I’ve been home with Holden for a week now.  It is absolutely wonderful!  We have been having such a blast together—I am so grateful that we have the chance to spend the next 3 months together.  This week we’ve gone on many outings to the park and library, plus a special trip to his school to take cookies for his classmates.  We’ve weeded our flower beds, gone for bikes rides in the driveway, painted, baked, played guitar, and danced to music.  Holden is starting to give up his naps entirely (he only naps about 20% of the time these days).  Last night we had movie night—we let him stay up late and watch an animated movie while eating popcorn and snuggling on the couch.

Some of Holden’s newest words are “ecosystem,” “angst,” and “privacy,” which is usually uttered as he shuts the bathroom door.  I tried to transition Holden back into cloth diapers for the summer (I had given up cloth diapering when I returned to work in September because I just couldn’t keep up with it)—but Holden wants nothing to do with the cloth diapers.  So I am giving them up.  I guess I should be happy that I cloth diapered almost exclusively for the first 14 months of his life.  I am proud of that accomplishment, but feel guilty when the garbage can piles up with disposable diapers destined for a landfill.

Incredibly funny things that Holden has said recently:

“Not too bad…..” typically uttered with tears streaming down his cheeks, most recently during the concluding snips of a long overdue haircut.  It’s his little way of reassuring himself that he will, in fact, survive such hardships as watching a loud train go through the center of town, brushing his teeth, or enduring a diaper change.

When reading to himself, or otherwise playing with his toys, he’ll exclaim “Good job, Holden!”  So self-congratulatory, already.

When asking “Do you want to read another book, or not?” Holden will sometimes reply “Not.”  This is funny mostly because he sounds so sarcastic when he says it.

Yesterday, when I was sitting on the ground weeding our flower bed and Holden was pushing his little bike across the driveway, he turned to me and gave me a look that said “I hate to break this to you, Mom….”

He then said to me, “Bye-bye Mama.”  Then he waited for my reaction.

I asked “Where are you going?”

He replied with a smirk:  “Restaurant!”

I asked “How are you going to get there?”

“Bike!” he exclaimed.

“What are you going to eat at the restaurant?”

“French fries and chocolate milk!” he declared in the most rebellious and conspiratorial air I’ve ever heard.

I laughed at his ambition, and he seemed surprised that I found it funny.  I am sure that the next week with Holden will bring a wealth of new material that will inspire laughter and appreciation that we have such a funny little person living with us in our home.