Novack Annual Visit

Again this September, Grammie (as Henry calls her now) and Grandpa Novack came to visit. Henry absolutely loved having them visit. We did all sorts of fun things, like the Children's Museum, Chucky E. Cheese, and an overnight trip to Newport, Rhode Island.

Newport is a beautiful little seaside town. Quintessential New England. I highly recommend a visit there. We stayed in a little B&B called The Clarkeston. We also visited one of the iconic seaside Mansions of Newport called Rosecliff. It was a huge bonus for me that they were having a Pierre Cardin exhibit in addition to the regular tour.

Henry was quite the jokester during the tour. While the tour guide (woman, mid-70's, white hair, ultra proper) was speaking about the history of Rosecliff to the very quiet group of 20 or so adults, Henry started yelling out "Blah, Blah, BLAH" and then proceeded to blow a Raspberry. I have no idea where he learned this behavior (must be JIM). Grandpa, Jim and Henry thought it was hilarious. As the raspberry reverberated through the halls of this enormous mansion, I pretended that I didn't know them.

Another highlight for Henry in Newport was a visit to the Firehouse. It happened that while Jim, Grandpa and Henry were walking by the Firehouse (the girls were shopping) the Fire truck was coming in from a call. One of the Firefighters invited them in. Henry sat in the truck, got a sticker badge and Hat and is still talking about it.

The visit was lovely and as always makes me sad that we don't live closer. It is obvious how much Henry loves his grandparents and it would be wonderful to be together more often.

Novacks Visit, Sept 2008

Can you spell SMART?

I will start by saying that if this story sounds like bragging, it is. Its mostly grandparents and aunts and god-parents who read this blog anyway, so they won’t mind me boasting about my wonderful child’s accomplishments! If I don’t keep track of them here, I am afraid I will forget when these milestones happen.

Yesterday, while I was working on the computer, Henry was playing with his magnetic letters. He was placing them on the dishwasher and saying some of them. The set has all 26 letters, 1-9 numbers and math symbols like the equal sign. He walked over to the refrigerator and said “Mommie, have all letters my name”, then he arranged what you see in the picture. Ok, it isn’t perfect, but my mouth was hanging open. This spelling effort was without any prompting, help, or even attention (sadly) from me! To be fair, it wasn’t completely out of the blue, because if you ask him how to spell his name, he will promptly say H-E-N-R-Y, but I get the feeling that he has just memorized it. I was very shocked that when given all the letters to chose from, in no order, that he could almost spell it out correctly! I am very proud-- can you tell??