Barnabas Monkeypants

What a week. Kristen and I were sick, I was in New Jersey for three days (which made me sicker), and Henry continued to grow way too fast. On Wednesday night, I ate a terrible meal at the (five star) Secaucus Houlihan’s, my sinuses completely clogged up. As I chewed the over-cooked hamburger, I couldn’t breathe out of my nose, so I had to gasp for air between gulps, just as Henry had done a few days earlier. (My dinner mates were pleased, I’m sure, that I chose not to cry every time I couldn’t breathe as Henry did last week.)  I’ve been away from him and Kristen before, but this was such bad timing, with all of us being sick and all. And I couldn’t wait to get on that plane.

When I got home last night from the airport, he was already asleep, so I didn’t get to give him hugs until his late-night/early-morning feeding, but when he woke up and saw me standing over his crib, I don’t know who was more excited, him or me. (He squirmed around a bit; I just smiled.)

As I’ve said, part of my job involves me traveling, and Kristen and I both understand it, but as I look at my upcoming schedule and I see six different trips in March, April, and May, and I’m dreading it.

Hopefully by then we’ll all be well again.

So what else did we learn this week?

We learned that Henry’s movements — previously flails and wild grabs — are now much more purposeful. He’s reaching for things and grabbing them, but not necessarily things that are offered to him. Now, he sees things, things that he wants to hold or put in his mouth, and he’ll get it. This also has brought out a bit of frustration on his part because now, more than ever before, he’ll not be able to do everything that he wants to, that his body has just not yet ready to do (ie, crawling, walking, picking up chicks).

But it’s great to see, and it’s great to see him get excited when he does figure something out.

We learned that Henry can now stand on his own… well, leaning up against something. This is a monumental thing, and something that we’d just rather he not do. He’s too young! As exciting as this may be, I just can’t write about it any more. Too young!

We learned that Costco’s diapers are… okay. Henry has moved from size 2 to size 3, and to commemorate it we switched from Pampers to the cheaper brand. They’re not as soft and nice-smelling and instead of Sesame Street characters there’s some random cartoon cat, but they’re good enough. And they do what they’re made to, namely keeping the nasty stuff in its place and not on the changing table or on his clothes.

And we learned that Henry is just at the right size and weight so that holding him and carrying him and hugging him just feels great. If there’s such a thing as a perfect baby size, Henry’s there.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 30th, 2009 at 9:30 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.