Barnabas Monkeypants

Yesterday morning, I woke up (along with a crying baby) at 6:15 and managed to roll out of bed by 6:30. Barely an hour later, I was out the door on my way to the train. I walked through the door again at 5:54, and, after a fun evening of trying to limit the wails from Henry, we were all in our separate beds by 10:15.

That means I saw my son, my beautiful baby, for barely 5 1/2 hours. This just isn’t enough. I don’t really know what to do about this, and I’m not going to make any huge decisions right now, but things are going to have to change.

I can’t take the chance of missing so many important things.

That somewhat depressing thought out of the way, what have we learned this past week?

We learned that what makes him calm and happy one day (car rides, the sling, bouncing in daddy’s lap) can make him scream the next. Making him happy has no rhyme or reason, and everything is on the fly.

We learned that things that we thought were completely ridiculous and unnecessary and mocked are actually a godsend. By this, of course, I mean the wipe warmer. Such is a thing for those silly parents who go out and buy every possible accessory offered at Babies ‘r’ Us. Right? Wrong. Henry does not care one bit for the cold touch of an unheated wipe, but will coo happily when we clean him with something toasty.

We learned that on some days, Henry’s in his best mood at around 7:24 in the morning. On those days, however, it’s all downhill from there.

We learned that he’s now a master at mimicking Kristen and me. We’ll open our mouths wide, and sure enough, Henry will open his. We’ll stick out our tongue, and out will come Henry’s. We’ll smile, and he’ll smile. We’re hoping he’ll soon be able to throw his voice.

We learned that the four-week growth spurt is often accompanied by lots and lots of general unhappiness.

We learned that while baby clothes with footies are really, really cute, they can often be a real pain in the butt when trying to put them back on in the middle of the night.

And we learned that every day his cheeks and legs get a little chubbier, and it takes greater strength for both Kristen and I not to devour them. They should be on the menu of every top restaurant in the city.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 18th, 2008 at 9:47 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.