Hank has started cruising, and I don’t mean adolescent-like attempts to pick up girls at the local playground (though he has been spending plenty of time at the playgrounds, and he’s been making quite a few friends). “Cruising” is when a baby starts to walk around by holding onto furniture. Check out the following action sequence:

He’s also walking up steps and stairs. He started by climbing the toddler jungle gym at the Steinway Street playground.

This is our favorite playground in the neighborhood.

There are lots of nice kids and very few ruffians, and the parents are all chatty and friendly and keep their kids in-line. Henry has even made friends with a 12-month old named Anna. They play together with Hank’s ball and her bucket.

When we’re running short on time, we go to the playground that’s a few long blocks down 29^th Street. It’s a school playground, and while the majority of it is without any shade (which will be great in the winter), it has a little shaded area off to the side with slides and jungle gyms. The only problem is that it’s a little old for Henry.

Other days, especially when we go to mommy group or swimming at the pool, we head down to the playground in Astoria Park, which is often crowded and a little chaotic. The jungle gyms are also a little old for Henry, but he likes the swings and the stone critters that he can climb on.

The fourth playground is my least favorite, but it sits right across the street from the little shopping plaza that has a Bank of America ATM machine and a supermarket that sells Earth’s Best infant formula. It’s a little too concrete jungle for me, but Henry doesn’t seem to mind.

Earlier this week we got back from yet another visit upstate for my cousin Roxanne’s bridal shower and my cousin Nikki’s engagement party, but I won’t go into that too much since we’re about to take off for a week in North Carolina with my parents and my brother and his family. Here’s a photo of Henry with my mom:

When I returned, Floyd had thrown out our coffee table, something we talked about doing but we hadn’t taken any action. It was great to come home and see it gone. The table was junk – a leftover from an ex-boyfriend’s fraternity house – and now the living room seems so large and open! Henry and I have a ton of room to play. I also came home to four days worth of Floyd’s dirty dishes. Instead of making a stink, I just packaged them up and left them for him. I mean, come on, he had to know I wasn’t going to clean up after him like a maid.

After the second day he realized that it wasn’t a joke, and he did the whole pile along with that day’s dishes, too. Good sport. Sometimes he just needs a little reminding.

My friend Anna came for a visit from Wichita on Tuesday, and Henry just fell in love with her.

He threw himself at her and mauled her and kissed her (well, slobbered on her, but we call that kissing around here) every chance he got, even if the only body part he could grab was her foot.

Here’s another shot of him balancing in between her legs.

We did as much as we could with only two days and a baby in tow – the beer garden, Greek food, Central Park, P.S. 1, and it was a lovely visit, though brief. I’ll close with Henry sleeping in front of Belvedere Castle in Central Park. I know I’m far from impartial, but even his drool is cute!

Henry and I hit the road once again - this time to visit the folks and travel with them to the 1,000 Islands for a Bedor Family Reunion. Traveling with Henry now is like traveling with a different child. He likes to walk up and down the aisles and makes friends, and he sits still for books, and he’ll pull himself to standing on the train seat and explore all the interesting train bits around him. While he’s a long way from entertaining himself, he’s a lot easier to entertain for long periods of time.

We arrived at my parents’ house Wednesday evening, and as a bunch of Battistes were coming on Thursday, we got spiffed up.

While he’s getting a little big for it, Henry loves to take a bath in the kitchen sink where he can drink from the faucet and crawl about.

Henry wore his fancy pants for the Battiste visit (khaki with embroidered frogs on it),

but it was so warm that he lost his pants shortly after everyone arrived, followed by his onesy. While he was a little cranky from the lack of a nap, he wasn’t at all upset by the crowd of people and the noise - a big change from his last visit big visit with the Battistes in March. In fact, I think he was hamming it up for the attention.

Wil kept Henry occupied while we readied ourselves for the drive up north on Friday - about a three-hour drive.

Considering Henry’s limited car seat experience (or car experience for that matter), he did really well on the trip up. Halfway to Wil’s brother Junior’s house (Wil has ten siblings, eight still living. Junior is the oldest), I discovered that Henry has a chip in his front left tooth. I couldn’t believe it! He hasn’t even got a chance to use it yet, and already it’s damaged goods. I don’t know how he chipped it, but I suspect that it resulted from chewing on keys the night before. He likes to clench objects between his teeth and then yank them out of his mouth, and he might have done that with the keys. I let him chew on the keys to keep him quiet during the Battiste visit, but no more keys for the baby! I felt terrible. Teeth # 5 and 6 are already in, and I want to keep them all in pristine condition, at least until they fall out.

We arrived at Junior’s late in the afternoon, just enough time to take a little dip in the lake and eat some tasty food. Junior and Dorothy live right on Lake Ontario, and they have lovely lake-front property. The rock bottom slopes away gently and gradually, and Henry had a blast playing in the water.

At that point, he was still stuck to me a bit (he’s going through some separation anxiety now - something we’ve been working on at the gym childcare, but it’s slow going. My workout routine has taken a bit of a hit.), but was warming up to mom pretty quickly.

Friday wasn’t the official reunion, but a lot of Wil’s family was there already. His niece Barbara (shown here) is a doctor in San Francisco. In the background sitting at the picnic table are his brother-in-law Al and nieces Nancy and Leslie.

That night we stayed at Janine’s beau David’s camp in Clayton. It’s walking distance from the St. Lawrence River. Hank did pretty well sleeping in a strange place. I think he’s getting pretty used to it now!

On Saturday, before we went to the reunion, we drove to the forget-its-name lighthouse, which stands where Lake Ontario meets the river. It’s beautiful country up there, and the water in both the lake and river is clear and clean.

My step-sister Judy and her beau Randy were at Junior’s by the time we arrived. Judy hadn’t yet met Henry, and it was a sweet introduction. Judy works in childcare as a site inspector and she’s truly a baby whisperer. Henry almost fell asleep in her arms.

I’d say there was a good forty people at the reunion. Here’s Dorothy (Junior’s wife) with Wil’s sister Audrey and Dorothy’s daughters Shirley and Nancy.

Here’s Henry making friends with Wil’s brother Freddy and brother-in-law Clyde.

This is Junior, the patriarch, though he passed the reunion-planning torch to Wil for next year.

Jean is Wil’s youngest sister. She’s holding her grandson Morgan.

Both mom and I took advantage of the adult company to sneak away and go for a paddle on Al’s and Tootie’s kayaks. I didn’t stray too far from the coastline. Lake Ontario is too huge for any efforts to make it to the middle.

The next morning, Judy and her daughter Lindsay came to visit us at Dave’s camp before we packed up and drove home.

I really think Hank enjoyed meeting all the new people, especially when he can do all the socializing from the security of mommy’s arms.

We drove through an incredible thunderstorm and arrived home to a power outage. The weather cleared up enough the next day to play in a tub of water on the front lawn.

Henry enjoys his water time, and his naked time. His favorite time is wet, naked walking time.

Second to that, he likes water and dirt time.

On Tuesday, mom and I brought him to Collins park where they have a little lake and a swimming area.

Paul and Linda stopped by later, and Henry taught Paul his new trick of sticking out his tongue (and keeping it out - it was a special look, I’ve got to tell you).

Later that night, we went to visit my friends BJ and Ann who just had their third child three days ago! My friend Dave, who lives in Middletown, was also there. I’m so aggravated that I forgot to take pictures because it was a trip watching Henry play (or attempt to play) with Eva and Jonah, BJ and Ann’s kids, who are 5 and 2, respectively. I also wanted to get a picture of Ann, who is beautiful pregnant (and beautiful not pregnant, too.)

On Wednesday, Hank and I went to visit Karen and Graham. We haven’t seen them since out trip to Florence, and they happened to be entertaining one of Graham’s colleagues who arrived from Florence the night before. I don’t know if you can see it, but Henry is holding his own bottle. That was the first time (and the last time so far.)

By this time, Henry had gotten pretty used to the car seat and was falling asleep in it regularly.

He also developed, while at my folks’ house, a habit of lifting his left fist up to the sky (sort of like a black power salute) to let me know he doesn’t want any more food. (He’s eating cheerios now, and pasta and bits of cheese and bread and potato and mashed up beans and, well, everything). It’s his defensive block. He also tilts his head away. Kind of dramatic, but cute.

He also loves to drink water out of my glass. It’s a wet experience, but he’s trying.

On Thursday, we met my cousin Suzy and her kids at the JCC for a swim meet. My godson Michael was diving and swimming, and his brother Nick was also swimming. Another occasion in which I forgot my camera. Damn. Henry was very well behaved, mostly because he spent most of his time in the kiddie pool.

We left on Friday (the day Henry turned 8 months!), and came home to a fairly clean apartment and a sweet Floyd who missed us. Hank is turning into quite the traveller, and he’s raring to go.

The truth is, raising Hank has been unbelievably difficult. Like health-altering difficult. And it’s not that I haven’t been truthful in my previous blogs, it’s just that I don’t think I really conveyed just how hard the past seven months have been. There was so much that I didn’t blog about, like the premature ventricular contractions (PVCs) I developed during Hank’s first few weeks. It’s a totally benign heart condition related to, in my case, stress and lack of sleep (surprise, surprise). But I didn’t find that out until after some very scary episodes (it feels like my heart is about to explode from big, extra beats) and one EKG, one echocardiogram, one full day with a holter monitor strapped to my chest, and one stress test.

The colic took such a toll that I didn’t fully recover from its effects until months after Henry was free and clear of it. It’s only just recently that my heart doesn’t start racing at the sound of his cry. And it wasn’t that his crying was so distressing; it was just that I didn’t know if it was going to last for four minutes or four hours.

The reason I’m realizing just how hard it was is because I’m finally beginning to see how easy it can be. These last few weeks with Henry have been a friggin’ joy. I mean, he’s been the same baby that he’s been since 4.5 months or so, but my stress levels have finally caught up to that reality. True, he still has some cranky times, and sometimes he gets up multiple times a night, but we have so much fun together and a nice, simple routine. I’m finally thoroughly enjoying motherhood, and the PVC episodes have diminished drastically.

And just today, he’s decided that it’s okay to go to his crib when he’s tired, have a little chat with his blanket, roll around the crib, sing a little song, and put himself to sleep for BOTH naps. He’s been doing that for weeks now at night, but during the day he still needed a little help settling. When he does settle himself, he often ends up in pretty odd positions.

In other news, my friend Jason came for a visit. He’s got the summer off from his job teaching English in China. And while Jason isn’t what you would call very “child-centered,” he still got a kick out of Henry and visa versa. He even picked him up once in a while to give me a hand:

Floyd was very generous and let me play hooky with Jason both Saturday and Sunday nights! Whoo-hoo. And Floyd and Jason both enjoyed baby-free time playing guitar together.

The beautiful Hagenbuch family came for another visit yesterday, though due to my and Claudia’s lazy planning, it was only a short visit after they had some Greek food down at my favorite Astoria restaurant - Agnanti’s.

Stefanie is missing from the picture.  I can’t really describe what beautiful chaos it is to have three adults with four children ages 6, 4, 18 months and 7 months all whooping it up in our living room!

Finally, after a couple of weeks of trying to feed Hank his baby food while sitting on the floor, I finally caved and bought him a high chair. He loves it! I put little broken up pieces of Cheerios on his tray (we’re still not brave enough to try a whole Cheerio), and he scoops them up in between bites of baby food (which I am proud to say I’m making myself - whoohoo, the wonders of a food processor). While he can’t quite get the Cheerios into his mouth, he has fun aiming (and I help him out, too).

I believe here he’s enjoying my gourmet creation of rice cereal and carrots with banana/kiwi/cantaloupe for dessert. If you look closely, you can see the top two!

So last Thursday Floyd, Hank and I packed it up and hit the road. We had an uneventful flight into Wichita, and Hank was so well behaved that a woman sitting across the aisle from us asked me if he is always this good. I told her “no,” but couldn’t help noting the difference between this flight and our last one. Henry has changed so much since Florence.

Michael picked us up in the airport in his newly restored 1950 Ford and drove us to our hotel room.

We put a towel underneath the car seat so as not to damage the upholstery. Henry knew to adopt the “cool and quiet” look to match our transportation.

After visiting with Michael and my friend Jeanine (who lent us the playard she bought for her granddaughter’s visits - a lifesaver, since we slept in four different places in as many nights), Henry and I took a dip in the hotel pool. It was Henry’s first pool experience, and he loved it. It was a gentle introduction - warm and enclosed.

Since we’ve been home I tried again with our neighborhood pool, which is crowded and noisy and the size of four Olympic pools put together. He still enjoys it…as long as there are at least five points of contact between his body and mine.

Marilyn Sue came over after work, and Henry quickly took to his Grandma again. They played so much that Henry must have thought he came to magic fairy baby land.

On Friday, after racing around Wichita to see a few friends, I rented a full-sized car and we all (Floyd, Henry, Marilyn Sue, Sierra and I) piled in and took off for Lamar, Missouri, a town with a street named after Floyd’s grandma’s family - Mayo Street.

We brought a thunderstorm with us when we arrived late at night in Lamar, and Saturday started with gray clouds and rain. Lamar’s a tiny little town, but we managed to find an amazing Mexican restaurant where the four of us had a huge lunch for $20. LOVE the Plains.

It cleared up by the time we got to Floyd’s Great Aunt Justine and Great Uncle Jay’s house. Justine is Floyd’s late Grandma’s sister, and she lives on Mayo Street. Judy, her daughter lives across the street and one of her sons lives down the street. A bunch of other relatives live either on the street or a few blocks away. Such closeness made me miss my family. Judy came over along with her brother Galen (who lives about 20 minutes away in Golden City) and Judy’s son Jared, along with his wife Astra and two daughters. Jay, whose real name is Albert Junior, is a real character. He made me sit on his lap and had Floyd take our picture. I protested, but he told me he made all his daughters-in-law and granddaughters-in-law do it. Astra backed him up on this, so I relented.

He also gave me $20 to go get Hank two pairs of overalls.

Justine fed us pie - coconut cream and chocolate cream, and I think Sierra had two, or maybe three slices.

This was the first time that Floyd had been back in four years, and the first time that Sierra, Henry and I met this branch of the family. Everyone was really sweet, and we all felt right at home.

After visiting with Justine and Jay and their family, we followed Galen back to his house where we met his wife Carla and their grandson Cooper. We also met their daughter Lindsay as we were pulling out and she was pulling in (she lives down the street from her parents.) One thing I can say about these Missouri families - they keep their houses spotless! They’d be shocked if they ever visited our cramped little fourth-floor walk-up! Unfortunately, my camera went dead, so I didn’t get any photos at Galen’s house, but I’m hoping Carla will email some to me.

Our third and final stop that day was at Francine and Shep’s house. Francine is Justine’s sister, the oldest of the three Mayo girls (then came Betty, Floyd’s Grandma, followed by Justine). Justine and Jay also came over so we could all play cards.

Henry, who had a very long day, gave in and passed out on Francine and Shep’s bedroom floor.

Sierra was the candid photographer for the evening. Most of the photos are hers.

Shep (whose real name is Carl Glen) coached me on my first game of Pitch

and Francine made a strawberry pie (Sierra had two slices I think- the girl is hollow). Floyd was my partner, and even though Shep was coaching me, he and Justine still kicked our butts. But there’s always next time.

That night, we stayed at a hotel on Stockton Lake, which was close to Greenfield, the town where Floyd’s grandparents had their farm and where Floyd spent many childhood years.

After sampling the pool at our hotel,

we drove around Stockton Lake park. After all the rain that pelted Missouri this summer, the lake was flooded, as the following pictures of Sies will show. At the beach where we stopped to swim, both the beach and the parking lot were under water.

Hank played in the water, too, and then dried off with his Grammie Sue.

After playing in the lake, we drove through Greenfield to see Floyd’s family’s old farm

and Sue’s land. She held on to five acres of her father’s farm. This town was rural like I’ve never seen - dirt roads intersecting with dirt roads,

parceling off pasture land and farms.

Before we left, we turned down a random dirt road because, as Floyd said, “You haven’t been to Greenfield if you haven’t meandered down a strange dirt road.” We came across an old church that Sue remembered from years back. The grass around it was all overgrown, and it looke like it hadn’t been used for years. But the front door was open and it was all set for its next service - with pews in place and hymn books at the ready.

Even the two pianos were in tune. All they needed to do was sweep out the wasps’ nests and turn on the electricity. Anyplace else this building would have been ransacked. But not in Greenfield. The name of the place was the Sinners’ Union Christian Church. Kind of cool, huh?

On the way home we stopped off and bought some fireworks, then stopped again and lit them off. We got home around 10 pm and I raced off to meet my friend Albert at a bar. We slept at Marilyn Sue’s that night and dreamt of Greenfield’s big, big sky.

We didn’t have much time left on Monday, but what little time we did have we spent with Sierra and Gina. Gina couldn’t come with us because she had to work, so we all enjoyed a little relaxation time at home before getting back on that plane.

Once we returned home, I could tell that Hank missed spending all that time with his family, especially his daddy. He was very clingy, which got a little tiresome, but he rewarded me with another milestone - pulling himself up to standing in his crib.

He’ll have so much more to show his Grammie Sue, Aunt Gina and big sister when he sees them again.