First Fam Reunion

Here we are!  Some of my ramblings about our trip to Iowa last weekend.  I have a ton of pics...so if you want to see more I'll get 'em up on fbook eventually, and if you want to see some from Trav's family session or some I took of Jolie just check out www.shutterpoets.blogspot.com   This is Henry's blog after all ;)  haha.  We all got together to wish grampa Paul his 75th birthday and everyone made it!  we had a great time, and henry was able to spend some qt with his cousins who live a little too far away to see as often as we would like!  here he is crawling around with kaydyn :)  she's exactly one year and one day older than henry, so every time they are together I can't help but think-wow that will be henry in one year!  they grow so fast

hanging out with jolie....er, actually hanging on to jolie's shirt

haha

loves his binks now-go figure

all three of the wee ones relaxing on the porch, minus the one on the way ;)

playing with great grampa's birthday balloons

gramps posing with henry in his classic stance- if you haven't noticed yet, henry has a penchant for holding out his right hand a la fosse (it's for balance right?---and all that jazz) 

AND tada!  the huge family photo of all of us! 

standing tall

okay-so austin and i have become jungle gyms overnight.  ever since henry figured out he can pull himself into a standing position, he thinks he should be doing it all the time, on everything he can reach!  i can't even hold him in my arms without him trying to crawl up mt. mama.   here's some fun pics of him in his new favorite position---standing.

i just had to zoom in on those beefy knees-hehe   love it!

ps--still working on the iowa weekend post....if you know me, you know i took about a thousand photos, and i have to go through them all still, we've had a bit of a hectic week!  and tomorrow we are going to a wedding and then heading out to rapid as soon as henry falls asleep for the night--he is quite the travelin' man these days

busy baby boy

this past weekend we went to iowa for great grampa pedersen's 75th birthday...but we don't have all the photos from that yet so that will have to wait until the next post....so we are going a little out of chronological order right now.  the past couple of weeks henry has decided that he needs to be a big boy.  he has started pulling himself up to a standing position! he wants to play with everything but his own toys, and has also suddenly decided that he likes pacifiers now--i think they must feel good on his sore gums or something (nope, still no teeth!)  He is growing a few more hairs on the back of his head too.

But what's probably way cooler than all of these things is that he is now starting to say dada too!  when austin picked him up from daycare last week, henry looked up at him and said dada, he's starting to associate the word with austin now!  :)  One thing that I wish I could add to this list is that henry has started to sleep through the night.....I pray that will happen very soon!  Mom and Dad are getting, well, tired sometimes :)

 AND henry isn't the only one making some changes lately.  mom is starting to do a lot of things she said she would never do like....use the tv as a babysitter, well, that is, henry watches veggie tales on a small dvd player when we travel, which we've been doing a lot of lately, and he really likes them!  in fact, those little videos buy us at least an hour of what would have been complete and totally misery :) car trips have been waaaaay better now.  I also use the back of my hand, the bottom of my shirt, etc. as a drool/snot rag, and can clean henry's face with a little lick of the finger and have figured out that a few germs will not kill henry-we no longer boil everything that falls on the floor-ha sooooo until I get the post up about this last weekend's trip to iowa, you will just have to watch this cute video of henry laughing and then splashing in the bathtub :)

(they were quite a bit longer, but we trimmed them for you...we know not everyone is as interested as we are in watching a five minute video of Henry pretty much doing the same thing over and over :)  )

 

ahoy baby!

henry went on his first boat ride this weekend at big birch lake in minnesota! it was a little short lived though--as soon as we got on the boat, storm clouds moved in and it started to thunder--so we went right back in.  I think we spent more time getting him ready for the trip than the actual ride-haha   we were worried that he wouldn't like the life jacket, but he was so amazed by the waves the boat made and everything else around him that he didn't seem to mind it much.  

then we celebrated grandma m's birthday!  here she is making henry smile...or maybe it's the other way around :)

henry's eyes were mostly glued to buck this weekend though.  he loved this dog! and lucky for us, he is a very gentle and well-mannered pooch

henry giggled soooo hard when buck licked his toes--it was super cute :)

we had a great time! and on our next visit we'll pay more attention to the forecast ;)

crazy beautiful life

henry says mom!  but let me back up a bit.  yesterday was one of those kind of awful days where everything that can go wrong does.  and on top of everything I was incredibly sleep deprived because henry is teething and super cranky.  he won't sleep and he wants to be held and comforted all day long.  well, I won't bore you with all the stress and frustration, because that is not what's important...anymore anyway.  as I was scraping last night's dinner into the garbage and Austin decided where to order out from (amongst everything else I accidentally left the crock pot on high for too long and didn't realize it and the meat didn't look edible--ugh) he paced the kitchen with henry.  I was about ready to cry into the bbq pork chop mess in the trash when they passed by me and henry reached out his arms and said, clear as a bell, "mom"    Austin and I stared at each other for a couple seconds and then just started laughing.  of course henry went straight into his mom's arms after that.  it was so amazing-can't really describe the feeling when you first hear your baby call you mom.  needless to say--my day went from awful to awesome with one little word :)  even at 5am this morning when I went to soothe a crying henry it was still awesome--he just looked up out of his crib as I walked into the room and said it again--mom

six month photo extravaganza!

here they all are! enjoy! (ps--if you want to get a really good look at a photo, just click on it!)

i always feel like...someone is watching me

i have noticed a pair of eyes watching me as i get ready in the morning now...usually this would creep me out, but don't worry its only henry :)

here he is, across the hall from the bathroom, peeking at me, making sure i don't stray too far...

he explores so much now, crawls wherever he wants to go, and has to play with everything but his own toys (the remote, dad's coke bottle, and the incredibly interesting yet invisible stuff under the couch...) so i have to put him in his crib with a few toys so that i can get ready.  as long as i am in sight, he'll give me a good ten minutes..AND if i sing and dance like a doofus as i brush my teeth and do my hair he might even make it fifteen or twenty!

yay america!

happy fourth of july everyone! we had a fun family day--after church we went to the parade downtown and then to the festival at the swiftel grounds!  we skipped the fireworks though, because they were scheduled way past bedtime...maybe next year :)

waiting for the parade to start, henry hanging on to his foot (this is his typical pose these days)

he liked the fire engine lights, the noise did startle him just a little but then we were okay

watchin' the funny cars go by then we had to leave a little early because someone was a little hungry...henry thought he should have a snack too

they had all sorts of fun activities at the uncle sam jam, but henry was a little too young so the only thing we could really do was ask the balloon twisting folks to make him a funny hat

the great plains zoo had a little booth too, and when henry wasn't busy staring down another baby girl in a frilly red dress, he actually looked at the animals, he got to see a hedgehog, a skunk, and this snake!  don't worry it was completely tame and doesn't bite

mommy did not pet the snake anyway...

then when we got home henry had his first science experiment

"daddy what are you doing?"

"oooooooooh"

we got all five hairs to stand straight up :)

ahhhhh amazing what we do for fun nowadays...haha

we hope you all had a great weekend as well!

henry sends his love and kisses (very wet and sloppy ones...no, we still don't have any teeth!)

annnd one more hat pic just because its so stinkin' cute, then i promise we're done!