Henry These Days

It's about time I do a long update on Henry.  He is almost 22 months old (two months from two--how did this happen?!) and is at a delightful stage (most of the time, but that's life with a toddler for you).

I'll focus this post on Henry's verbal and physical development, because otherwise the post will become a chapter book.  Next post I'll write about Henry's favorites these days.

Verbal Development:

Probably the biggest development recently has been in Henry's verbal abilities.  At his 15 month appointment, our pediatrician told me that his language would take off around 18 months and that he'd be saying 50 words or more by the time he was two.  I nearly laughed in the poor doctor's face.  I just found it hard to believe that this boy, who spoke maybe 5 words at the time, would be at 50 in 9 months.  But boy, am I eating crow.  Just about at Henry's 18 month birthday, he began saying ALL THE WORDS.  I began a list in January so that I wouldn't forget them.  At the time, the list had about 55 words or so on it.  Now, Henry probably says 100 words, although I have lost count at this point.  Some favorites: helicopter, airplane, slide, playground-fun (two words that are consistently said together), maze, monkey (for his favorite stuffed toy), cycle truck (recycling truck), dump truck, cement truck, fire truck (along with accompanying sound), slam dunk, maybe, oh no (LOVES this one), butterfly, maybe, milk, cashews, raisins, and on and on.  Can you tell the boy loves things that move?!

Henry uses two words together consistently now, and probably more often than he says single words.  He said his first two three word sentences a few weeks ago ("Daddy sit down" and "cupcake cookie maybe?") and his first four word sentence shortly thereafter, to me, at the kitchen table, when we were sitting together (Sit down next me).  Henry uses three word sentences regularly now, although they vary in context so there aren't good examples to list here.  He also says four word sentences in the form of ____ truck, maybe come?  As in: "Fire truck, maybe come?" or "cycle truck maybe come?"

Henry refers to himself as Hehy and has done so for months.  He also uses the pronoun me in reference to himself (for instance, "me help" or the aforementioned "sit down next me" sentence).

Henry calls Mark and me Daddy and Mommy, and began doing this about a month or so ago after transitioning from Dada and Mama.  He calls our nanny, Desiree, "Deses."  Henry knows the names of lots of our immediate family members and loves to name them when he sees them in photos.  There are my parents (Gama and Dago--not sure how he got Dago out of Granddaddy), Mark's parents (Gama and Gandpa), my aunt Lois and uncle Tom (Loises and Tom, or often, "Henri, hahaha," because Tom says this when he sees Henry), my brother, Michael and sister-in-law, Laura (says Michael perfectly, which I find impressive, and Lada), Mark's brother Greg and his wife Linsay (Geg and Lisy), and my grandmother and her companion Dave (Gigi and Dave).  Today he pointed to an advertisement and said, "Dave"--definitely not Dave, but he looked a bit like Dave, so Henry wasn't completely off base!

In terms of other verbal development, Henry knows almost all of the standard colors: red, white, blue, green, yellow, black, orange, pink, purple, brown.  If you ask him what the color of an object is, he will answer with the correct color.  He also will point out objects of a particular color in books when asked.  Henry also can count to ten!  It took a bit for this skill to develop; he used to skip five consistently and then would skip other numbers.  But now he will count to ten correctly in certain contexts, such as climbing up and down stairs or counting objects.  Although he will double count objects--for instance a fork's tongs are counted beyond three and up to six or more.

Physical Development:

Henry has been walking and running for months, so nothing new there.  The biggest recent changes have been in other gross motor skills, namely climbing.  The kid is a climbing fool and can hoist himself onto just about any piece of furniture, including our sofas and dining chairs.  He also can climb ladders on playground equipment, with assistance of course.

The scariest part of this is that we think Henry can climb out of his crib.  A few weeks ago, Mark was standing next to Henry's crib after Henry woke from a nap and Henry lifted his leg to the top of the crib, as if he were going to climb right on out.  He did the same thing a couple of days later for our nanny.  This new skill obviously left us scrambling, because we were not prepared for Henry to be attempting this at 21 months.  We purchased a video monitor with sound immediately so that we would know when he woke up.  We also bought a sleep sack (like a swaddle without the arm wraps) in the hope that it would keep him from being able to spread his legs far enough apart to scale the crib.  The monitor works wonderfully, and because Henry always makes noise upon awakening, we can watch him and get him before he tries any tricky moves.  He LOVES the sleep sack, oddly, but it doesn't restrict his movement.  We are phasing it out because it would just make it more dangerous if he fell while trying to climb out of the crib.  We also purchased a conversion kit to make his crib into a toddler bed.  I was reluctant to do this because the crib is going to be used for Lima Bean, but she won't sleep in it until she's 4 months or so, and by that point Henry will be ready for a twin bed, which we also purchased.  Our next step is to convert the crib.  I have been holding off because I honestly don't think Henry is ready to stay in it at night.  I think he will climb out and help himself to the things in his room.  But, we will probably need to bite the bullet in a couple of weeks.  When we do, we will remove the bookcase from his room so that he can't try to scale it, and make sure his closet is locked.  Ugh--not looking forward to this transition!  Hoping it goes as well as possible.

Henry also can hop, walk along curbs like a balance beam (yay!), and roll.  I think I will sign him up for a movement class soon, and gymnastics once he is old enough.

And, because what's a post without lots of pictures, some recents of our boy.

Playtime with Daddy!

I waited months for Henry to be able to wear this outfit without a shirt underneath.  He wore it once this way and the next time I tried it was too short!  Will have to save it for baby sister.

Henry now smiles on command.  Just about the cutest thing ever.