The little helper

In the last post, I told you all about the negative helper. Well, he was in his prime this week since we had a big project going on that involved lots of tools, noise, and men. We built a deck. Boy, was he involved and in the middle of it all!

Here is a picture of the deck project:

And here are a few videos of the negative helper:

So deck building went late into the night and around 7:30, I made the mistake of attempting to take Hank inside for a bath, dinner, and bedtime. This did not work. Hank became completely hysterical when I brought him inside. He wouldn't eat. He fought me on the bath and he kept crying and pointing to the back door. So I did what any good mother would do...I gave in. No bath. No bedtime. And Hank ate Dino Buddies outside in the backyard between hammering and measuring the deck.

fun with Uncle John

Today Hank and I made chocolate chip cookies and as if he has some kind of super nose, Uncle John walked in just as they were coming out of the oven. Amazing. Anyway, Uncle John lets Hank get away with all kinds of stuff, like sitting up on the counter and eating too many chocolate chip cookies. Here is some video of Hank and Uncle John playing a really fun game that never seems to get old. You may need to turn down your volume because Hank hits some high notes on one of these!

the negative helper

We're in the process of trying to get our house on the market this weekend and have been knee deep in house projects all week. Hank loves house projects. He loves to help. However, we refer to him as the negative helper. Jason will gather all his tools, go to some spot in the house, and start working on a project. Well, Hank is right there, ready to help! Except Hank projects aren't the same as Jason projects and every time Jason turns around to find his hammer or his tape measure, Hank has disappeared with the needed object. Hank loves tape measures and hammers. He's very good with them too. He holds up the tape measure against something and pulls out the tape, then he mumbles to himself, puts down the tape measure, picks up the hammer, and begins to hammer that spot (this upsets mommy and makes daddy very proud). Then when he's hammered enough, he's back to measuring, mumbling, then hammering again. This would all be very cute, if he wasn't hammering my newly wallpapered bathroom and if Jason wasn't always having to stop his projects to go find his tools. We bought Hank plastic tools, but he immediately was on to the fact that they weren't "real" tools and kept trading them out for Daddy's tools.

The Hank Report will be back...later!

I'll be better about updating. It's been a busy week! Check back later on!

97 degrees and rising

One of the nice things about Oregon is the temperate climate. We usually max out around 80 in the summer, but mostly sit in the mid 70s with no humidity. It's really, really nice and makes up for the lousy winters. However, today it hit 97 and since almost nobody in Oregon has air conditioning, it's pretty miserable. My friend, Kelly, invited Hank and I out to her place today to play in the kiddie pool with her son, Matteo. I wish I could post all kinds of fun pics of Hank and Matteo splashing around in the pool, however, I forgot my camera. So instead I'll just post some pictures of Hank when we got back to the house. We're scheduled to go out again next Tuesday, so I promise I'll remember the camera next week. (I know, I know, a Hank blog doesn't do much good if I don't remember the camera....we're back where we started with no pics....)





So in the evening, Jason does push-ups. Hank also does push-ups, but needs to work on his form a little. Sometimes he gets tired and just rolls over. We need to work on that. Here's Hank doing push ups with Daddy.

After push-ups, Hank has dinner. Here's his dinner for tonight- dino bites and zuchini. My father taught me that presentation is everything.

And after dinner, we clean up. Hank is very good at loading and unloading the dishwasher. We believe in child labor around our house. You should see him work the dustbuster. He's amazing. I'll get that on video next time we clean the house....which could be days or even weeks from now...

So I'm getting pretty good at this if I do say so myself. Pictures AND video. My mother must be absolutely out of her mind right now with so much Hank overload!!!!

Hank has a big zuchini!

In Oregon, everthing is big. The trees, the mountains, even our fruit and vegetables. Below you will see Hank with a zuchini that we picked today out of Lynden's garden. Lynden makes wonderful zuchini bread and we'll probably get 10 loaves out of this zuchini alone. There were many more.

Hank scraped his toe on a rock while we were watering the garden today (The Brown's went away for two weeks, so we are looking after the garden). He didn't act like it hurt too much, but he was very interested in the scrape and kept pointing at it and looking at me. I washed it off and left it alone. Hank wants everyone to look at his boo boo. We went to Safeway and Hank showed his toe to the lady at the checkout stand. Then he showed his toe to the man in line behind us. We all discussed Hank's toe and that made Hank very happy.

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Hank is VERY advanced for his age....

Today I gave Hank some markers so we could color.

He was far more interested in sucking on the marker.....

Go Beavers!!

Can you feel it in the air? Can you smell it? Are you excited? Well Hank is. It's time for football! Fall practice started today for the Beavers and Hank and I were right there on the field watching. It was a light practice, nothing too hard. Hank was very interested in all of it though. He cheered when someone would throw the ball and he cheered whether or not it was caught. So at least he made everyone feel good. He really liked the linemen's practice drills since they just kept hitting each other. I had to hold on tight to him because he wanted to run right out there and hit with them! Luckily for me, Hank's only 2 and can't understand the F-word because defensive line coach used that word a LOT and he used it LOUDLY. We may have to come up with a solution for that in the future because Hank repeats EVERYTHING he hears right now. So far though, he hasn't repeated the defensive line coach's favorite word.

Thank god for technology

So I'm a lousy mom when it comes to taking pictures of my kid and sending them out to family and friends. My friend Lacy sends out new pictures IN THE MAIL of her daughters every month or so. Not only does she actually make the effort to write a note, stick it in an envelope and mail it to all of her family and friends, but the pictures are always professional grade. Her daughters are actually clean and their hair is done and they wear pretty dresses. It must be nice to have daughters. We have Hank. He's rarely clean and his clothes are even harder to keep clean. His hair usually has some sort of food in it. He's definitely picture-quality cute, but we are usually chasing him and rarely have an opportunity to pose him for a photo. Anyway, I got tired of getting notes from Lacy saying, "send pictures!" and I got tired of my parents bugging me to "send pictures!" and as I was reading one of my friends blogs, it came to me! I'll create a Hank blog and easily be able to update his pictures and the latest stories and then I'll never be in trouble again for not sending pictures! Ha! Take THAT Lacy. I bet Molly and Lindsay don't have THEIR own blog! Hmmmm...seems that Mommy of the Month award may be slipping from your grasp....

In all seriousness, this is just a simple blog to update the family on what Hank is up to. We're not crazy parents who think the world can't wait to log in every day and see what Hank did, although you know who you are out there who will be logging in every day.....(grandparents, GAGM...) We just figured this is a good way to get some pictures and funny stories out there for those who are interested. So stay tuned......FOR THE HANK REPORT!