Barnabas Monkeypants

Henry has several “faces,” each one better than the last.

There is, of course, the smile face (not to be confused with just a regular smile). The smile face is when his open, smiling mouth takes up his entire head. This usually results in both Kristen and I also having huge smiles appear out of nowhere. (I love this face.)

There’s also the concentration face, where he looks at something and is determined to figure out how to a) put it in his mouth or b) put it in his mouth right now.

We have the extactic face, which is usually when he’s standing up, looking around, and just being elated that he’s that much closer to the rock-art cat or the fish mobile that hangs above his changing table.

And we have the surprise face, which happens after he’s done something so amazing, so miraculous (to him at least) that he can’t believe it actually happened.

That one occurred this morning when he rolled over for the first time. This morning, I gently roused Henry out of his slumber at around 6:30, and we played on the bed for a while. (I love this time of the day, because now, when Henry wakes up, he’s willing to play instead of immediately wanting to eat. This gives us some good dad-son time.) I propped him on his stomach and, after a few lunges, he rolled over.

Now, I was very excited about this, but I couldn’t call it a true roll-over because, as I’ve mentioned earlier, our bed is so terrible, so lumpy, so full of hills and valleys, you could lay down on the bed and roll over without even trying. (Sleeping in this bed is not unlike being on a boat, there’s so much movement.)

So I carried him to his room, where I placed a blanket on the ground. I plopped him down on his stomach and watched and waited. He started to reach for things. He balled up the blanket. He shoved his fist into his mouth. He smiled at Kristen. And then… he rolled.

Thud.

It wasn’t particularly graceful, and he bonked his head a little bit (not enough to hurt him, but I could tell he didn’t like it), but there he was, suddenly on his back when just moments before he was on his stomach.

And that surprised face came out. “Wah-la-woo-duh-duh,” he said, which, roughly translated means, “Dad, what the hell just happened here?” And then he smiled and smiled and wanted to do it again. So he did, and everyone got hugs and kisses.

I have to admit that sometimes I get worried when Henry doesn’t hit all of those milestones at the low end of the estimate. Babies start rolling over from 3 to 6 months, and when 4 months came and went and he still wasn’t doing it, I panicked.

(This keeps me up at night, you know.)

He’s well ahead in other areas (he can stand on his own if he’s leaning against something, he’s doing a very strange scooting movement, and he can sit up without help), but I, of course, can only look at the negative and worry. This is something I have to change about me, because I’m pretty sure that Henry’s going to be doing all of these things at his own pace, daddy’s ulcer be damned.

So, one less thing for me to worry about.

What else did we learn this week?

We learned that Henry can point at things that he likes, especially his rock art cat. (He’ll point at Kristen and me as well, but I think he likes the cat better.)

We learned that Henry can’t stop moving on the changing table. Getting Henryinto clean diapers and clothes used to be pretty easy. He would be very cooperative and allow us to put his pajamas on or his pants, and wait until everything was done to start squirming. Not any more. Arms and legs go flailing. Back arches. Hands ball up into a fist (usually as they’re halfway in the arm of his shirt). We ask him nicely if he would just calm down a minute so we can finish putting that last sock on, but he’s really not been in the mood to comply with our wishes.

We learned that Henry’s much more aggressive in playing with his toys. What I mean is, he knows what each thing does — rattles, squeaks, plays “Old MacDonald” — and goes after each toy with real purpose. No more just banging his hands on things; now he now spins the globe and pulls on the star and shakes the rattle.

And we learned that we’re going to have to buy him shoes very soon. I’ve read in a thousand places that babies don’t need shoes until they start walking, and generally I agree with that. And while Henry’s still a couple of months (weeks?) away from walking, he stands constantly (to the detriment of sitting and rolling over, I’ll say), and it’s not so easy to stand in stocking feet on hardwood floors. He’ll be up there, leaning against me or Kristen or the dresser, and whoah, there goes the feet, splaying in opposite directions. So I’ll straighten him out and he’ll be okay for another 5 or 10 seconds until, whoah, there he goes again.

Some of his socks have rubber stripes on the bottom, but that just assumes that he hasn’t pulled his socks completely around so the rubber is now on the top of his foot and not the bottom. So, breaking with one of the “rules”, Henry will be getting something with a little traction. Hopefully Zips.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 11:14 am 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.