Balls!

On a recent trip to Target (a favorite of both mine and Henry) we saw something that we knew Henry just had to have- lots of soft plastic balls (175 of them to be exact). They are just like the balls that they used to have in the McDonald's ball pit, and I knew Henry would like them.
We brought them home and poured them into a laundry basket and put Henry in... at first, he was unsure about the whole thing, but he started coming around pretty quickly.

He has been playing with them for days now, and although they are a MESS, he thinks they are pretty darn fun! Here are some photos of our couple of days of fun....

We also bought Henry his first "real" shoes last week. We went with Nana and although I don't think Henry was all that excited by the shoes, mommy was! We had purchased shoes before, and they never seemed to fit and we couldn't figure out why, so they measured him for shoes, and we got our answer- our son has a WIDE foot. So he is a 4.5 wide. A pretty big shoe for someone his age! He ended up with three new pairs- one brown pair, a pair that looks like a monkey and a pair of tennis shoes.

Bryan is still in the hospital, and we don't have any news about when he will be home for sure. We are hoping it will be today, as he hasn't seen Henry or I for a couple days, and we sure miss him!

Pneumonia and other tales....

So, this week we have suffered a bit of illness.

Bryan came home with a sore throat Thursday, only for it to turn to a full blown "illness" by Friday. This morning he went to the dr and they diagnosed him with Influenza "A" (which the flu shot cannot protect against I guess) and Pneumonia. So as I am home with Henry, Bryan is at Parker Hospital, for at least tonight.

Please send him your well wishes and prayers, we hope he will be home tomorrow. We were supposed to put up our Christmas tree this weekend... think we might have to wait :)

Other than that, looking forward to a fun Thanksgiving week... We will spend the day with Nana and Grandpa Purvis on Thursday (since that is the day that Katie eats unheard of food...) , we will see Grandma and Grandpa George Friday and we will be seeing GG, Aunt Jayme and Uncle Tyler on Saturday to celebrate Christmas (yes, Christmas!) as Uncle Tyler will be headed out to serve our country on the 18th and won't be here for Christmas day. Henry is excited to see his aunt and uncle (and to show uncle Tyler that he can crawl... and will indeed be walking for his wedding to Aunt Jayme :)

I am headed to bed, as it has been a LONG day. We will catch you up this week as we enjoy family and Henry's first turkey day!

Sleep

When you don't have a child, you don't understand what a beauty it is to see a sleeping child. Not because that child is quiet (well partly because the child is quiet!) but because there is something so innocent and amazing about a sleeping child.

I realize tonight as I checked on my son, that there is nothing in the world that I love more. There is no one that I would give more for.

I hope that everyone else realizes this about their little ones (even if they are only little ones to come or little ones who are all grown up).

Love you Henry :)

The stairs.....

Since Henry has been crawling (a little over a month) we knew that the next thing would be him being able to crawl up the stairs and pull himself up on the furniture.

Well, it came much faster than we thought it would. Last week when I was working and Henry was hanging out at home with his GiGi, he learned how to crawl up the one stair from our family room to the kitchen. No big deal right? Wrong! He has now learned that he can crawl the stairs quickly and that there are LOTS of stairs to climb from the dinning room to the upstairs!

We have had to buy new gates, and have suffered through some pretty good head bumps when he tried to come down the one stair from the kitchen to the family room. That being said, it has been fun to have him a little more mobile, he entertains himself and is pretty proud of himself.

I tried to upload a video, but my computer kept freezing. I will upload one later...

Doing the laundry

Yesterday when we were doing the laundry Henry thought that he could help me... it was a fun time, and although it took me nearly 30 minutes to fold the load because we were playing, it was worth it!

I took the laundry out of the dryer and it was still pretty warm, so the first thing that Henry did was crawl over and bury his face in the clean clothes (you know this is scary if you know that my child throws up on everything). Somehow we made it through without any throw-up, and finally got everything folded and in the basket.

At that point Henry realized that he could stand up while holding onto the basket. He thought that was funny. He also realized that the clothes in the basket were just right to take out and throw on the floor, which he thought was HILARIOUS! Here are some photos from our fun morning.

He was growling at the laundry here, caught this funny face

When I first came into the room to find him with the laundry...

Laughing because he had thrown lots of the laundry on the floor

What is in here???

We have a pretty fun weekend planned. We are going to see GiGi sing with her choir group tomorrow up at her clubhouse and Bryan is going to put up the Christmas lights on Sunday. The weather is supposed to be pretty nice Sunday (62 degrees!) and we decided that although we would love it if the weather was a bit more "christmas-y" the nice weather will make the whole process less stressful. We would normally have our Christmas tree up by now, but we are a little worried about Henry and the tree (he LOVES the lights, and I am sure the he will think the ornaments are toys) so we are going to wait just a couple more weeks until we put it up.

Have a great weekend!

This one is for daddy...

Henry has this face he makes when he is eating something he doesn't love (although, recently he just makes the face because he thinks it is funny).

Anyway, we have recently tried to capture it on camera for everyone else to see- plus it is much funnier than when Bryan does it!

The new things I can do!

This weekend, for the first time, Henry waved! He has been doing it non-stop now that he knows what it means.... he waves to his toys, to the kitties and to mommy and daddy. He is a little shy about waving to other people.

Henry also has a new "word" he says "ba-ba". Granted he repeats it over and over again, and I don't think it has anything to do with his ba-ba... but it is adorable. He gets a very serious look on his face when he is saying it, like he is telling a really good story. We are working on "ma-ma" and "da-da", we know they are coming soon, and then we will be sorry that we tried to teach him words- because we just know how chatty he will be (you know his parents right?)

And the last development we are pretty proud of is that he can almost stand up on his own. He is trying to pull up on everything, most times he falls over, but he doesn't cry! We know that the creeping stage is on the way, and we cannot wait! He needs to be able to walk by March so he can be in Aunt Jayme and Uncle Tyler's wedding... so we are practicing that now!

Pictures to come soon, when I can get him to wave at the camera!

Broncos Game

Last night the Broncos played- Bryan was excited to watch two games in one week. I know he is hoping that Henry will want to watch the games with him one day soon... but for now he is more interested in the gate the surrounds the TV (which I thought was a brilliant idea when I bought it, now I see that my son is going to be able to destroy it).

Trying to get the gate apart and get at the TV!

Watching the game with Daddy...

Trying to watch the game with Daddy, what you can't see is that kitty is to the left of this photo, that was more interesting to Henry.

On a fun note, I have had some fun making new things for Henry to try. Yesterday I made him acorn squash with brown sugar... he thought that was quite good. We also made mashed bananas and more applesauce. I am going to make him mashed potatoes for dinner tonight, I think he might finally come around to that one. I made him stuffing this week which he also liked, so we are right on track for a big Thanksgiving day dinner... with pumpkin pie!

Lunch with Miss Natalie

Yesterday Henry and I ventured down to Cherry Creek to have lunch with Miss Natalie at Zaidy's (a wonderful little Jewish deli). Normally this would not be all that newsworthy- we have lunch with Miss Natalie once a week. This week however, there was a photo-op that I just couldn't pass up.

We sat down at our table, put Henry in his highchair, and right in front of him was the "kids menu" (they always bring a menu for Henry, I wonder, can they not see that my child is clearly not going to eat a grilled cheese or hot dog?!). Anyway, he picked it up and was really interested in it. When Miss Natalie asked him about it, he turned to her and started gabbing up a storm. It was adorable.... (well I thought so!)

Hum, what am I going to have?

Telling miss Natalie what he wants to eat :)

We had a fun lunch, Henry shared my potatoes with ketchup and he was really happy (and loud I might add). Thanks for a fun lunch Miss N. We will miss you when you are in London!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

Here in the George household, November 1st is the official start of the holiday season. We get excited, listen to Christmas music, watch our favorite Christmas movies and get a move on putting up our Christmas decorations.

Since we have lived in our house, Bryan has become increasingly excited about putting up Christmas lights on the house. He loves getting everything up (although it takes him a couple days). We will be putting up our lights in a couple weeks, so the countdown begins.

As far as home decorations go, we are normally excited to get the tree up inside a couple weeks after Halloween is over, but this year we are re-thinking that schedule... Henry has a fascination for lights and we know he is going to want to grab at the tree and ornaments. Since he is crawling we are debating a gate around the tree (but how icky would that look?)... we are still debating the best way to do all of this. Who knew this would ever be an issue!

In the meantime, we have realized the Henry LOVES the Christmas lights. We have been going to Target to see all the lights they have for weeks... he just stares at them. So this week we got Henry some lights to see at home... he really liked them (he was more interested in putting them in his mouth, but that is ok too!)

Lots of pictures to come this holiday season!

Kitties!

Henry has always really liked the kitties in our house, Midge and Princess have never felt quite the same. Princess has never liked Henry, and Midge is curious but cautious.

With the recent addition of crawling, Henry realized he could get pretty close to the kitties if they weren't careful, and that makes him very happy. He squeals, giggles and yells when he sees them (especially Midge, since she is brave and comes to see him when he plays on the floor). Princess thinks she that can avoid him, but I know when he gets a little bigger that won't be the case, so we are teaching Henry to be nice and gentle with the kitties. (Right now, he doesn't listen well... he grabs their fur, ears and tails... and likes to hit them)

Yesterday Henry was playing with Midge, she was not a happy camper...... (well Henry was playing, Midge was trying to figure out how to get away from Henry)

My trip to the park with mommy

Being that it is uncharacteristically warm here this November, Henry and I went on a walk to the park the other day that was pretty fun. We have been over by the park before, but have never really been on the swings (mom thought I was too small) but after a little thought I realized that he REALLY loved his baby swing, so why not give it a shot.

Well, the swings were a hit! He laughed and giggled and talked the whole time that we were swinging, especially when mommy would make the swing go high! We also ventured down the slide a couple times (which he didn't like as well, not nearly as exciting!) and played in the rocks a little (he is after all a boy!). We finished up the morning playing in the grass, but Henry soon realized that there were lots of fun things he could put in his mouth (dirt, rocks, leaves) so we decided that we should head home.

We walked through our neighborhood and looked at people taking down their Halloween decorations and begin putting up their Christmas decorations (there is a guy down the street who is about 75, and he starts with the Christmas decorations the second that Halloween is over- much to most of his neighbors dismay).

Yesterday, I am proud to say, the entire George household went to VOTE. Sadly, we were out voted, but Henry was happy to get a sticker and spend the afternoon with his mommy and daddy.

Our Fun Day at the Park!
Mommy pushed the swings pretty high!

I VOTED!

Just before he ate a leaf....

We went down the slide

One more time on the swings....

Daddy was so proud

Henry recently found daddy's favorite toy ... a golf club (yes, he practices his swing in the bedroom) and he was pretty happy about it. Here are some photos that Daddy thought were pretty exciting. Bryan seems to think that Henry will be playing golf with him and his Grandpa George by next summer, we'll see :)

I'm a Monkey!

We have had a rough couple days in the George house. Last weekend after a fun trip to the pumpkin patch and a hockey game with the AIMCO HR team, we all got the stomach flu. Bryan and I were sick until Tuesday, but Henry only started feeling better Friday- just in time for his costume!

Nana, Grandpa and GiGi came over to see Henry in his costume and help hand out candy. Henry was a pretty good sport in the costume, but he was a little unsure about the feet of the costume. He was pretty shy and since he wasn't quite back to normal, he didn't smile much. We went to see all of our neighbors, and they thought he was pretty cute too!

Here are some photos from our fun evening! He was the cutest little monkey (no bias here!)

In his monkey costume
With Grandpa, Nana and GiGi