Our Family Roadtrip

We’ve just returned home from our very first Henry family road trip.

I’ve been on trips before. I’ve even been on trips with Toby and with Rob before, but never before have all 3 of us set out -- WITHOUT GRANDPARENTS - -on our own.

We headed down to West Virginia, stopping in Niagara Falls, Hershey PA and Washington DC. It was two weeks of 115 degree weather, long car rides, hours and hours in swimming pools, frantic searches for highway parks, apple juice drink boxes and new levels of temper tantrums.

There was a little stress and a little longing for home, but the predominant emotion was that of utter contentment. Spending every day as an inseparable threesome was absolute heaven and fulfilled my daily longings to have more time with my husband and my son that my hectic life brings me. It was a good sign that both Rob and I (and even Toby) were a little sad to say goodbye to our final destination. This was soon quenched by our realization that the car-saviour DVD player had been scorched to death in the Virginia heat and we had 17 hours of kid to entertain in the car. Needless to say, the closer we got, the more excited we got for home.

DVD player be damned, we made it. We were both exhausted but Toby (who had been cooped up in a car all day) was high on life and filled with beans. We both had to quiet that part of our brains that needed to unpack everything and play with Toby until bedtime. Finally - -FINALLY - -bedtime arrived. As we put our exhausted kid to bed I gave him the usual hug, kiss and “I love you”, but this time I added on, “Thank you for a great trip, Toby. I’m a very lucky Mommy.” Toby pulled away from our embrace and with a serious look directly into my eyes replied, “I’m lucky, too, Mommy.”

Like a Simon in the Sky

...And then there's Toby's opinion

Toby is growing increasingly interested in “my belly” and the baby that is hiding in it. He often comes up to me and innocently tears my shirt out of my pants so he can have a look for the baby. It’s not the GREATEST thing to have your increasingly flabby belly flaunted to the world at a moments notice, but it’s nice to see he’s interested. It is certainly much better than his initial reaction when we first told him he was going to be a big brother.

I believe he was eating cheerios at the time. He stopped chewing for a second and stared at me. Intently. Then took another mouthful. I rephrased what I had said and added something nice about how he’s going to get to be a big brother. Another mouthful of cheerios. This time the stare was more of a glare, but still no verbal clues as to his understanding.

Finally I asked him a question, “Toby don’t you think it’s great that Mommy is having another baby?”

“Nope!” he replied, spewing cheerios as he spat the words out, “I just like baby Toby.”

His other fascination (other than my belly) is my stethoscope. He likes to come over and listen to my heart and lungs and tell me whether or not I need medicine. (He is KIND OF the expert on respiratory illnesses, having survived a fairly significant one himself.)

Tonight he got the clever idea of listening to my BELLY with the stethoscope. Finding this rather endearing, I asked him if he was listening for the baby,

“Yes!” he said excitedly.

“What’s the baby saying, Toby?”

He thought and listened for a minute and then very sweetly in a tiny voice said,

“Meeeooow!!”

No wonder he’s excited. He thinks I’m having a cat.

I'm Back! With some Exciting News to share...

…And I’m back.

My apologies for the month (maybe two?) long hiatus from blogging. But I have a somewhat good and somewhat lame excuse.

I’m pregnant.

Don’t let the boringly-punctuated-single-sentence-sans-superlatives give you the wrong idea - - Rob and I (and, to a much lesser extent, Toby) are very excited and can’t wait to meet the 4^th member of our family!

The boringly-punctuated-single-sentence-sans-superlative is there to ironically emphasize the fact that this tiny change in my uterus, of something that is apparently only 4 inches in length and 2.5 ounces in size, has thrown my entire universe out of whack such that...I stopped blogging.

My nightly ritual used to consist of playing hard with Toby after work and laughing with him as our wild adventures swirled around my head, aching to be put down on paper. After the lights were out and I sat quietly with a nice glass of red wine, relishing my alone time to reflect on my day and make some sense of it all in the form of my blog posts.

Not 2 days after this 2.5-ounce delight entered our world, my nightly ritual changed.

“Playing hard with Toby” consisted of inventing games that revolved around my lying on the couch with a blanket over my head, choking back nausea. “Wild adventures” were replaced with rapidly alternating feelings of intense hunger and nausea. Keeping up – kitchen-bathroom-kitchen-bathroom – took up a lot of my time that was spent off the couch. After the lights went out? So did mine. And oh, that relaxing glass of red wine…that is a mere 15-week-old memory at this point that has only recently started to resurface as my nausea has eased off. There have been many times in the past 4 months that I have found myself reflecting, marveling and anticipating, but those thoughts, I knew, would have to wait until it was safe to share them.

So I’m back. My posts, without red wine, may be somewhat tamer, but I’ve got new things to share and a great journey ahead with this 2.5 ounce. Thanks for sticking with me…

Broken Balloons and Trike-a-thons

I can’t believe how long it has been since I have written in my blog…I’m so sorry to anyone out there who is still checking!!! Life has been BUSY.

For example, this week held the exciting annual Trike-a-thon at Toby’s daycare. It’s a fundraiser for his daycare and all the kids get dressed up and decorate their tricycles and drive them around a big circle.

I’m sure people without kids would find this concept EXTREMELY lame. But for those of you who have had kids and remember back to the days of having a 2 year old – I suspect you may remember the thrill of having a full 2 hour long activity that the kids are EXCITED about and entertained by AND that allows you to socialize with other adults and your spouse. JACKPOT.

In preparation for this great event, Toby (obviously) wanted to decorate his tricycle. Rob and I both got home early the night before and helped him decorate his trike with the decorations of his choice; gold yarn and yellow balloons with smiley faces on them. Toby helpfully ran around the garage in excited circles kicking various soccer balls while we worked hard to get the decorations on his trike. He was FASCINATED by the art of blowing up balloons and insisted on trying but then had difficulty calming down enough to actually stand still long enough to blow one up. When finally we had 2 balloons on his trike he played with them and bounced them and laughed. And then one of them broke.

It scared him at first and then the world went into slow motion. Rob spoke first in a very calm and measured voice, "Don't worry, Toby, I'm going to blow up another one. It's OK. It's not your fault". By this time I was by his side with my arm around him just WAITING for his world to fall apart.

He looked at Rob. He looked at me. Slowly he pointed to the broken balloon on the ground as his lower lip started to quiver and he let out the LOUDEST and SADDEST WAIL I have ever heard. Hysteria.

"MY BALLOOOOOOOOOON!!! It BROKE!!!!!!!!!! Fix it, Mommy," he sobbed, "FIX IT!"

Rob rushed to blow up another balloon but it didnt' solve the problem of the BROKEN one that still lay on the ground.

We couldn't help but laugh becuase the whole situation was SO DRAMATIC and yet SO RIDICULOUS. Finally we regained our composure and amongst his lamenting sobs we said to one another in unison, "We should bring some extra balloons tomorrow..."

Mr. Manners

Toby is working on his manners. It’s a bit of a slow process, but he’s catching on. He’s at the point now that he USUALLY says thank you and will gladly say please (when prompted) so long as it’s not peri-temper-tantrum.

Tonight, in eager anticipation of his impending apple juice, he commanded me with breathless excitement to “Get me an ice cube for my apple juice!!” Granted, when you’re THAT excited and already have a full 8 words in the sentence, tacking on a PLEASE must seem rather daunting to a 2 year old. But I calmly remained seated and explained to him that he hadn’t asked very politely.

Without missing a beat his tone changed as he cocked his head to his side and cooed, “PLEASE, Mommy DEAR??!?!?”

He may be a man’s man, but he certainly knows how to charm the ladies…

I got him the ice cube.

Mother's Day Cards

Toby spent a great deal of time making a mothers day card for my mom this weekend. At first he seemed a bit skeptical about putting his hockey stuff down long enough to engage in ARTS and CRAFTS which goes COMPLETELY against every ounce of morality that the poor guy has. But he soon grew excited by the fine array of firemen, sports and automobile stickers that I allowed him to choose from. He even found a lovely sticker of an eyeball that I’m sure grandma will GREATLY appreciate having on her card.

Once he had plastered the card in boyish stickers he decided to colour and eagerly handed me crayon after crayon with instructions on what to draw. His old standard is to ask that I draw “Hannah” (from daycare). Hannah is a lovely girl in his group with curly blonde hair. Quite appropriately I drew a stick figure with a dress, two dots for eyes and a mouth as well as some yellow hair. (See above - -not too complicated.)

When I was finished my fine portrait Toby looked down at it and GASPED with HORROR.

“Th-th-th—th-THAT’S not HANNAH, Mommy!” he bellowed, ‘That’s ABBY!!!”

I was then instructed to “DO IT AGAIN!”

Not only is the kid bossy; apparently he also has quite the eye for detail. I, on the other hand, need to work on my stick figures.