taking the zoo to the zoo

henry is my very own personal zoo, so we had our hands full (all three of us, me-my mom and dad) when we took him to an actual zoo last weekend. :)  he was very good, but very busy!

all the way up on his tippy toes to catch a glimpse of the flamingos (he let us know that he was too big to have anyone hold him)

 AND what do you know....there are all of these exotic animals at the zoo and one of henry's favorites is the turkey. turns out gunka is pretty good at calling them and getting them to fluff out their feathers and gobble back--which henry thoroughly enjoyed of course.  

gunka the turkey whisperer.

 i would have liked to just run around and snap cool shots of all the animals....but not with my own little monkey on the loose.  

 the carousel.  henry started off riding the elephant's back for two seconds and then decided that my hip was probably more comfortable than the butt of a big pachyderm...i'm sure :)

 we flew past the monkeys, took one look at the penguins and raced away......but when it came to the goats, we stuck around for awhile.  (ahem---austin?  you know how i've been telling you that we are going to get a pet goat someday?  here's proof that we need one.  you will have to give in now  :)

 probably because we could feed them

 "okay, give me more change for the goat pellet machine"

 hahaha,  i just now reversed the image of this photo in my mind so that henry and gunka were on the other side of the fence.  please do not feed the animals.  hehe.

a goat enjoying his goatness.

 showing gunka how the change machine works so that we can feed goats until.....the cows goats come home?

 then after feeding the goats it was only polite to offer the giant stone turtle a wood chip.

 oh henry

:)

 that's how we roll.

henry prefers to push the stroller rather than be pushed in it.  i can rarely take him for a walk with the stroller now--we might get two blocks before its his turn to push.

 another mode of transport :)

 egads.  after i told george about our trip to the zoo he showed me this video clip of a lion trying to eat a baby through the glass at another zoo.  yikes.  that would be to creepy for me to just let h sit there like that. yeah, no thanks.  we will keep a safe distance.  i've read life of pi.

 and finally, just in case gunka forgot amidst all of the distractions a zoo has to offer, henry made sure he remembered where his nose was.  yup. right in the middle of your face.

it was a good day :)

play that funky music

i captured this cute little viddy with george's iphone (must have one now of course) from when we visited the far east.  henry loved it when george played his guitar.  but don't take my word for it 

(see below video :) )  

oooh i see now, after posting, that it's very small.  my first iphone video.  i spose i should have turned the phone horizontally....maybe there is a way to upload it so that its larger, but i haven't quite mastered all the video conversioninginging yet.

if you click on the corner box it will come up in full screen...but then its pretty pixelated.  ah well.

elmo lens friend :)

henry has a very serious elmo obsession....so when i saw this i flipped!!!!  i think i'm going to have to get/make something like this.    An adorable shop on etsy sells them and calls them "lens friends"  This would TOTALLY work.  wherever elmo is, that's where henry's attention is focused.  this is a definite must-have for sure.

the pool boy

warning: the number of photos in this post exceeds what some people might call "excessive" or "necessary" (picture me making the chris farley air quotes).  but its my blog darn it. and i get to do whatever i want.

so consider yourself warned :)

besides, it is currently 8:24 AM and henry is still sleeeeeping!!!!!!

carpe diem!

sorry that you are going to have to find out this way austin....but i have fallen for the pool boy :)

he's so cute and i'm pretty much obsessed with him (i.e. check out all the photos i take of him!)  but you probably knew this was coming.

a couple of weeks ago we got henry the coolest little pool.  its a lion AND it has a sprinkler attachment (which we actually haven't used that often yet because the hose water is super freezing cold after one minute).  AND it was fairly inexpensive to boot! ;)   to say that he loves playing in the "wawer" would be a complete understatement.

 it even has a tail, how ridiculously cute is that?  oh the things they come up for kids nowadays....

we splish

 we splash

 we pause momentarily to make sure our belly-button is still there

and we repeatedly get in and out of the pool to take our "baman" shoes on and off.

 here are the famed "baman" shoes (thanks to amber and our trip to nc where henry fell in love with his cousin kaydyn's crocs!  they are comfy, easy for him to take on and of himself, and they fit his uber-wide feet, PLUS did i mention they have batman on them?  h lurves these things, his face literally lights up when i say, "okay let's put on your batman shoes")

(insert photo of henry's "pretty fwowers" here)

and finally, one more thing that henry really loves.  this ball...well really, any ball.  but on this particular day he loved this ball.  a lot.

he stalked the ball....

he snuck up on the ball...

he grabbed it

tackled it

falled...and giggled :)

 he also tried to blow up the ball the way he saw mommy do it.

my cute pool boy.

and after we came inside, this is what happened while he tried to eat his lunch.  i have heard the myth that sometimes babies will fall asleep in their highchairs, but never thought such a thing would happen to henry, the little boy who fights sleep like a little ninja.

he didn't even wince when i scrubbed all the sticky jam from his face before laying him in his crib :)

maybe i shouldn't be surprised after the busy morning we had

party on

we have been to a couple weddings recently, and henry has had a blast at them!  he, of course especially loves all the bubble blowing and dancing.  in fact, he doesn't wait for the dance to start to hit the floor...

here are some photos from my friend jenn's wedding a couple weekends ago.  i was a bridesmaid and the photographer--so i had my good friend lindsie help me out (she's a photographer too and we used to be partners and often work together).  

 i love this photo--henry is such a little bubble nut--it captures him perfectly at this stage :)

haha--this just made me laugh

lindsie captured these at the reception--we just got there and no one had eaten yet, but henry knew exactly what that floor was for, so he boogied down to the dinner music!

 and found an "older" woman to dance with!

 the three of us!

if you are interested in seeing some of the photos that lindsie and i took of the wedding you can check them out on my haiku happy photography blog!

www.haikuhappyphotography.blogspot.com