I’ve spent the last week trying to catalog of all the profound changes going on in Henry’s life and how wonderful it is to bear witness to it, but I’m so zonked right now, I can’t think straight. Let me just say, he’s a great kid with an amazing, sweet disposition and a healthy curiosity. He’s articulate and adventuresome and a pain in the butt. He’s my Hanky Pantser, my Noodle, my Mister Bister, my Monkey, and he’s THREE. Unreal.

Since this is Henry’s last birthday as an only child, we kind of spoiled him a bit this year. Here are some photos from today’s celebration.

And one photo from yesterday, because I  like it so much:

Happy birthday, Henry. We love you more than can be expressed in some silly blog post.

We’re now plotting how to tell Henry about Number Two. We haven’t told him yet because we didn’t want to stress him out before it was really necessary. I suppose it’s still not entirely necessary yet, but we’ve ordered some picture books about babies and when the time feels right, we’ll talk to him about the impending arrival of his new baby sister.

(Not the greatest ultrasound image, but it was the only one that didn’t make her look like a roast turkey. Apparently she’s taking that whole “fetal position” thing very seriously.)

Sometimes, not very often, but sometimes, it’s actually sunny here. And Henry stops to smell the peonies. (The rain destroyed them the day after they all bloomed. Damn you, rain!)

Here he is in the big boy bed. As you can see, it’s just his crib with one of the sides replaced with a short rail. We talked the big boy bed up for a month or so before actually making the change. Henry was super excited about the whole thing. The first few nights, it took him a long time to calm down and just sleep, but once he fell asleep, he stayed asleep. He had similar problems at naptime, and spent about two weeks ill-rested and cantankerous. He’s doing better now, though.

Henry’s very proud of the big boy bed and will show anyone who expresses interest just how he climbs in and gets under the brand-new Lightning McQueen-themed bedding. It’s an exceptionally cute display.

However, now that we’re almost three weeks into this big boy bed business, I think he’s having second thoughts about being a big boy. He wants nothing to do with sitting on his potty (just when we thought his poopy diaper days were behind us!), he doesn’t want to walk up or down stairs anymore, and he’s constantly asking either me or Raphe to, as he puts it, “picky up.” I am slightly concerned about how he will react to being moved into a new bedroom later this summer, and then to his new sibling later in the fall. Oy vey.

Henry has boundless energy and sure does love to run. Sometimes when we pick him up in the evenings after work, he runs down the block instead back to the car, forcing us to chase after him. The kind of funny thing is, he still does his bouncy toddler happy run that’s he’s done since he could run at all. That is to say, he doesn’t have a very even gait or look terribly coordinated when he’s doing it. (Indeed, I’m often worried he’s going to topple over while running.) I attribute this to the fact that he is very tall for his age and must have a very high center of gravity. Note that in the photo to the right, he is the same size as four-year-old Zoë.

Now that we’re going to be a family of four, we need a larger vehicle. As it is, Henry kicks the front seats of the Forester when sitting in his car seat. We would never be able to drive anyone else around if we had two car seats in the back. Plus, Suzy Subaru is going on 10 years old, and has needed expensive repairs each of the last two years. It’s SO time.

So we’ve been hitting up various car dealers to find the right car for the expanded Cheli family. Raphe is vehemently anti-minivan. I am trying to keep an open mind. My must-haves are heated seats and a sunroof. Raphe’s must-not-haves are sliding doors. Henry’s partial to anything that features lots of buttons and hidden compartments. We’ll see how this all pans out.

It’s farmers market season again, which means we spend Saturday mornings in Evanston perusing the goods. Henry is excited about the prospect of more garlic cheese, which he hasn’t had since last summer. Unfortunately, the Wisconsin cheesemonger he adores so much has not yet turned up at the Evanston farmers market. Luckily, we are able to distract Henry from his disappointment with brightly colored flowers and mock threats of making him eat strawberries.

Let’s see…what else can I tell you about. It’s not very exciting (unless it’s your kid, I guess), but Henry has been experimenting lately with using time words. By that I mean, he’s trying to sort how to express when things happened in the past. According to him, pretty much everything that has ever happened to him happened either “yesterday” or “when (he) was a little baby”. So, although he went to Zachary’s party more than a month ago, it was “yesterday” as far as he’s concerned. And although we’ve been reading him Each Peach Pear Plum since he was about a year old, he says “I was reading this when I was a little baby”.

OK, I’m outta gas. I can’t think of anything else interesting to write about tonight. You are all going to have to nag Raphe now to update you on things. It’s been, what, like six months since he wrote a What We Learned post? Get on his case, willya? He doesn’t listen to me anymore.

On those rare days we can get Henry outside, we run him around until he drops.

Henry can ride his tricycle all by himself now! Good thing, because pushing him around on it is a real pain. Also, he actually demands to wear his helmet. One less thing to argue with the Toddler Tyrant about.

Here he is, trotting down Andersonville’s main drag. That’s his chicken bag he’s carrying. Henry won’t leave the house without it. Inside are some snowflake plastic rings that were cupcake toppers, a Thomas train or two, a few cars and trucks, and a Superman Happy Meal toy. (Happy Meal consumed by me–no, not Henry–during my last pregnancy when I was obsessed with them. We now have a stash of Happy Meal toys in the trunk of the Subaru for those times when we need something with which to distract H.)

Digging in the dirt out back. Don’t worry, those hostas will be fine.

Not an outdoor photo, but oh how Henry loves to go shopping at Whole Foods, where he gets to push his own shopping cart. He likes to sidle up to me with my big cart and say, “Look, we’re the same.” (No, neither Henry nor his father brushed their hair before leaving the house this particular morning.)

I can’t yet say we’re back with a vengeance, or that we’ll post with any kind of regularity. But we’ll try. In the meantime, a funny story:

Raphe had to travel for work last week, so I was taking care of Henry solo. I was having one of those days where I was just constantly nauseous. I picked Henry up from the Anisha’s at the end of the day, drove him home, got him into the house, and promptly ran to the bathroom to wretch. Henry, now no stranger to me throwing up, followed me into the bathroom. I really don’t like him watching me vomit, but I guess it has become sufficiently old hat to him, because he pushed me away from the toilet and said, “Move over, Mommy, I want to barf, too.” And then he spit into the commode. “All better now.”

***

One more thing. Today would’ve been my grandmother’s birthday. I miss her a lot, but the kind of nice thing is that Henry (with his surplus of Blome genes) occasionally looks a little like her. Also, he can’t pronounce the “ch” sound (not unlike native speakers of German, such as my grandmother), so he’s been calling chicken “SHICK-en” in true Oma style. Like fatterpatter (instead of caterpillar), I’m going to let this go uncorrected for as long as I can.

He has always favored Kristen over me, and I can certainly understand this. She’s “mommy”. She’s loving and caring and smells a lot better than I do.

But, of late, it’s gotten worse. I am no longer an acceptable giver of hugs and comfort when he’s crying. When he wakes up at two in the morning because he’s had a bad dream, I cannot calm him down. When he’s in a bad mood (which, of late, has been more often), I cannot make him happy. Only Kristen.

This past weekend was the worst. On Friday night, a grumpy Henry joined Kristen, me, and our friend Amanda out for dinner. Twenty minutes in, however, I was carrying a screaming toddler out of the restaurant and driving home. (We get to see Amanda only every 3 years, so I wanted Kristen to at least enjoy her company.) He was belligerent and ornery and wanted only to sit on Kristen’s lap (whilst squirming like a greased weasel). And as I was strapping him into the car seat (oh, the joy), there was nothing I could do to calm him down.

On Sunday, we had planned another outing, this as a thank-you to our friends Kyle and Meghan (and daughter Vivi) who have been more than nice to us this past few weeks. That never happened, as we were never able to get pants (or underpants or even a diaper) on Henry. I can only imagine what Meghan heard on the voice mail as Kristen was apologizing for canceling at the last minute — the shrieks and wails from Henry were legendary.

And through all this, I’m not good enough.

When it’s just the two of us, it’s okay. (I try to have at least one daddy-Henry outing each weekend.) On Wednesday, I took a day off and went to the Museum of Science and Industry (oh, the trains!) with Henry, and all was great. The minute Kristen walked through the door, however, I was tossed to the side like yesterday’s news.

And while it seems like I’m being funny about this, it’s really starting to get to me. It breaks my heart when he runs to Kristen instead of me or when I can’t console him after he gets upset. Yesterday I was really upset, noticeably so. It’s very frustrating and makes parenting not at easy.

Sigh.

Anyway, Henry’s been watching a lot of Dumbo lately, although we fast-forward over the scene where Dumbo and Timothy the mouse get drunk. (Also, I’m troubled by the scene with the crows, but the racism flies several feet over Henry’s head, so…we’ll deal with that eventually.) You may not remember this, but in the movie, Dumbo’s mother, Mrs. Jumbo, gets locked up in a solitary trailer away from all the other animals after she attacks some people who were teasing Dumbo (“She made a bad choice in the heat of the moment and got put in time out,” is how I explain it to Henry). Later in the movie, to cheer Dumbo up after he messes up a performance, Timothy takes him to see his mother, who pokes her trunk out a barred window, gathers up Dumbo, and gently rocks him. It’s a scene that will make even the most hard-hearted melt.

And it’s the scene that Henry wants to re-enact daily. “Mommy,” he says as he takes me by the hand, “I want to go to your room. Come rock your baby elephant.” He curls up very small in my arms (no mean feat, considering he’s the size of a four-year old now), and I rock him and sing very softly to him. Sometimes it makes me a little weepy. And then he realizes that he’s been calm and quiet for a bit longer than his toddler brain can handle, so he busts out of my arms and says, “Mommy elephant, I gonna find a hammer and break you out!” I interpret this whole thing to mean Henry’s a little ambivalent about growing up.

***

We have to remind Henry nightly to eat like a human at the dinner table. He’s taken to eating like a goat (his words:  “Mommy, I eating like a GOAT”), which basically amounts to him putting his face to his plate and snarfing up whatever’s right under his mouth. He hasn’t yet figured out how to tilt his head so he doesn’t get food all over his forehead while doing this, so it’s incredibly messy. It started with him eating sunflower seeds out of my hand and then morphed into this ridiculous scene at the dinner table. We have to keep reminding him that he has to respect his fellow diners at the dinner table and that he can do silly things like that when he’s anywhere BUT sitting at the dinner table. This message has yet to sink in. We get strange looks when we take him to restaurants. Ah, well.

Christmas:  My mother came to visit. She was only supposed to be with us four days, but there was a ginormous snowstorm back in New York and she ended up staying for a week because she couldn’t get a flight back. This could have been a disaster (I fully buy into the old “fish and houseguests” adage), but it was actually great. Henry had a lot of fun with my mom, and Christmas morning was a blast. There is even a little bit of not-very-exciting video from Christmas morning, to wit:

Yes, I am snapping photos while operating the Flip video camera. Shut up. It’s not like anyone else in this family takes photos or video. Besides, if I wasn’t snapping away, we might have missed some of these moments:

I think Henry pretty much loved Christmas. He keeps asking where the Christmas tree went and when it will be coming back.

The Neighborhood Parents Network had a New Year’s Eve Eve party for kids at one of the Lil’ Kickers facilities here in the city. Henry was terrified of the guy in a bunny suit who walked around all evening, but other than that, he was in heaven. He really liked playing parachute games. We couldn’t help but notice he was almost a head taller than all the other kids in his age group. He’s going to be a giant someday.

My mom left on New Year’s Eve, and on my way back from driving her to the airport, I picked up a celebratory cake, per Henry’s instructions. (We were celebrating  the New Year, not my mother’s departure, although it sure was nice to go back to being slobs once she left.) That’s right. Henry asked for cake. He’s SO my baby.

Here’s the cake:

The teenager working the counter at the bakery looked at me like I was stupid when I asked her to inscribe the cake thus. She had no sense of humor, that one.

Here’s Henry’s face when we told him he could not have more frosting to eat:

He was pissed, I’ll tell you what.

Mid-January, we went down to see my dad in Florida. All of us desperately needed the sunshine, even though it wasn’t super warm down there.

Henry loves those swings at Clearwater Beach. The giant inflatable slide, however, is his arch-nemesis. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to listen to him talk about being scared of “big slides”. I’m worried my child is going grow up to hate fun the way his daddy does.

However, Henry loves Thai food, and flowers in his hair. Maybe all is not lost.

At the beginning of February, we had our own ginormous snow storm here in Chicago. Almost 2 feet of snow fell in 24 hours! And Raphe flew out to San Francisco the day before it started and missed the whole thing. I missed two days of work and spent them playing with Henry.

A week later, we joined Zoe at an Evanston Park District ice rink to celebrate her birthday. Henry was game enough to put on skates and get out on the ice, although he begged us to pick him up. (We didn’t, reasoning that it was too dangerous.) He’s been talking about ice skating ever since, so I guess we’ll have to go again.

Nothing exciting has happened since the ice skating party, unless you count a toddler haircut exciting. Oh, wait. THIS is exciting:

Something every parent longs for:  when their kid wears underpants more often than diapers.  Here’s hoping we’ve bought our last case of Pampers. Then we could get another cake to celebrate! Maybe I’d even let Henry eat extra frosting.

Take Christmas for example. He got quite a bit. Between us and his grandparents and aunts and uncles and friends of ours, there were a lot of presents under the tree. Christmas morning was ridiculous (or ree-DIK-ih-luss as Henry would say), as he opened scores of gifts. And after it was over, and he sat in the carnage of wrapping paper and ribbon, he looked up at us and said, “I want to open more presents, Daddy.”

More? More presents? You’ve got to be kidding me.

And we had no more. He sulked for a few minutes but then started playing and forgot about it. For the rest of the day, he was really happy with all his new cars and books and stuffed animals. Until the next morning when he woke up and asked for more presents. And the next morning. And the next.

I want Henry to know that we will give him things on occasion. Like on birthdays or holidays or every once in a while when we see something neat at the store. But I don’t want him to always think that there’s something new or that every time we go out he’s going to get something new.

On the other hand, I want him to be happy. Not that buying things for him is the only way that he is happy. He’s happy when we’re playing or reading books or going to the park or taking baths, and we do all that and have a blast.

What’s a father to do?

So other than Henry being a bit greedy, what else have we learned this month? (Well, a month and a half, since this is pretty late.)

We learned that Henry has started wearing underpants. (An aside: am I the only adult male who still refers to their boxers/briefs as underpants? Friends laugh when I use that word for my own undergarments.) During the summer, there were a few days here or there that we let him run around without a diaper, but more often than not, it ended up with him peeing and getting them soaked or running around so much that, because of his flat butt, they just fell to his ankles. But now, for a few hours a day, off goes the diaper and on goes the Lightning McQueen y-fronts. With enough pestering and reminding, he will now walk over to the potty and sit down on his own. This is great because we’re going to be diaper-free (daytime edition) by Henry’s third birthday.

We learned that Henry now speaks in compound complex sentences. (A recent example is “Daddy, I want to go out to lunch to get a quesadilla and then come home and play with trains.” He was very serious when he said it, so I obviously had to do everything he said.) I didn’t realize that kids could talk this well at just over two, but it’s really fun.

We learned that Henry has started to tell white lies. These aren’t likes like he’s denying that he did something bad, but he’s started to say things that really aren’t true so that he can delay the inevitable of taking a nap or going to bed. As one of us is rocking him before putting him into bed, he’s recently said such doozies like “Mommy, I’m hungry and I want pasta!” or “Daddy, I need to go poop right now!” and “Mommy, I need to take medicine” and, my favorite, “Daddy, Mommy said that you have to read me two books!”

We learned that Henry likes us to kiss his “owies”. If he bangs his knee or toe or scrapes his elbow, he will calmly walk over to us and ask us to kiss it to make it better. Amazingly, it actually works! Today, as Kristen was complaining to me that she had a really bad headache, Henry walked over and kissed her on the forehead. “Is it better, Mommy?” he asked. Amazingly, it actually works for parents, too!

We learned that Henry has become very interested in what makes things go. “How does that work, Mommy?’ is a common question lately, and today, when we were outside in the evening, he asked, “Daddy, where did the sun go?” It’s not easy trying to try and explain what makes things go and why nature occurs the way it does to a little kid, but I’ve tried, while making the answers a simple and straightforward as possible, to tell the truth. So when Henry starts telling you about the earth’s revolution, you can be justifiably impressed.

And we learned that Henry has been demanding what he calls, “Huggles and kissles and snuggles and sizzles”. This is an elaborate action where Kristen and I make a Henry sandwich, smother him in hugs and kisses and we say “sizzle” up to his neck and ear (the z’s making a good tickle), and as he is laughing uncontrollably, he demands more and more and more until he’s exhausted. I’m quite a fan, too.

Henry may actually burst from the excitement of opening SO MANY PRESENTS tomorrow morning. A package filled with wrapped gifts from Raphe’s sister arrived yesterday afternoon, and Henry was so pissed Raphe wouldn’t let him open them that he gave him the silent treatment. A two year old! Giving the silent treatment! Just crazy.