Phineas

One of the things Henry loves the most are the bells. The BYU Carillon Bells, to be exact. Most days, he says "Go a walk, see a bells?" And so after dinner, just before bedtime usually, we load him, his "blank," some juice, some goldfish, and a water bottle for us up on the buggy and head down to campus to visit the bells. We try to plan our excursion so we arrive at the base of the bells just a few minutes before they go off. Which means, most of the time, we hear the bells toll for 8 o'clock. We go rain, snow, sunshine--whenever we feel like going for a walk, we just go.

Some time, a few years ago, Derek and I decided to name the largest bell on the tower. I'm sure the actual bell ringer people have a name for it, but we chose the name Phineas. Why that name, you ask? Well, if you know anything about Brigham Young, you know that his brother's name was Phineas. And that Phineas was pretty instrumental in getting Brigham to read the Book of Mormon and join the Church. We decided Brigham would be pretty happy about us naming such an important piece of BYU property after his brother. So there you go.

Over the last month or so, Henry has picked up on the name. He asks to go hear Phineas quite a bit, and gets really excited when he can hear him. "Phin-eee-as!" he says, as though it were three short words. Sometimes, instead of asking to go walk by the bells, he will ask if we can go hear Phineas. It makes us smile, every time.

Once, we were walking by the base of the bells before dinner. I was really hungry (surprise surprise) but Henry just didn't want to leave. We were trying to convince him to go with us to get food from the Creamery, but he was not about to leave the bells and the ducklings that live there. Suddenly, the bells went off "Oh," Derek said, "Phineas said it's time for Mommy to go eat! We better go."

"Ok," Henry said, "Phin-ee-as, said, Mommy eat. Time a go." And he was happy with that.

Now, if you ask Henry what Phineas said, he will usually say "Time Mommy to eat." It makes me laugh, because about every hour, it is time for Mommy to eat.

With all the baby ducklings at the waterfall/pond at the base of the bell tower, Henry has an added measure of excitement when we arrive. He loves to chase them around, clutching his blanket and speaking to them in the sweetest little baby voice. He gets very excited when they go in to the water, as they always "take a bath" when we are there. He has chased a mother and her ducklings from one side of the lawn all the way to the other, hoping he could catch them just for a second! Derek and I have to keep pretty close tabs on him, because sometimes the mama ducks get a bit defensive of their babies. Luckily no duck bites yet!

Most evenings, we make the trek down to campus and walk by the bells. It's so relaxing, Henry loves it, and we love spending time just the three of us. We sometimes take food for the ducklings, which Henry ends up eating and not feeding them, but usually we just go and wander around until the bells ring. I love how big his smile gets when the bells go off and how he always says "Bye bells! See ya later!" whenever we leave. I love that when he hears the bells from our house that he gets excited and almost immediately asks to go for a walk to see them. They've become part of our family, really, and I'm grateful we live close enough to make these memories with him.

I can't wait for him to show Little Brother the bells--something we've been talking about lately. I'm sure it will continue to be a fun family walk for us for months to come.



**these photos are from a few weeks ago, taken with my phone.