The Play Kitchen

We gave Henry this play kitchen for his birthday. He plays with it a bit once or twice a day. He sometimes needs some suggestions about what to do. And he mostly likes looking through the food and pretending to eat it.

There is a before picture of this cabinet that I made the kitchen from somewhere on the computer but since I started the project back in September I don't want to look through for it. But it was a TV cabinet that I turned on its side and changed up a bit. There was actually quite a bit of cutting and screwing - changing one big door into two, making that top shelf smaller to keep room for playing, adding shelves inside the oven and fridge, and cutting a hole for the sink. There was even some soldering as that was honestly the only way I could imagine to do the faucet affordably in a way that I liked - it is some elbows and short pieces of copper pipe soldered together. I stapled that fabric on the back to be the backsplash, that perfect fabric just happened to be in my stash of fabric.

And then searching for pots and pans and cutlery and crockery took awhile. We found most of it at thrift stores, I was especially pleased with the Sesame Street plates I found. And Kevin and I made some felt food as well (so fun when the husband wants to make crafts with me!). And I did buy some velcro cutting food. His favourites are the cutting food and the pasta.

And I managed to squeeze it into our kitchen. That was important for me because I had this image in my head of us cooking together each in our own kitchens which has actually happened a few times.

And now that huge project is over. It turned out to be a lot of work but all of it fun (except painting). It was just the perfect project, simple enough that I could just figure out how to do things on my own (with lots of insipration from google) but the culmination of all that work is a pretty big thing I think - a play kitchen with doors on hinges and knobs that turn and Henry knew just what it was as soon as he saw it. And after a week and a half of playing nothing is breaking yet!

Henry's 2nd Birthday Celebrations

We spent the weekend celebrating Henry's birthday which was on Friday.

We gave him the card we made him the day before. We printed off a card with all his favourite characters on it. I never thought I would but I have embraced this whole character branded thing, he just loves it so much. And why wouldn't he like seeing the same familiar characters on everything? It was fun, he really liked all his cards this year and kept wanting to take them off the shelf and look at them.

On the morning of his birthday we gave him the big present from Mommy and Daddy - the play kitchen I've been working on for months. There will definitely be a full blog post on the play kitchen later this week.

I had put up a few decorations the night before. A Happy Birthday sign that he pointed to and said "ABCs". And some dangling streamers that he thought were fun. I also put up a few extra pictures of Henry to help us reminisce and because Henry likes looking at pictures of Henry almost as much as I do.

I wanted to do something special during the day on his birthday but we had loads of snow so I didn't feel like driving anywhere and Henry kept saying he wanted to stay home anyway. So I convinced him to play outside for half an hour and we spent the rest of the day inside, just an ordinary day.

We picked out a special birthday outfit for him to wear in the evening together. The shirt has car parts in the stripes and we both liked the pants with suspenders.

Kevin's parents and one sister came over in the evening. It had been ages since we'd had his parents over and Henry was soooo excited to have them at his own house. We had creamy pasta for dinner which Henry liked. And I did waffles and ice cream for dessert. Henry had a bit of waffle some chocolate that had been part of a present and refused to try the ice cream.

And on Sunday we had another celebration at my mum's house. He got to open even more presents.

And his Aunt Eliza made him a chocolate cake which he seemed happy about until he realized that when we said chocolate cake it didn't mean he gets chocolate. Luckily I had brought the leftover ice cream and he liked that on this day.

Henry's 2nd Year

I love looking back at this birthday post from last year so I thought I would do another one for Henry's second year. Here are some pictures to show how he's changed this past year. He turns 2 today and we have lots of celebrations planned.

13 months

14 months

15 months

16 months

17 months

18 months

19 months

20 months

21 months

22 months

23 months

24 months

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HENRY

2 Year Old Henry

Holy moly I love my almost 2 year old Henry even more than I loved 18 month old Henry or any of the Henrys before that. We are having so much fun these days. Especially these past 2 weeks now that I am officially used to him disagreeing with everything I say:

Me: You're doing great

Henry: No doing great

He talks a lot. Just pointing out things he knows and narrating what his toys are doing, making his own little sentences. It is so sweet when he gets the grammar wrong like when he says "make it more". But it is also so sweet when he says a perfect sentence in just the right context. He even says "I" every once in a while.

He sings. His favourite songs are The Alphabet Song and the Thomas the Tank Engine Song. And occasionally he'll sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star which is awesome too.

He plays. Some days he'll play by himself mostly all day, totally engrossed. My favourite is when he plays with his doll house. He makes the family sit down to dinner (always pancakes and maple syrup if you ask him). And he rocks the baby to sleep and sings to it.

And of course he plays with his cars. Pushing them all around. He can also be very nurturing to his cars especially to Lightning McQueen who always gets a share of Henry's food and drink and one time Henry even said Lightning McQueen needed his diaper changed and then ran into his bedroom with him. And he likes to take his toys including his cars for rides in his doll stroller too.

He is really into playing with water the past month or so too. He LOVES baths. He LOVES going to City's big indoor pool. And he even likes putting his hands in the water while I wash the dishes which makes washing the dishes more fun for me. And he likes to wash his hands and when we do he often wants to run and find a car to "wash wheels" and then he'll play with the car in the water in the sink for awhile.

And he loves to go on walks, a new thing he likes is riding his lion car all the way to the playground. He loves that lion car. And he still loves to help shovel snow.

When he wakes up he comes into our bedroom and says "mommy and daddy play". And sometimes he'll say "play together".

Just recently he loves saying that he's a bad boy, I don't know where he got this from. He even has a squinty-eyed face to go with his bad boy persona. And of course we can't help but laugh when he says this so he will continue to do it.

When you suggest that he close his eyes, the only way he knows how to do it is to squint a lot. And he has forgotten hos to blow. He wants to blow out the candle and puts his face up close and then nothing, it's a bit sad.

He really likes his bedtime routine: the monster pyjamas and reading the horrible boring Thomas the Tank Engine Books that are too boring to read the rest of the day. So he'll often say he's "ready bed" when he's not.

He still loves being read to.

He is done napping, with just the occasional nap on busy days or days when he had a bad sleep and he usually wakes up cranky from them. The only thing that calms down super cranky Henry is suggesting we watch some Thomas and then he immediately goes from crying to smiling and saying "choo choo" and "all aboard".

He sleeps in his own bed in his own room and when he wakes up needing help getting back to sleep he just comes into our room. Occasionally I am so happy to see my little sweetie that I let him stay but, in preparation for the new baby coming, Kevin usually takes him back to his own bed to lie with him to help him back to sleep.

I keep waiting to get used to having a kid, but it's not happening. Henry gets better and better all the time and I am constantly blown away by how awesome being a parent is and how crazy it is that I just happen to have the best kid in the whole wide world.

Michigan

Kevin and I went away for this past weekend and left Henry with his grandparents. That was a big step for all of us. We all had a great time.

Kevin and I drove to Michigan and stayed in a bed and breakfast in Kalamazoo for two nights and visited Grand Rapids for a day.

Michigan has some of the best beer in the world so we spent a lot of time in Brewpubs sampling beer and eating pub food.

Both cities featured awesome historic districts with huge old houses. We even had a tour of the Meyer May House - a House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1910. It was beautiful and crazy technologically advanced too - central vac and panels that were windows in the day and beautiful light fixtures at night.

The other houses were pretty interesting too. Luckily I was having a good walking day - no cramps or other pains - and so we walked and walked all around the historic district.

We brought our allotted 17L of beer over the border and so we will be remembering this trip for months to come.

And today I am spending some quality time with Henry. I missed him like crazy over the weekend. He was too busy having fun with Grandma and Grandpa to think about us though.