Barnabas Monkeypants

We are — well, Kristen and I — running on about 5 hours of sleep today. That routine I wrote about yesterday? Yeah, well, so much for that. At around 2:30 last night (or this morning, to be exact) Henry woke up for his normal middle-of-the-night feeding and made the executive decision that he wasn’t going to be going back to sleep any time soon. That bill was vetoed at 4:00, and he finally fell asleep.

We then had to wake up at 6:30 to go to work and other appointments, meaning that we’re both zombies. (Well, I am. I think Kristen was able to take a quick nap when Henry did the same this afternoon, so while she’s still a member of the undead, her flesh isn’t decaying at the rate mine is.)

Although that sounds like a complaint, it’s really not. It’s more of a “these are the things that new parents have to deal with, and we’re dealing with them.” My and Kristen’s patience (something we’ll both admit not to having as much as we’d like) has been, if I say so myself, really great. It’s easy to get frustrated at times, especially when Henry is inconsolable and you just don’t know why, but instead we’ve grinned and beared it, and just hugged him more or burped him more or rubbed his tummy more.

And sometimes… it works.

So what have we learned this past week as Henry just turned 21 days old.

We learned that the newborn diapers no longer can withstand his powerful flow, and that we’ve now gone from the N (for newborn) size Pampers to the 1 size. (We still have about 2 dozen newborns left. I think we may keep them for when Cecil gets too drunk and is unable to go to the bathroom on his own.)

We learned that bringing Henry into the bed on a lazy Sunday morning and watching as he sleeps between us is one of the most amazing things ever. It’s even more amazing when you can pull him toward your body and feel his warmth and hear his breathing and smell his hair.

We learned that tummy time has taken a turn for the better (how about that alliteration) because Henry is now able to hold his head up for about 10 seconds. He wants nothing more than to push his whole body up and have a good look around. He’ll be standing in less than a month. I guarantee.

We learned that sometimes when you’re holding him and you want him to stare into your eyes just as you’re staring into his that he’d rather look at the ceiling fan. But that’s okay.

We learned that our downstairs neighbor Lillian taking Henry for a walk on Monday and Friday mornings (therby giving Kristen 45 minutes of alone time) is more therapeutic than any psychotropic drug (not that we take those, but you get the idea).

We learned that when Kristen asks, “How are you doing?” when you have a baby asleep in your lap, his hands gripping your fingers tightly, the answer will always be, “Better than I had ever imagined”.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 11th, 2008 at 4:13 pm and is filed under What We've Learned. 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.