The Perfect Weekend

Fall has finally arrived here in Southeast Texas. That means the weather has finally cooled off to the point that long sleeves can be worn. And we enjoyed that to the full for our fun, autumn weekend.

On Saturday, we had matinee tickets to see Mary Poppins. We had been looking forward to this for quite some time and decided to make a day of it. So, after a bit of a lazy morning, we headed off for a late breakfast/lunch that we enjoyed at Mama's Cafe. Before heading out, we had a mini photo shoot in the yard:

After breakfast, we decided to spend a few minutes at what Houstonians call the Water Wall. It may have a more formal name, I'm not sure. But I'd never taken Henry before I thought he would get a kick out of it. And he did:

As it's name indicates, it is a wall with water cascading down the side. We got a bit wet standing there watching it. But it is a bit mesmerizing. It also gave Henry a chance to run around a bit and burn off some energy before being required to sit still at the play.

Here is Henry looking adorable before the show:

He loved the play and reported his favorite part was when everything fell apart in the kitchen. His second favorite part was where Mary Poppins flew across the stage (which she did a total of 3 times). My favorite scene was the tap dancing, especially when Bert tap danced across the ceiling.

After the play ended, we ran a few errands and ended up in the part of town where the sole Macaroni Grill in the Houston area is still open. We decided to dine there and experienced another great meal.

On Sunday, we found ourselves a bit discombobulated from the time change. This seemed to give us a nice stretch of time in the middle of the afternoon without anything else to do. Henry decided he wanted to ride his bike since he has the goal of removing the training wheels. After riding for a bit, I realized that there was very little time where one of the trainings wheels was actually touching the ground. So I decided there was no time like the present and off they went.

We had a few falls and many, many tears. But in the end, he mastered balancing the bike quite well. Now, steering it is another matter all together and the topic of our next bike-riding lesson.


Here we are having a bit of pep talk...

And here is proof of him riding on his own!

Busy Weekend

So, we had quite the busy weekend at our place. It started on Friday. Of course we ate dinner at Gringo's...that's what we do. But we had a special guest this week. Usually Nada is our special guest, but she couldn't make it this week, so we had a different special guest. It was a member of the "cutest baby in the universe club"...Leslie's nephew David.

Saturday, we have a full schedule, starting with the Children's Symphony. The theme for this presentation was Aladdin and the Arabian Nights. It was the last show of this season. I had sort of decided against renewing for next year, but as Henry and I chatted before the show began, he told me how much he enjoys the Children's Symphony. So we ran out to the renewal desk and signed up again for next year. Because we renewed, we got to have a photo taken with the Conductor, dressed in his Arabian garb. Of course, all I had with me was my cell phone, so sorry about the quality.

From there, we ate lunch at a Burger King in "down town city", as Henry refers to Downtown Houston. I am sad to say that we've now eaten enough fast food that Henry has started having a "special order" versus just taking whatever Mommy gets him. We had a few errands to run, including a new haircut (thanks Aunt Leslie!).

And then, we had our first Astros game of the season. Since the Comets are no more, we decided to get a six-pack ticket package from the Astros. Henry really does seem to enjoy any kind of sports. So we were barely home for just a few moments, when it was off to the "ole ball game".

Leslie had gotten Henry a mitt and you would think the thing was glued to his hand. (As a matter of fact, I had to ask Henry to remove it this morning while he was eating breakfast!!). It was a good game, but we only lasted until the 8th inning. It was getting past the little boys bedtime and he had lost interest in the game. So we headed out while we were down 7-4, thinking it was a lost cause anyway.

As we climbed in the car, we tuned the radio to listen to the rest of the game. Much to our surprise, the Astros had rallied and managed to tie the game. It ended up going into overtime and finally ended with a loss for the Astros in the 11th inning. Whew, glad we didn't try and stay for the whole thing!

Here are some pictures from the game:

Sunday, Linda asked if we could go eat with her after the meeting. That's always a treat for us, so we let her pick where we would go. She chose Benihana...a place I would rarely say no to. The kids had a blast! Notice the creative use of chopsticks by Henry and Sara. And you can tell by the leftover rice on Samuel's face that he enjoyed it.

Whew, what a fun and eventful weekend!!

You just need to work it out...

So, in the spirit of getting back into the habit of blogging, rather than catching up on everything that's been missed, instead, I'll share a recap of our weekend.

We had a special Mommy/Son day on Saturday by attending the Children's Symphony. The theme of the event was "Rodeo". And that was quite appropriate, too, since the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo opened last week and runs through later this month. Henry enjoyed the music, which included a song from Toy Story 2. He also seemed to enjoy the song and story dealing with Billy the Kid, as he tried to repeat it later to Aunt Leslie.

After the concert, we attended the activities provided for the Junior Patrons. It included face/hand painting. Henry never wants to get this done...I'm not sure why. But I talked him into it this time and he really seemed to enjoy getting the cowboy boot painted on his hand. (Of course, later in the car when I wasn't looking, he used a bottle of water to wash it off and get the paint all over his new outfit!) So maybe next time I won't push for the face/hand painting quite so hard.

They also got to decorate a paper cut-out of a cowboy boot. And they had a sawhorse steer that they got to rope. All in all, we both had a good time.

Last night, at about 12:30, I heard the pitter patter of 5-year-old feet running into my room. The little guy jumped into bed with me and announced that he had a bad dream. He then decided he needed to "use the facilities". After that, he crawled back into bed with me, rolled over, and went back to sleep. There were a couple of times during the night where I needed to remind him that he could not put his feet on my head, but other than that, the rest of the night passed uneventfully.

So, this morning, I decided to discuss his dream with him to see what constituted a bad dream for Henry. He advised me that he had a dream about a tornado and that he got stuck somewhere and his house blew down. But some nice guy came along and helped him to get un-stuck and helped him to rebuild his house. So, he told me, it all ended well.

At this point, I asked him if the next time I had a bad dream, could I come and crawl into bed with him? To which, I was told "No, Mommy. You just need to work it out."

I agree with Henry's new favorite phrase: "Hrmph! It's just not fair!"

Pot Luck....what's been going on

Yeah, yeah...I'm way behind and it does seem like a lot has happened since the last "real" blog entry.

SNOW

First of all, it snowed last week. That's a big deal here in the Houston area. That just doesn't happen that often. Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos, but it was real snow. Huge, chunky flakes. I have a snowball in my freezer to prove it.

MEGAN

We were invited to dinner at Allison's on Friday. Megan was cooking. We saw this as an opportunity to help Henry appreciate the nuances of being invited to someone's home for dinner. So we allowed him to select the flowers that we would take as a hostess gift for Megan. He was quite picky and looked everything over quite carefully before selecting a small glass vase bowl/vase, with just roses and a few carnations "floating" on top.

Henry had so much fun playing with the other kiddos, even though they were all much older than him. Fortunately, he is quite used to playing with his older cousins, so just fell right in step with whatever the older kids were doing. He jumped on a trampoline in the backyard...a first for him. Towards the end of the evening, the kids all ended up in front of the TV and Henry was right there among them. Here are a couple of pics:

Oooooh, and I don't even know where to start on dinner. Megan had prepared one of the most yummiest of Chicken Picata's that I've ever been privileged to get to eat, complete with the lemon butter, capers and artichoke hearts. It was served with a side of angel hair pasta, steamed veggies, and a lovely garden salad. (There was supposed to be garlic bread, but we forgot it in the oven, so we ate it as a pre-cursor to dessert). Oh, and speaking of dessert, it was my most favorite...creme brulee. Megan had made it from scratch, complete with torching the sugar on top. Here she is in action:

MISCELLANEOUS

Here are a few pictures of the boy that I've taken over the past couple of weeks:

Here he is at bookstudy with Nana and Papa. This will probably be the last official "bookstudy" since we will be out of town for the next two weekends. When we return, it'll be the first of the year and we'll be under the new program. The end of an era...

Here he is dressed for the meeting one night. I think he looks so cute with his t-neck and sports coat:

And here he is dressed for the children's symphony. Not that I'm biased or anything, but I think he was one of the best dressed young men in attendance. Especially when he was wearing his coat:

JOKERS AND PEGS

For those of you that have never heard of Jokers and Pegs, you are missing out on one of the best games. You can check out more about it here. Anyway, after another yummy dinner at the house of one of the families in our congregation, we decided to finish off our Sunday evening with a round of J & P. Now, we've been playing this for the last two winters while my parents are in town (and other times, too). Henry is always relegated to "helping" someone, or playing on his own terms, with his own cards, board, and pieces separate and apart from the adult game.

Since he is such a game-playing little boy, I had decided to see if he was up to playing on his own. He was so excited when he realized that he was going to have a spot at the adult table, get to play on the "real" board with his own pieces and his own cards.

Before we started, I wanted to see how much of the game he understood just from observing all of the adults playing for the last few years. I started in with my questioning:

• Me: How do you get one of your guys out of start?
• H: With a face card!
• Me: What do you do with an 8?
• H: Move backward.
• Me: What do you do with a 9?
• H: Move one guy forward and one guy backward.
• Me: What do you do with a 7?
• H: Move a guy 7, or split it between two guys.
• Me: What do you do with a Joker?
• H: Knock somone off.

Okay, wow, he seemed to have it down. This is the first time I've played without having my trusty little cheatsheet to help me remember what all of the rules were. He actually played fantastically on his own. I did kind of keep an eye on his cards, but there was only 2 times that I needed to intervene with any kind of guidance in what he should or shouldn't do. Unfortunately, he didn't win his first solo game of J & P, but he (and all of the rest of us) sure were proud of how well he did on his own. Of course, he had us all in stitches through most of the game with his take on things. Here are a few of his gems:

• Papa, guess what? I might knock you off!
• Mama, I'm gonna play this joker. Sorry, Mama! (as he knocks me off)
• 1, 2 ~ I'm gonna get you (as he played a 2 and came close to knocking Papa off)
• 1, 2, 3 ~ Sing with me (gotta love the exuberance of youth)
• If I could, I would double-wham you (to Aunt Leslie and Nana when he landed between them)

Well folks, that's all I can think of right now. We're heading to North Dakota at the end of the week to see my Grandmother. I'm hoping that we have enough warm clothes to survive the sub-zero weather that is going on there.

That's Incredible...am I seeing triple?

Yes, this weekend there was a Dash sighting..make that a sighting of three Dashes. We paired up with Henry's buddies Sara and Samuel to go and see Disney on Ice. I think that Henry enjoyed having some buddies to share the experience with him. He and Sara had tons of fun playing all kinds of games in the car.

The theme was "A Disneyland Adventure" and I thought it was clever how they worked many of the favorite rides into an ice skating show. Towards the end, they brought out Henry's all time favorite Disney-related thing: the castle. At first, it was dark and the castle was all lit up, it was almost breath-taking. Here is a picture with the castle in the background and all of the characters in the foreground:

I think all of the kids had a great time, and I think the adults had fun watching the kids have fun. And here is one parting shot of my little munchkin:

Friends and the Children's Symphony

So this week, there seems to be some growth in the area of friends. For the first time, a little kid in the neighborhood rang the doorbell to ask if Henry could come out and play with him. Since I don't allow Henry to play in the front yard unsupervised, I invited Ethan to play with Henry in the backyard.

Also, at the meeting on Thursday, Aisa (a little girl born on the same day as Henry) asked if she could sit with Henry. (She had actually asked on Sunday..or Henry had asked her...I'm not sure who did the actual asking...but anyway, Aisa was not permitted to sit with a friend on Sunday due to some prior infraction, but promised to sit with Henry on Thursday.) After the moms conferred, it was determined that it would be best if Aisa sat with us since her mom had a talk and her dad was conducting the front school. So Aisa sat with Henry for the entire meeting...the first time we've had a friend sit with us at the meeting (other than Jack).

Ethan has been back a few more times. He stopped by as we were getting ready for the meeting on Thursday. As Leslie explained that Henry couldn't come out to play because we were going to "church", he was incredulous: "Now, but it's almost night time?"

And today, Henry became an official Junior Patron of the Children's Symphony. What does this mean? It means he got a "free" t-shirt and will have his name in the remaining three programs of the series. We also became members, so we'll be in attendance for the rest of the performances.

Today's performance was titled "Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham". The first song was the theme from Looney Tunes. I think the parents appreciated that more than the kids. Second, was a song that they use in Little Einstein's "The Good Knight and The Bad Knight". Henry recognized it immediately. The third song was The Barber of Seville. The conductor did a great job of involving the children and seeing that there were two "characters" in the song and demonstrating the sounds of each and then setting up what would happen in the song. And finally, was the feature song "Green Eggs and Ham". For this, there was a young boy and a soprano singer who actually sang and acted out the story. It was quite interesting to hear "I do NOT like green eggs and ham, Sam I am" sung in opera style. The important thing was that Henry enjoyed it.

The Backyardigans

The Backyardigans Theme Song

Spoken:
Hi, I'm Pablo.
My name's Tyrone.
I'm Uniqua.
I'm Tasha.
And my name is Austin.
And we're ...

Sung:
Your backyard friends, the Backyardigans!
Together in the backyard again,
In the place where we belong,
Where we'll prob'ly sing a song,
And we'll maybe dance along.

We've got the whole wide world in our yard to explore.
We always find things we've never seen before.
That's why every day we're back for more
With your friends, the Backyardigans.

Why am I regaling you with the lyrics of the Backyardigans? Because we went to see them last Saturday. Henry really enjoyed the show, in his own way. See, Henry doesn't participate. He doesn't get up and dance. He doesn't sing along. He doesn't call out when asked to. Most of the time, this is even true when he watches television. He wants to observe, not be part of the show. I don't really understand, because other times, he has no problem being the center of attention. Maybe he feels like he might miss something if he is doing those other things. So anyway, he enjoyed the show very much and talked about it the rest of the day. His favorite part was when Pablo was pulled off stage on a wire. There was a loud crash from the sidelines and then Pablo could be heard calling out "I'm okay".

After the show, we decided to be a bit adventurous for dinner. Leslie had found a restaurant with the same name as my last name. We didn't know anything about it, but decided it would be worth checking out. Turns out, it was a "bar and grill" which really meant, it was a sport's bar. The good news is that we were there early so it was almost empty. The even better news is that there were about 20 televisions in the joint, each tuned to a different sporting event. Henry didn't know which way to look, but finally settled on watching his "Cubbies". The food was alright, but it won't become a place we frequent often.

Are we staying at the fancy Marriott?

December 19, 2007
I have gotten behind – so just a short synopsis. We went to Sea World over Thanksgiving and had a blast. It was really cold and you were tall enough to ride a water ride – the log ride and you loved it and we rode it 3 times in a row. Your Mom was soaked at the end but we had so much fun. We stayed at the Marriott with the courtyard and the peacocks and you kept calling it the fancy Marriott. We thought that was cute. Also, right now you say “No Ploblem” – when you mean no problem – you have a pretty laid back attitude. You still love football and play all the time but you are always getting tackled and break your leg. Lane Sutton just hurt his hip and was on crutches and you call them crunches. Since it is so cute we don’t correct you. Yesterday at school you had a pajama party and wore your pajamas to school. You just couldn’t figure out why you would wear your pajamas on the playground. You just tell us you love us all the time and it is so nice to hear. You are having a little trouble with the holidays this year. This is the first year you have understood them some. So last night when we went to Allison’s, you asked us if they celebrate Christmas. You will get the swing of it. Your Nana and Papa are coming down this week for their winter visit. You love their visit and they do also. Today, they had their Christmas party at school so Mom kept you home. You are having lunch with Sara, Samuel and Linda at James Coney Island and going to see Alvin and the Chipmunks. Skylar Scheffer is coming to the movie also. You had your first kid party at jumpin jacks. It was so much fun. You wanted to have a Nascar theme. About 15 kids came and then we had cake and did crafts. This Saturday we are going to a Hockey game, we are also taking Megan, Lane and Jack. Hopefully Nana and Papa will come too. Jack might spend the night.

Your first Concert - Justin Roberts

November 12, 2007
We had such a great weekend. On Friday of course, we went to Gringos but Joyce & Hailey, and Allison, Megan and Lane joined us. You and Megan and Lane were cute after dinner playing and looking at the water and stuff. Then on Saturday, You, your mom, me and Jack went to the Woodlands to the Children’s Festival. We had a good time. You guys got lots of stuff and got to spin prize wheels, make craft projects and you went to your first concert – Justin Roberts. You and Jack would dance and do all the arm things Justin Roberts would ask. It was fun. You have been having a little trouble with your attitude at home and at school. So Mom asked Br. Bill Thomas to speak with you guys. After the meeting on Sunday, you all went into the Library and talked about having a good attitude and how happy that would make Jehovah and you need to listen to your Mom. It went very well. Hopefully it will help some. Your Mom is in Atlanta on a business trip and so we always say that we make a good team while your mom is gone. I know it is hard for you because you have to get up a little earlier and stay at school longer but you are a trouper. I love you so much. Whenever we watch a football game you always want to get your football and throw it around. You are pretty good throwing it – you have a little more trouble catching. You are quit the sports fanatic – just any sport and you will watch and try to imitate. It is cute and we are thankful for that. On Sunday afternoon, I went to the movie with Nada and I gave you a kiss before I left (you were not down for your nap yet) and you were so concerned that I needed to be back before you woke up and I was.

Butterflies everywhere!

Mama and I went to see the butterflies yesterday. It was so neat and they were flying everywhere. In the first picture, you'll see a huge iguana in the tree branch over my head. I had so much fun, but got tuckered out -- as you'll notice from the last picture.

Love,

Master Henry

My first symphony

Mama took me to the symphony on Saturday. It was Peter and the Wolf, which is a Russian fairytale. It was real cool. The guy on the stage explained about all the different instruments and how they can sound like different animals. Another guy came and read the story while all the instruments played. I hope Mama takes me again some time.