spent quite some time letting Henry look at different electronic toys and playing with the Thomas the Tank Engine train table they had set up. Spent so much time waiting for Henry at the table that Mummy decided to buy the Thomas Water Tower Figure 8 Set for Henry. He didn't actually have a Thomas train with his wooden train sets and he was enjoying playing with the water tower set-up on the table, so thought that was a good set to buy. Plus the set comes with some more track and a cool humpbacked bridge. We also bought for ourselves a cheap set of plastic golf clubs and balls, a giant bucket, and some additional bubble mixture for the bubble sword.

On Saturday morning, Daddy took Henry to French class and Little Gym class. In French class, Henry told Ms. Joelle all about Gene Kelly. He also surprised he because he already knew the song they were singing in class, "Savez-vous planter les choux". He learned this song in his Worldspeak French class back when we lived in Culver City. It is also on a CD that they made for us, which Henry listens to sometimes (only about once a month lately, a lot more when he first got it).

The theme of his "Funny Bugs" Little Gym class was "Healthy Me". When Henry was done with class he revealed to us that "It is healthy to eat apples." Daddy and Henry picked up some sandwiches at Subway for lunch.

Saturday afternoon, Mummy, Daddy and Henry headed down to the Aquarium of the Pacific at Long Beach because we only had until the end of the month to use a complimentary ticket (for Daddy), which Mummy got with her membership. The place was crammed full of people -- even busier than it is during the week when there are school groups there. Both Henry and Mummy were balking at the crowds inside the Aquarium when we first arrived. Still we managed to enjoy a few moments in between the periods of overwhelming noise. It was cute how Henry seemed to act as a tour guide, with Daddy as his tour group, "Look Daddy, moon jellies!" It was a little bit better outside, where Henry and Daddy enjoyed watching the rays in the touch tank.



As the afternoon wore on the Aquarium started clearing out a bit more, but was still fairly busy. We headed back into the Northern Pacific exhibit just in time to see two divers enter the tunnel tank to feed the fish from a couple of buckets. One of the divers spent a few minutes communicating with Henry. Henry was rapt.



Henry also enjoyed looking at various gadgets in the gift shops at the Aquarium. He is so curious and he loves looking through those stands that have multiple bins of toys and trinkets. He also is an organizer. When he sees something in the wrong bin, he will move it to the correct one!

Eventually Mummy and Daddy felt that we were getting a bit peckish and Henry said that he was hungry. Mummy thought we might like to go out for some ice cream. Little did Mummy know that in the time between when we had been outside for the touch tanks and when we left the Aquarium to walk to get ice cream, the clouds had rolled in, the wind picked up and the temperature dropped. It didn't get really cold, but the air no longer had that warmness to it that whispers in your ear, "you want to eat an ice cream to cool off a little." We stopped outside of the Aquarium to view the Wave Fountain, which Mummy had blogged about in an earlier post. Here is a picture of Daddy and Henry watching the waves. Once again, Henry got scared when the water splashed high up against the wall.



Anyway, we walked around the harbor area to Shoreline Village and popped in a little ice cream shop. Daddy had a cup of Black Cherry and Mummy and Henry shared one of Mint Choc Chip (Henry's choice). Then we headed home (with much complaint from a very tired Henry who said he wanted to go back into the Aquarium). He fell asleep pretty much right away once the car got moving. However, just before he fell asleep we had been telling him how it was getting to be night time now and the Aquarium was going to be closing and the fish were going to sleep. Henry said to us, "The divers are going to tuck the little fishies in their beds in the bottom of the ocean."

On Saturday evening, Mummy spent her time wrapping birthday presents and altering Henry's Art Zone artwork into cards and envelopes for T.L. and Sarah.

On a separate note, recently Mummy asked this seemingly simple question to Henry "What would you like for breakfast?" Henry's response (this is word-for-word because Mummy wrote it down right away), "Christmas trees and trains and stuffed animals and Super Bouncy." (Super Bouncy being a squishy ball type toy he got from the dentist.) Perhaps Mummy should have added the word "eat" to her question.

First off, check out some new photos in Henry's Photos 2009 (April to June) and quite a few butterfly-related photos added to the Butterfly Project album.

Wednesday was the culminating day of our butterfly project. In celebration, Mummy and Henry visited the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, particularly to see the Pavilion of Wings. We only spent about 20 minutes inside the Pavilion of Wings, but we were able to see a lot of butterflies and identify some with the use of their conveniently posted sign. Spot the Buckeye butterfly resting at the top right.



Mummy liked seeing what different plants were in the garden. There was one in bloom she especially liked the look of and learned that it was a Lantana, which we already have in our garden. She talked to one of the workers and learned that Lantana grows very quickly, so she later adjusted the positioning of the Lantana in our own butterfly garden to be on the far sides of the flower bed.

Henry liked seeing the butterflies, particularly seeing them flying around, but didn't like when there was a large school group in the pavilion with us (the group left after about 10 minutes). What Henry liked the most was looking around the butterfly gift shop. We bought wind-up caterpillar and butterfly toys and also a set of various plastic butterflies (which unfortunately contained a monarch with its wings the wrong way around -- the back wings are next to its head).



As we left the pavilion, Henry announced that he was hungry, so we headed to the cafe for an early lunch. We got the kids meal, including a turkey sandwich, and a muffin. Henry ate about half of the muffin, a couple bits of the sandwich and some cheese from the sandwich. Also half of a chocolate chip cookie. Mummy ate the rest.

Then we headed to the Discovery room on the same level and Henry did some simplepuzzles, or should we say, Henry did ALL the puzzles they had out. Then we looked at all of the different terrariums with insects and other small animals inside them. Mummy grabbed a small step stool and set it down in front of each glass house for Henry to climb up and look in and read the name of the critter. He did a great job reading all sorts of unusual words. He had interesting pronunciations for some. There was a "Vietnamese" something or other, that Henry read as "vitamin". He tackled the word "Madeira" but changed the emphasis so it sounded like "MAD-er-uh". After looking at every single terrarium, we headed into the museum.

We mostly walked around the museum, without stopping too often. We stop briefly in the Thomas the T. Rex lab to watch a man filling putty into the cracks of a T. Rex femur. Henry also liked a video in the bird exhibit area showing a "bird's eye" view during flight. He flapped his arms up and down and pretended he was flying too. Toward the end of our time at the museum, we stopped in the members-only lounge. Henry played around with a big tarantula puppet, making it do "crazy dances".



After such a long day, Henry slept on the way home and Mummy transfered him to his bed when we got home. After he woke up, we took the butterflies next door to show Gisella. Gisella and Paul joined us as we released the butterflies into our garden. Three of them flew out at that time and each headed in a different direction. Another two had to be encouraged out later...they stayed in the treehouse, even though the door was open, for about an hour! Know this photo is a little blurry, but had about two seconds to get the shot during the butterfly release.



Thursday morning Henry had Music Rhapsody class. Everyone in the class was doing the same thing. Henry concentrated through the first three songs, though at the end he wanted tip the drum over. He had fun again dancing to Carmina Burana, but was perhaps a bit more wild than on Tuesday. Later that night he performed every single song for the concert in front of Mummy and Daddy, including lyrics and movement, and playing the tambourine as if it were a conga drum.

After class we headed to the South Coast Botanic Garden. The morning program theme was "Flower Power". Henry played for a short time with the watering cans at the well (he noted there were new cans and Mummy noted that he chose to use an old favorite over a new one). Then we potted a orange French marigold in a cup to take home (Mummy later planted it in our butterfly garden). Mummy took noted they had some pretty Johnny Jump Ups in their Butterfly Garden and thought we should get some for our garden as they were one of the first flowers that Mummy could recognize as a child (after dandelions, of course).

Henry decided he wanted to see the Rose Garden and then walk down to the lake, so we did that. He played around on lots of rocks at the lake, having fun jumping between them and climbing on top of the bigger ones. He said that he was like Gene Kelly jumping across the castle as he jumped across the rocks.



We had lunch at Bob's Big Boy. They still have some restaurants open, though the one in Manitowoc closed down a long time ago. They have a pretty diverse kids' menu and serve breakfast all day. Henry had pancakes, bacon and eggs, though he pretty much only ate a pancake. Then he decided he didn't like our booth and tried out four other places in the restaurant throughout the course of the meal. Mummy tried to distract him from this by having him count the lights, but of course, he couldn't do it from the table, which was what Mummy intended, but then had to walk all around the restaurant to count them.

Saturday. Henry got to attend his French class and go to The Little Gym. Daddy took him to both places. They started studying music/musical instruments in French. Henry was the only one at class so he got to sing a lot of French songs with Ms. Joelle. Mummy spent that time writing the previous long blog post.

That afternoon we stopped at the Redondo Beach Fire Station No. 2 as they were having an open house. Got a nice picture of Henry in the driver's seat of the fire truck.



Also a nice one of him sitting in the back with headphones on. Was he pretending to be a firefighter talking to dispatch? No. He was singing, "Hit Me With Your Best Shot". Guess he was reminded of the headset/microphone from Karaoke Revolution.



We only spent about a half hour at the fire station. Looked at an engine and around the station and witnessed the paramedics being called out to a skateboarding accident.

Then we headed to Wilderness Park to check out the "Mother as Goddess Faire". We arrived toward the end of the faire and there wasn't too much going on. We headed over to the bake sale table and got a couple chocolate chip cookies, a couple muffins and a slice of cake, all for $3. We enjoyed those at a table. Henry and Mummy both thought the muffins were yummy.



Then we headed down to the pond to feed the ducks. Those ducks were super tame and would eat right out of our hands if we let them. Thought as we had arrived in the mid-afternoon they would have had plenty of food by then, but they were as eager as ever.



We strolled up to the small amphitheatre and Henry decided that he wanted to climb around on some posts. Had fun doing that while we waited for a puppet show that never materialized.



Then we headed over to the Seeds of Joy preschool classroom that is at the park and Henry looked around the place and rode on their rocking horse. All the toys in the classroom are wooden, nothing plastic and nothing electronic, as the Seeds of Joy preschool is based on the Waldorf philosophy. Henry started to get tired so we headed home around 4pm.



While Henry napped, Mummy and Daddy watched the movie, "School of Rock."

Sunday morning, also Mother's Day, a very unmotivated Mummy, after much procrastinating, finally headed out for her run, which though only 4 miles, still felt tough. Later that morning Mummy, Daddy and Henry headed over to the beach for a stroll along the Strand (the paved pathway next to the beach). We brought Henry's tricycle along, which let him have an opportunity to drive it without us pushing it for a while. He is getting better at steering, but still needs practice to keep straight and look in front of him. There were also a few times when he decided, on purpose, to run into a wall (we stopped/slowed him down just before he would hit it). We spent the rest of the day relaxing at home.



On Monday, Henry headed to Art Zone as usual. He brought quite a few paintings and things home. He told Mummy that at story time they read a book about an elephant, a giraffe, a zebra and a tiger, in which the tiger eats the first three animals. He related a story about playing with Brogan and Maddie in the playhouse with a train and that Maddie asked, "Where are we going to go?"

Also on Monday, four Painted Lady butterflies emerged from their chrysalises. The fifth one emerged on Tuesday morning.



Tuesday was a busy day. In the morning Mummy and Henry headed up to Culver City to Ida's new salon for haircuts. Henry played with Ida's old toys while Mummy had a haircut and helped Tito assemble a brand new shampoo chair. Henry had a very difficult time sitting still for the haircut. He sat in the chair, but when Ida would try to cut he would lean his head in the opposite direction. His skin is so sensitive, he was being bothered by the cut hair that was gathering around his neck. He wouldn't let her use the electric razor at all. Eventually, she got through it, though it isn't the best haircut she has ever given Henry. Still, it is probably better than we could get elsewhere. Henry loves going to see Ida, just doesn't like the haircut part!

On Tuesday afternoon we drove over to one of the playgrounds at Alondra Park and Henry played around on the equipment. Didn't stay very long there. Mummy wasn't comfortable at that park because there were a few vans and motor homes with people clearly living out of them parked in the parking lot. Decided if we went over there in the future we would try a different playground on the west end of the golf course, that doesn't have the parking lot right next to it.

On the way home Mummy mentioned something to Henry about Music Rhapsody class and he said, "Let's go there." Since the kids have a concert coming up at the end of May we are able to attend other classes during the week for extra practice. Teacher Jessica was also teaching this Tuesday afternoon class. Henry got to be kind of special for the concert practice because he was the only one on conga drums, the regular class was playing finger cymbals and there was another girl there who played the tone block. He did an excellent job playing the drum and singing along on the first three songs they practiced. The other mothers were remarking on how cute he was and how well he knew the songs. Then he started to lose his concentration and wanted to remove the tape lines from the floor. The kids sang the "All the Little Critters" song together, no instruments, and Henry had a difficult time staying on the tape line. He wanted to be with Mummy or run circles (literally) around teacher Jessica. He did sing and do most of the movements to the song though. Then the whole class danced to Carmina Burana holding scarves in each of their hands. Henry was ace at this. He did the whole dance correctly (probably the best in the class) and looked so serious when he was marching around following teacher Jessica at the end of each section of the song that it was pretty hilarious. There was a lot of giggling from the mothers during this dance (all of the other kids were looking cute too). Finally it was time to play on the big Orff instruments and play the conductor game. Henry lost all concentration again. Mummy had to take him out of the room because he was all over the place. Took him back in again and he was focused for about a minute and played the glockenspiel. As soon as the game stopped, he was all over the room again. Luckily, it was the end of class! Though Mummy spent another ten minutes trying to get him to leave and finally ended up carrying him out.

We've been enjoying some very sunny and sometimes hot weather over the last week. We've finally got some cloud coverage this morning (known at the coast as the "marine layer"), which undoubtedly will burn off by lunchtime.

Here's the weekly roundup.

Monday, Art Zone. Henry made a cute picture holder/clay paper weight. There is a note written on a heart that Henry dictated to one of the teachers. It says, "I love it (Mommy). She likes to go running. Love, Henry." After the Art Zone he noted that Olivia wasn't there that day. Then he said with a sad sounding voice as if he really wished that she had been there, "I love Olivia." Here's his project.



Monday evening we did our make-up class at The Little Gym from missing Saturday's class because of the audition. Teachers Sabrina and Ana were leading the class. Now that he is in an older class he is starting to work on stringing skills together, for example, they did two walking leg lifts/kicks followed by a forward roll to standing with arms up in the air in the "ta-dah" pose (sorry not up-to-speed on the correct terminology). Henry also got a chance to hang from the bar and even pushed himself up on the bar (where the bar is at his waist level) and he held that pose unsupported by the teacher for a couple seconds. They also did some work on the low balance beam.

Tuesday was a busy day. We got up a little late so Mummy ended up taking Henry out in Bob for her three mile run. That was really tough. Still building up fitness after being off sick for a month. Plus it seems like Henry has gotten heavier in the past two months. Probably just because Mummy is carrying him (or pushing him up hills in Bob) less often, she is losing the strength to do so for any length of time.

After the run we headed over to Beverly Parkette for the Moondust playgroup. Had a nice time playing at the park and chatting to people. Someone had left a Hot Wheels car at the park and Henry had fun playing with that. He picked a few sprigs of clover and gave them to Mummy and also Rachel.

In the afternoon we headed down to the Aquarium of the Pacific for their Aquatots program, "Slippery to Prickly". The teacher had an unusual name, something like Graylynn or Grayleen (not sure of spelling). As everyone was arriving there were crayons out and a coloring page scene of fish and coral for the kids to color. Started class with a "touch and guess the item game", where there were different items in bowls, which were covered with paper with a hole in the middle. The hole was covered with a post-it note with the name of the item written on it. Of course, when each bowl was passed to Henry, Mummy had to quickly put her hand over the post-it note so that Henry could not READ what was inside the bowl. He wasn't keen on guessing what was inside, but he did a pretty good job at describing what he could feel. He especially liked the little white piece of coral and the small cowrie shell. Love how he described the piece of sea otter fur as "furry". Henry enjoyed feeling the objects, but every time Mummy asked him what he thought he was feeling he responded with, "I don't know". Mummy was hoping he would at least make some effort at guessing, but it didn't happen.

After that project we assembled a little touch and feel sea creatures book (with pre-printed pages). Henry wrote his name on the front page, making a pretty good H and E (missed the R though, which was probably Mummy's fault as she went straight from describing how to make an N to describing how to make a Y). Probably the best part of the bookmaking was the sea star page, in which we used glue to make dots on the sea star and then sprinkled gold glitter on top of the star. Henry liked the bookmaking activity too.



Then it was time to tour around the Aquarium. We visited the seals and sea lions, the ray touch pools, the tide pool touch pools, the shore birds (where teacher G. brought out feathers to feel), and the giant spider crabs. Henry was not keen on touching the rays, though he did put his hands in the water. He touched a few sea stars in the tide pool. We also met a creature we hadn't heard of before called a sea hare, looking much like this one.

We headed back to class and got to look at the small touch tide pool that is kept in the classroom. Henry touched some more sea stars (and we got to see one with its stomach extruded). He also got to touch a sea urchin (quite pointy) and a sea anenome (very squishy). Then everyone headed to the bathroom to wash hands and Henry requested to use the potty. When we went back in the room, teacher G. read a story about a hermit crab trying to find a new shell. Henry was squirmy during the beginning of the story until Mummy got the idea to cuddle with him. Later in the car he told Mummy that he "didn't like the story" because he had thought the class was over when we went to the bathroom.

When the story was over teacher G. passed around some more interesting things for the kids to look at, including a leatherback sea turtle skull, a sea lion skull, ray teeth, a baleen whale tooth, an orca tooth, and a cone shell. All of the other kids and parents left (there were about eight pairs there). Henry was still looking at stuff and started having a conversation with Mummy about the teeth. He said that the orca tooth was for eating meat and thought the ray teeth were for eating plants. He clearly must have internalized the pointy teeth, flat teeth discussion that had happened at the Page Museum a few weeks ago. Teacher G. came over and we asked about the teeth and if the rays ate plants. We learned that the flat teeth of the ray and the back flat teeth of the otter would be used for grinding shells and that sea otters are only carnivorous. We noted the sea lion only had pointy teeth (even in back) and that those are used for catching fish and then they swallow the fish whole. This was a particularly interesting discussion because so much of it was led by Henry's comments and insights (we'll get the hang of the constructivist approach yet)! Henry then moved on to the 6 inch long shell and he described where a snail would go in the shell and pointed to the opening and then said how the shell looked like an ice cream cone (it was actually a "cone shell").

Well, despite Henry telling Mummy later that he didn't like the story that was read, think he might have actually liked it because the next thing he did was crawl around the floor pretending to be a hermit crab looking for a new home. He crawled under one of the tables and proclaimed he had found one. Could barely get him to leave. We went into the hallway where there is a huge soft model of a giant squid hanging up. Henry remarked something about Daddy needing to see it and how amazed Daddy would be by it. They also had multiple shelves of various skeletal parts and a huge orca skull which Henry at first thought was a dinosaur. We saw another skull, can't remember exactly what it was but Henry wanted to hold it and teacher G. was trying to discourage him and said that it was very heavy to lift. So then Henry of course responds that, "Gene Kelly could lift that because he's strong." Teacher G. had to have Henry repeat that statement and then she said, "Do you mean Gene Kelly, the dancer?" Henry confirmed and then enthused some more about the strength of Gene Kelly. Mummy felt the need to then explain why her three year old son knows about Gene Kelly. Teacher G. made a comment to Henry along the lines of "You like Gene Kelly?" Henry responded with "Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra too!" Teacher G. asked, how about Fred Astaire? Henry replied, "Yeah!" Henry then got distracted by some giant foam sea creature shapes on sticks, especially a large sea star (not on a stick), which he nabbed. Teacher G. asked him to help put that away in a closet and then Mummy was finally able to get Henry to exit the classroom area, about 20 minutes after the class had ended. Mummy thanked Teacher G. for indulging us as we left. Next we looked around the gift shop (where Henry enjoyed playing with various plastic sea creature toys, especially puffer fish) and looking through some books, including a very sparkly one about mermaids. Then we managed to spend about an hour looking around the aquarium. Henry was especially thrilled to see not one, not two, but THREE divers cleaning inside the tunnel tank. We watched them for a long while and also spent some time identifying fish in the tank against the picture/name display cards along the tank edge. We were amused to find quite a few different types of butterflyfish.

We actually stayed at the Aquarium long enough to hear the 15 minute announcement prior to closing time! Then we headed outside to eat a snack. We watched The Wave fountain outside the Aquarium and actually went around to the "inside" part of it. It is three quarters of a spiral circle (like a chambered nautilus), with a sort of streambed comprising the outer part representing the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers, and a platform on the inside with "waves" that splash up against a wall in different patterns, recreating the sound of the ocean. Henry got a little bit scared when the waves shot up really high! He decided it was too loud and we decided to call it a day. He fell asleep in the car on the way back. We had had a really wonderful day. Too bad Mummy forgot to take the camera to the Aquarium.

Wednesday, we ended up not doing not much of anything but errands -- off to Trader Joe's to shop (Henry was happy to get a balloon) and picked up a large world map we had had framed. Daddy hung the map in Henry's room during the weekend.

Thursday morning was Music Rhapsody class. There was a line of green tape on the floor. The kids learned that they would be playing conga drums at the start of the concert for the first three songs. Henry was kind of spaced out during class, though he did do more singing then usual. He wasn't into playing the metalophones or xylophones at the end of class and just wanted to mess around with the bars and complaining about the mallets he got. Then Mummy had trouble getting him into his car seat, which actually almost never happens (it is one of the few things that he is usually good about). This led to Mummy getting increasingly frustrated with Henry, then we got home and there was some more of the same kind of irritating actions, including an argument about going to the park (guess who wanted to go and who didn't). So at lunch Mummy had Henry watch all of Anchors Aweigh so that she could have some time to herself before she got completely fed up. We probably should have gone to the park, because then Henry wasn't tired enough to take a nap that day, so Mummy was feeling completely stretched thin by the end of the day.

Friday was a lot better. Henry got dropped at Spanish class in the morning. Mummy ran over to Target and bought that electric air pump that we need for the inflatable pool -- hope it works. Mummy got back to Early Birds in time to have a nice little conversation with Hattie's mom and Sienna's mom before class finished. Henry was having so much fun that it was difficult to get him to leave and he was starting to get into things. Mummy finally carried him out like a sack of potatoes and he shouted his good-byes to everyone from Mummy's shoulder.

After class we stopped at home for a snack, then got the tricycle out and walked over to Townshend parkette. Forgot it was garbage day, so there were lots of bins to steer around on the way and didn't realize how hot (and smelly) it had gotten. Won't be doing that again soon on a Friday! Henry had a good time anyway, though we only spent about 15 minutes at the park itself. Had a quiet afternoon together and read stories. Henry is really into Christmas stories at the moment -- How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (both the more traditional story and the one based on the stop animation TV show -- which he hasn't actually seen), 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, and the Santa's Suit book. When we read the Grinch, Mummy had Henry read all the words on the left hand side of the book and Mummy read those on the right hand side. This is good way to get him to do some reading, besides having him say all of the dialogue of one of the characters. A lot of the time lately he says, "I'm too tired to read." He still seems to be hesitant to read any book which has more than four or five lines of text per page.

He slept for about three hours on Friday afternoon. This gave Mummy the opportunity to book online our flight and a rental car for a short trip to Wisconsin the first week of July. It also meant that he was wide awake to play with Daddy when he returned home. Poor Daddy, he has to work all day and then come home to carry Henry around on his back or shoulders. Even if Henry is feeling kind of tired in the evening, as soon as Daddy arrives home he gets his second wind.