Barnabas Monkeypants

Every time I look at Henry, something is new.

His eyes look a little different. His chin. His legs are a little chubbier, his toes are a little longer.

Instead of staring into what seems like nothingness, he stares back at me. He makes funny faces and even funnier noises.

If my face gets too close (and it often is because it’s the easiest way to take a good whiff of his wonderful smell), he grabs onto my glasses and pulls them off.

His cries when he’s hungry or cold or hot are a little more defined, and while it’s difficult to always understand what he’s getting at, Kristen and I are much more attuned to trying to make him as happy and content as possible.

And it kills me — just kills me — that I’m missing so much of it.

Friday was my first day back a work, a wasted day because I had absolutely nothing to do all day (except to tell my co-workers about how wonderful Henry is). But I knew that I would be back home very soon, where I could try and make Kristen’s day a little better (food? water? a treat?), throw a load into the washer, and take Henry and hold onto him for a couple of hours. And then I could do it on Saturday and Sunday, uninterrupted.

But today, it’s not just 8 hours away from this. It’s 8 hours, and then tomorrow another 8, and then another 8, and so on and so on.

And now I’m afraid that I’m going to miss something very important. And it’s killing me.

* * * * *

Friday for Kristen wasn’t easy. Henry — for much of the weekend actually — wanted to be held constantly, or at least be able to fall asleep in the arms of mommy or daddy. When there are two of us around, that’s not such a bad thing, because one person can hold him and comfort him (and smell him — don’t forget that), but when Kristen’s by herself, she’s trapped.

You have to hold in that pee because he doesn’t want to be put down in his crib. Or hold off another 20 minutes to get something to eat because he just needs that much more time to fall deeply asleep so you can make yourself a sandwich.

Luckily, this weekend Kristen mastered the sling that we bought a few months ago, so she can, if needed, cozy him up to her (so he can still smell her and feel her heartbeat) and still have her arms free. Hopefully that will help and allow her to be a bit more mobile.

* * * * *

Sunday morning we gave Henry his first bath. We’ve wiped him down many times before (and he smells so nice afterwards), but now with his umbilical cord fallen away, he’s allowed to be under water. He didn’t really like it all that much, but I think it’s more of a new thing freaking him out a bit as opposed to being a bad thing that he just doesn’t like.

I took pictures, but I’ll have to put them up later so I can pixilate his doodle out of the photos. We are nothing if not chaste here in Barnabas Monkeypants-land.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 8th, 2008 at 9:52 am and is filed under Barnabas, Kristen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.