3 Weeks, 6 Days/ 2 Years, 6 Days

Henry's birthday party was an unqualified success. He had quite a bit of fun running around the back-yard with Carys and Helen, blowing bubbles, and playing with balls and sidewalk chalk. JT's parents were in town for the party and were a great help in preparing and cleaning up. Henry had a great time being home with them for a few days and Silas definitely enjoyed all the cuddling. JT cooked up hot-dogs and had a full-spread of Chicago-style fixins along with three different nationalities of potato salad (American, German and French.) Henry received so many fun gifts from our friends and family (summer clothes, cool books, a stuffed doggy, play-doh, and a lawn-mower.) He's actually played quite a bit with all of his toys but he's definitely obsessed with his lawn-mower right now. In fact he wanted to take it outside yesterday when we went for a walk so he could mow the sidewalk. I'm happy to say that chore is all done.

He's been riding on his "bike" a lot lately as well which is a little push-toy that looks like a grasshopper. It was an early birthday gift from my parents and at first he just liked to walk behind it and push it-- now he drives it all over the house and has gotten adept at avoiding or purposely running into stationary objects. He's also making some real progress going down the stairs. He has been walking down stairs for awhile but he really disliked doing it for a good long time. Now he rarely asks to be picked up and just wants to hold your hand while he walks down-- which is a good thing because i usually have Silas in the other hand.

Silas is continuing to do well. He's wanting to be held a little bit more and is taking longer to get to sleep at night, so hopefully in exchange he'll start sleeping some longer chunks as well. Henry was also very difficult to get to sleep but you had to physically hold and rock and pat and walk and bounce. As soon as you would lay him down he would start screaming and you'd have to start the whole process over. Silas just cycles in and out of light sleep fussing, grunting, and occasionally crying out in the awake periods. Mostly he just needs to work through his own wind-down routine but it's been taking him 30-45 minutes to get into a deep-sleep which feels like an eternity during the middle of the night!

I have a ton of new pictures on the camera that i'll promise to download soon. Here's one from Henry's birthday party courtesy of JT's parents!