The Joker
I love that Henry is a happy baby. He’s constantly smiling, hamming it up for one and all. I’ve heard horror stories from some parents about their babies being grumpy or crabby or angry or surly (or any of the other dwarves), and while our son has his moments with all these emotions (sometimes all at once), for the most part, it’s laughter and puppy dogs in the Cheli household.
And this is a good thing. I think I can speak for both Kristen and me in that we’d much prefer him to be as he is than be a curmudgeon.
Except for when he’s happy at 3 in the morning.
As I’ve written before, Henry’s nighttime sleeping pattern goes something like this: off to sleep at 6:30, wake up for an early-morning snack and diaper change around 3, and another arousing at 6 to start his day with a cup of coffee and a danish (or breast milk).
(Side note: While this schedule has been Henry’s standard snooze schedule for well over a month, the past week has been challenging to say the least. No more sleeping straight until 3. Now he’s up at midnight. Or even 10:30. This, my dear readers, is not a good thing at all. Hopefully this is just a phase, part of his 4-month-sleep-regression, and after he gets over this little hump, he’ll start to let his dear mother and father have a bit longer uninterrupted sleep.)
(Another side note: I write a lot of side notes.)
So, back to Henry. He wakes up one of two ways. The first way (and the much scarier of the two) is a couple of really loud screams. Out of nowhere. Kristen and I could be all the way in the other side of our place and — baby monitor or no — we’ll be able to hear him wailing. This usually means that he has a huge gas bubble stuck in his innards, and a quick burping can usually do the trick (at least to have him stop screaming). Sometimes, if he’s in the mood, he’ll even go back to sleep.
The other way (and the much more common) is this slow, gradual waking that starts with some quiet whimpers (usually about a minute apart), then some quiet crying, and, if we don’t get there soon enough, real cries. Here, too, he can sometimes be consoled back to sleep (circular rubs on his tummy, a kiss on the forehead), but mostly this means he’s ready to wake up.
Here’s the thing. When he’s waking up, he sounds terrible. These whimpers are not pleasant. The cries are pure misery. If he could talk, you know he’d be yelling to whomever would listen, “My parents hate me and force me to take naps and go to bed at a reasonable hour, oh, woe is me and my dirty diaper!”
When we eventually get over to his crib (very quickly during the day; sort of slowly at 3 in the morning), and here’s where it gets rough. Expecting to see a child near tears, instead we find a smiling baby. Smiling!
How dare he toy with our emotions like that?
And, moreso, how dare he do this at 3 in the morning? When he wakes up, ready to eat, I’ll walk over and unswaddle him while Kristen gets all of her pillows positioned around her. (All done extremely slowly, too.) Neither of us are at our best at this time. There are no coos for the baby. No funny faces. No attempts to start playing.
But Henry, he’s doing all those things. “Yah, yah, yah,” he’ll say to me, smiling. Squirm, squirm, squirm. Grab, grab, grab. His eyes are wide open; mine are slits.
I’ll pick him up and bring him to Kristen. After I’ve safely given her the baby for his feeding, I’ll fall back to sleep for about ten minutes, dreaming of large feather beds, waking only to the sound of Henry having a bowel movement and Kristen cheering him on. “Yay poop.” This is my cue to get up and get Henry, change him, reswaddle him, and put him back in the crib.
Now you’d think that after a nice meal, a clean diaper, and a warm wrap, he’d be ready to go back to sleep. But no. More squirms. More smiles. More yah-yahs.
Darn you, baby! Get sleepy! No playtime!
So I try and fool him. I frown. I yawn. I look at my wrist, where a watch would be if I wore one, noting that it’s still so early. Most of the time he catches on, and by the time I’m back in bed (Kristen’s pillows arranged now for sleeping), Henry will be calming down, getting ready to fall back asleep.
Smiling, of course.
