Henry's story

Peter was away, fetching his parents from Gary for a visit. Henry, disconsolate, wanted to help me write a story as a surprise for Peter when he returned. I was amanuensis and prompter, but the story is largely Henry's work.

Here it is:

Henry and Dada had lots of good ideas.
Sometimes they climbed on ladders.
Sometimes they hammered hammers.
Sometimes they looked at diggers.
Sometimes they looked at statues.
[Here, Henry inserted a page of drawing and asked me to note that one bumpy bit was "Mountains for Dada" and another oblong bit, that he was surprised and delighted to have produced, was "A Banana for Dada."]
One day, Dada made a picture for Henry.
The picture was of lots of things Henry loves.
It was a picture of:
Dada!
and Charles Darwin [the dog, not the eminent Victorian]
and a cookie
and a bulldozer
and a wheelbarrow
and a sweet potato
and chocolate
and James
and a butt.

Sunday, June 19

Tough day.
I think I'll just put up a few pictures. They're a little tough, too.

With Mom, at Aunt Virginia & Uncle Dwain's house

Apparently my second birthday.

This expression is pure Dad.

Obviously, I love this picture of us.

James at six months

Weight: 17 lbs., 9 oz. (50th-75th percentile)
Height: 75th percentile
Head circumference: Ditto

James's outfit is approximately 84 times as old as he is.

A first

Henry fell asleep reading!

I once gave myself a bloody nose that way. (Not with a Little Golden Book, however.)

An amour fou

I know it used to hurt my mom's feelings--or tickle her sense of injustice--when I used to tell everyone about how Dad read Pride & Prejudice out loud by the light of oil lamps one summer in Maine and changed my life, as if no one had ever read to me before, or when I would sing along with Ella Fitzgerald to Cole Porter's My Heart Belongs to Daddy.

Now I have an inkling how she felt.

At 2 1/2, Henry is besotted with Peter. The other day as we walked home from the store, his conversation the whole time was nothing but a love poem to his father. "There's Daddy's brown car," he said wistfully. "And there's Daddy's blue car, and Daddy's red car. Maybe Daddy's driving down the street in a big dump truck."

 We passed a house three or four blocks from ours. "That's your house, Mama," he said.

"Is that where I live?" I asked. "Don't I live with you?"

"No, Henry lives with Daddy in our house."

A pause ensued. "I loooove Daddy."

Another thoughtful pause. "Daddy's sump'n, Daddy's really sump'n."

That's my boy

Henry hopped onto his wheelybug this evening after his bath and announced that he was going to the grocery store.
"What are you going to buy?" I asked.
"Oh, kale and jellybeans."

A few more things Henry says

"I don't know where the other Daddy went."
 This takes a bit of explaining. We were sitting on the front porch, watching Peter drive around the corner on his way home from work. Since Molly had parked in his usual parking space, he drove around the block & parked on the street instead. Upon seeing him approach the house from a direction completely different from where he'd been heading, Henry was deeply perplexed, and repeated this question over and over, all the way through bedtime.

"That's a funny-looking noise!"
 Funny-looking, like crazy, seems to be an all-purpose modifier that means "delightful to Henry."

"What are you eating, Daddy? What are you eating WITH A SPOON?"
Occasionally, Henry goes into the bedroom and settles himself without a fuss into his nest of blankets on the floor. More commonly, he plasters himself against the crack at the bottom of the door, where he can watch whoever is in the living room and issue a running commentary/list of complaints, until we all crack and go to bed. Tonight, it was j'accuse all over again, when he deduced that Peter was trying to sneak a quiet bowl of ice cream while the babies were in bed.

Also, I just have to mention that I was taking a short walk around the park this evening, enjoying the sights of spring: At the west end of the park, householders tending their community garden allotments, Little Leaguers whacking balls, hipsters walking dogs; and at the east end ... a passing car with an enormous--real--parrot in the passenger's seat, and a couple of folks struggling to cover an iron lung with a tarp.

Sometimes, Henry tells me James is a funny-looking baby.