Barnabas Monkeypants

A few exciting things happened this weekend.

First off, we had our first overnight guest since Henry was born. Kristen’s father graced us with his presence and was immediately smitten with our son (who my sister is now referring to as Prince Henry, a name that certainly fits). The thing is, Henry knows how to play to an audience. If he sees someone cooing at him — BOOM — he turns on the charm with a big smile here, a coy smirk there. If your eyes, for whatever reason, stray from his delicate personage, he’ll start doing his monkey-like grunts (“uh, uh, uh”) until you again give him your full attention.

Hopefully this will continue throughout his life. This will certainly get him out of parking tickets, library fines, and any punishment Kristen and I choose to dole out. (“That’s a time out for you, young man!” *bats eyes* “Oh, who am I kidding! Have a cookie instead!”)

Another exciting thing that happened was that we had our first baby-sitting situation and neither Kristen nor I had a heart attack. On Friday, Kristen drove out to the airport to pick up her father, and our neighbor Lillian watched Henry for nearly an hour and a half. That’s right: at one point both Kristen and I were not within five miles of Henry, and we both survived. This is a momentous situation. You have to realize that for the first couple of weeks one of us was in the same room as Henry at all times. (Really. We moved the co-sleeper from room to room just so we could watch him sleep and groan and move his arms.) I can’t speak for Kristen, but I think I’m now emotionally strong enough to send him off to college.

Third up is clothing. Henry is now almost 7 weeks old (that’s 1 week in dog years), and in that time, he’s only ever worn onesies or pajamas. It was always just the easiest thing to put on him. Not too many snaps. Friendly sleeves. Happy legs. But on Sunday we ventured into the netherworld. That is, of course, pants. Overalls, to be exact. And the thing is, while it did make for a bit more work when changing him, he was just so darn cute in the things. So we dealt with the extra 348 snaps and went with it, and it was worth the extra 10 minutes it took to change his diaper.

This is what I deal with, people, every day. Snaps. Countless snaps.

Finally, the Boppy. If you’re a recent parent, you’ll know all about the Boppy,  a curved pillow that is very helpful while breastfeeding or when you just want to have your baby sleep next to you but your arms are just too darn tired to hold him. (Believe me, your arms get tired pretty quickly when you’re carrying around a 10-pound ham all day.) Well, in the morning, when Henry is his most gregarious, we sit him up in the Boppy, and we dance. Of course, dancing with a 6-week-old is mostly just waving his arms and feet around, but he loves it. He smiles, he “oh’s” (that is when his mouth makes a perfect circle and his eyes get big and wide), he flaps his arms around, and he kicks his frog legs.

This is fun. Really fun. Finally, he’s starting to play with us and make serious eye contact and dance in his own infant sort of way. We’ll sing to him (usually songs about poop, because, as they tell you, connect with your audience to what they know the best), and he’ll coo back.

After about 15 minutes, he gets a bit tired and overstimulated, so we slow down and let him stare at the ceiling fan (his true love). If all else fails and he, like his dad, he can’t get a date for the senior prom, his fallback will be the bedroom ceiling fan.

He can charm even inanimate objects, you see.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 6th, 2008 at 9:42 pm and is filed under Barnabas, Kristen, Poop. 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.