Two Force Powder

Oliver recently discovered "Katy and the Big Snow" on his bookshelf. Since this discovery, we've read Katy over and over. Davis decided that Oliver needed a Katy of his own and so he made one for Oliver. Oliver looked at the first edition Katy and pointed out that there were no eyes and no crossbar. Davis went back to the basement and built a new Katy. Oliver carefully examined the new Katy and decided that Davis had gotten her right (he's one tough critic).


Katy is 55 a horse power bulldozer. Oliver has declared that he is "2 force powder." What does someone who is operating on 2 force powder do? (Besides "This.")

A 2 force powder Oliver flies planes,

And makes sure that his baby sister has a plane to fly.

A two force powder Oliver changes Bulldozer's diaper.


And a 2 force powder Oliver picks out incredible outfits and takes Bulldozer walking and biking with mommy and Henrietta.

Thanksgiving

Tim, Carolyn and Caitlin joined us for Thanksgiving. While Oliver loved visiting with Caitlin and Carolyn, Uncle Tim was most definitely the object of his affection. Oliver kept begging Tim to play tag, trains, trucks, planes...
While Oliver was not terribly interested in sitting at the table for Thanksgiving dinner, we did manage to get him to sit down for a few minutes - with the drumstick.
Henrietta spent much of the day sleeping and snuggling.

She did manage to gain over a pound over Thanksgiving week - I am going to pretend that her weight gain was due to all of the chocolate pie I ate. Yum.

One Week

Yesterday Henrietta celebrated her one week birthday. Despite all the waiting and anticipation, I am still wrapping my head around the fact that we have a new little baby and we are now a family of four - a family of four who needs a good 45 minutes (at least) to get organized and out of the house (seriously, we get Oliver all bundled up and ready to go and Henrietta decides it is time to eat. I feed her and then find that Oliver has taken off all his clothes. We get Oliver dressed again and find Henrietta needs her diaper changed. We change her diaper. Dress Oliver for a third time. Feed Henrietta again, dress Oliver again...)

Oliver continues to be infatuated with his sister. He is still sharing all of his special toys with her and giving her kisses and asking for her to snuggle with him at night. Last night he actually asked if we could move her bed into his room so they could share a room (I hope he still feels that way in another couple months when we plan on moving her in with him). So really, all is going well. Well, all except for bedtime. We'd gotten bedtime down to a science of sorts (at least for us and our continued struggle with sleep) - all told (books and snuggling) it would take me 30 minutes to get Oliver to sleep. Since we brought Henrietta home it has been taking me between an hour and an hour and a half. Of course, it is right at this time that Henrietta decides it is time to eat. Davis and I have been trying to coordinate, scheme, test out different interpretive dance moves - anything to try and make bedtime better, but no such luck yet (we keep reminding ourselves it has only been a week and we'll get it together at some point.

Henrietta is proving to be a very low key baby. Lots of eating and sleeping. The last couple days she's had her eyes open a bit more which has been fun. I've been trying to get in lots of snuggle time with her as I am reminded when I look at Oliver at how quickly they grow up.



I think the most difficult thing about this past week has been trying to figure out time with Oliver. I spent a good portion of all three trips to the hospital to have Henrietta crying about Oliver - that while I knew he'd be excited about a sister, he also hadn't been consulted in the decision to have a baby and that a new baby would profoundly change his life. Anyway, this past week, while I've spent time reading, playing trains and snuggling with Oliver, our routine is gone, and while I know we will fall into a new one, I am still sad about losing our old one (although at this point, I seem to be the only one - he is very happy).

(Wondering what is in the blue bag in his hand? Trains - surprise, surprise - this boy loves his trains!)

Another difficult thing - the night before last I turned to Davis and said - I could really use a good night sleep. He laughed and asked if I'd had a good night of sleep since Oliver arrived - nope. So really, that good night of sleep - probably another 3 years away (unless Henrietta proves a champion sleeper - please, please, please).

My baby

Oliver remains infatuated with Henrietta. He is constantly checking on her, bringing her toys, and this morning he informed Davis and me that he would make sure that he would make sure that no one and no monsters would take her.

Yesterday was Oliver's first gymnastics class. Davis had to work and, although I'm a gymnast at heart (right), I was a bit worried about getting out the door and getting trough class alone - thankfully Elizabeth offered to come and help.

Oliver loved the class - 45 minutes of being encouraged to go super fast, jump, tumble and, did I already say this? - go super fast.

Oliver showed everyone in class "my baby." And informed everyone that he was the big brother. Throughout class he kept going over to check on Henrietta; it was very sweet.

Although I keep trying to go back to our nighttime routine and have some mommy and Oliver time, Oliver refuses. He wants Henrietta involved in story time and wants to fall asleep with her in the bed too. We are going with it - ready, at any minute, for him to declare he's done with her.

Being two Oliver is not one for sharing. We've had some talks lately about which are toys we can share with friends and which are our "special" toys we'd prefer not to share. Oliver's trains, Thomas in particular, fall into the special category. It has therefore been telling that Oliver not only wants to be sure Henrietta has a train with her most of the time, but has even given her Thomas on occasion (note the blue train in the cradle).

Thomas has been a bit of a trouble maker though - oops - as Oliver says - "naughty Thomas."

This morning Oliver put on jammie pants, a striped shirt, an orange sock, a polka dot sock, a Puma, and a blue sneaker. While I'd love to show you the outfit, because it really is quite special, I can't because he decided it then needed to be hidden under his wonderful blue suit. To top it off - check out the hairdo. Ah yes, the little man is sporting a "pony."

And baby makes four

Henrietta joined our family at 4:21 in the afternoon on November 15, 2010; she weighed 8 pounds and was 21 inches long.

Thus far she seems to be pretty mellow - loving to eat, sleep and snuggle.

Oliver met Henrietta just about an hour after she was born and was smitten. He begged to hold her and to take her home with him. He also danced around the room and the maternity floor telling everyone he had a new baby sister and that he was now a big brother.

When he visited her today at the hospital he brought her balloons and, again begged to hold her and bring her home with him. He also desperately wanted to make her a cake for her birthday.

While a second night in the hospital sounded like it could be relaxing, Oliver's excitement (and promise of cake) was enticing so Henrietta and I headed home.

Oliver has read Henrietta his favorite books, shown her all of his toys, and even give her his special kitty to snuggle with. He's also peppered her with kisses and rocked her over and over again. And, just in case we may have forgotten, he keeps reminding us that she's his baby, her name is Henrietta, and that he is the big brother.

I attempted to give Oliver some mommy time tonight, but he would have none of it; he wanted Henrietta to be a part of our night time routine.
While I know that Oliver's excitement will likely soon give way to other emotions, Davis and I are glad that Oliver is, at least for now, a very happy big brother.

What folks are made of...

Well at this point you know, little boys are made of snips and snails and puppy dog tails.

So where do little girls come from?....


Girls, well girls are sugar and spice and everything nice:



Welcome Henrietta!

Trial Run

Last night at 11:15 I started to have contractions. After about 40 minutes of them coming every 10 minutes apart I decided to wake up Davis to see if we should think about calling the midwives (they had said to come in when I had contractions every 10 minutes, but I didn't want to get ahead of myself). Davis is a very heavy sleeper. The first time I tried to wake him up he told me "shhh." The second time he asked if I was Jewish (what?). The third time I was a bit more forceful and he woke up and decided we needed to leave immediately. Did I mention that by this time my contractions were 5 minutes apart? Luckily Papa and Le Le were visiting so we woke them up and asked them to keep and eye on Oliver and jumped in the car and headed to the hospital. Still not convinced we were going to have a baby I asked Davis to take Route 1A rather than Route 1 so we didn't arrive too soon. A couple miles from the house my contractions started coming every 3 minutes; Davis was calm, but was also starting to worry a bit.

It turns out our trip to the hospital was for nothing. Two and a half hours of contractions every 3 minutes, but no progress so we were sent home - that was 11 hours ago and the contractions are gone. Booo.

Since we didn't weren't spending today in labor or caring for a new baby we decided to head to the beach - where it was FREEZING!

Papa just headed back home, but we asked Le Le to stay the night - just in case. We are hoping the little trickster will send us to the hospital again tonight, but that this time will make an appearance.

My paleontologist

Every day Oliver amazes me with how much he knows, how much he is aware of what is going on, and how quickly he learns -- what happens in the mind of a two year old, and what a two year old's mind is capable of simply astounds me.

In addition to his love for things that go superfast, Oliver is very much in to dinosaurs. Not only has he memorized the names of a good many of the dinos, but he can also identify them - and cross-reference them in his dino books. Yesterday morning though my budding paleontogist threw me for a loop - I desperately needed 20 minutes to get dressed and throw in some laundry and so I decided to let Oliver have a special treat - TV. He's normally not allowed to watch TV, and if he does it is either Curious George or snipetts of his two movies (Finding Nemo and Madagascar). Anyway, George wasn't on and he didn't want to watch the movies. Desperately wanting to begin our day I caved and found a show called "Dinosaur Train." Feeling guilty I headed upstairs. Moments later I heard running. Of course this brought me, running, back downstairs. It turns out Oliver had just gone to get one of his books about dinosaurs so that he could match the dinos on the TV to the ones in his book.

When "Dinosaur Train" was over Oliver had me sit with him and he went through his book and named all of the dinos he'd seen on TV and told me which were meat eaters and which were plant eaters. He also told me that his favorite dino was diplodocus and that Percy's (his train) favorite dino was either gigantosaurus or allosaurus - Percy hadn't yet decided.

Stick some tongs in me - I'm done

Thankfully Oliver decided to mix things up a bit and chose to stick me with tongs to see if I'm done rather than go with the more common method - a fork. While Oliver declared that the baby is in fact ready to be born - "in 10 minutes" - the little lady seems to disagree. Both Davis and I were convinced that the baby would be born early because Oliver was; it is looking as though this is not going to be the case.


While we are waiting for the baby to arrive we are keeping busy. Oliver has been exploring the baby things we've brought down from the attic,

and has been making the best of daylight savings time.

He's also continued to keep us entertained with his outfits and love of shoes. Here are the "jammies" he chose to wear to bed last night - hot pants, rocketman shirt and his car slippers which he calls his night time roller skates (because everyone has a pair of roller skates they wear to bed).

When he woke up this morning he immediately declared that, since it was daytime, his night time roller skates had to go and his red star shoes needed to be put on - did I mention already that this had to happen - immediately?

Super Fast

As has been mentioned many times before, Oliver has one speed at which he currently moves - super fast. Much to his disappointment Mommy no longer moves at a super fast speed. Daddy, however, continues to move super fast - this means that Oliver thinks it is "super duper" when Daddy is around.

The two super fast ones in the house have kept up their bike racing - and Oliver really has gotten ridiculously fast on his bike (Davis is also doing quite well).

With the not so wonderful weather Oliver has also been spending quite a bit more time in the pool. This past weekend we removed one of the foam pieces in the bubble and Oliver didn't notice - I think it was because he was too busy with his new pool trick - diving. Ah yes, our little fish now wants to dive in and doesn't want anyone to catch him. Great except for the part that he doesn't know how to swim by himself. So this little activity is actually Oliver going head first into the pool, sinking for a bit and then being pulled up. Sounds fun to me.

The other morning the forecast was for a pretty icky day and we were looking for something fun to do. Since Oliver is really in to trains (as in he not only plays with them all day, but he now also always has at least one in each pocket and sleeps with at least one each night) Davis and Oliver decided to go for a train ride. I dropped the two off at the train station and they took the train to Beverly - I picked them up and then dropped Davis off at work and Oliver and I drove home and spent the day building train tracks and driving trains.

Oliver's current favorite train is one from the Thomas the Train collection. It is a green train named Henry. Interestingly Oliver has decided to call the train Percy. The train actually talks and says it's name is Henry - when the train says this Oliver laughs and says "Silly Percy." Mind you there is a green Thomas the Train named Percy. At the store Oliver correctly identified Henry and then correctly identified Percy. He then chose to bring Henry home and call him Percy. Go figure. Henry/Percy came with a tender which Oliver has chosen to call "Percy's dad," 99% of the time and "Peter" the remainder of the time. Another one of his trains (not from the Thomas collection, so no name attached to it) he's decided to call Rufus. I have no idea where he comes up with these things.

On a totally different note, I just have to say - I am vindicated!!!! While Davis refuses to go as far as to say I am not crazy he has conceded that my craziness saved us some big big money. We just got our water bill and, much to our dismay, found the usage to be five times higher than usual. Some research and some Excel plotting (yes, we are nerds) has shown that the toilet I banished from the house was the likely culprit. So what it looks like is that the new toilet is going to save tons of water and a ridiculous amount of money. Yea for crazy!