Barnabas Monkeypants

Henry woke up crying last night at 10:30.

At first, we didn’t know what was causing him such unhappiness. I suspected he was still sore over his father’s alma mater’s recent exit in the men’s college basketball tournament, but then we remembered that he’s not really a hoops fan. We then thought he was hungry, but neither Kristen nor a bottle (which is a real second fiddle to what she has to offer) made him any less crabby.

So we changed him. (His diaper was pretty clean, so that wasn’t the problem.) And we did some singing. (He did not care for anything with spiders going up water spouts.) And we did our fair share of dancing and jiggling. (This led to brief half-smiles, but not for a long time.)

But still Henry cried. We were all getting a bit worried, because this was unprecedented. Yes, he’s cried in the past, but when it’s at night, it’s usually a food or poop issue, and neither were the culprit this time.

Not knowing what to do, we just kept on singing and jiggling, all the while I was sweating like mad. You see, we live in a building with radioator heat. This is usually pretty good in the winter, because it makes the place nice and toasty when it’s cold and miserable outside. But in the spring and fall, there’s always odd issues, because the heat comes on when a certain temperature outside is reached and also the average of all 6 units inside is below another number. (I have no clue what those numbers are.)

So last night, I was warm. (Kristen was fine, seeing she has only about 4 tablespoons of blood in her body, and is usually cold in every situation.) And in trying to get to bed at a normal hour, I had spent the last 30 minutes running around, helping Kristen pick up the place, do dishes, fold laundry, and brush my teeth (which is always quite strenuous).

Add to that a warm baby (he was in his sleep sack and, as he was crying, he was emitting a lot of heat), and I was dying. So he was unhappy, I was grumpy (I get that way when I’m overheated), and Kristen was worried.

Henry eventually calmed down enough that, as I was holding him, Kristen held the bottle up to his mouth and he was kind enough to drink a little bit and stop crying. (This was a funny scene because I’m quite a bit taller than Kristen and it’s never easy to get a bottle into a squirming baby’s mouth.) Then Kristen balanced the bottle on my shoulder (to let him finish) and jumped into bed and got ready to feed him some more.

After he finished the small bottle, I transferred him to Kristen’s lap where he again started crying. This was horrible. We thought thought the tears were over for the night. But just as the wails were going to turn into shrieks, Henry farted.

It was a long fart. It was a loud fart. It was a fart that, if the cats had been on the bed, would’ve driven them to run for cover.

But it was also a fart that made Henry calm down so quickly that in only a couple of minutes, he was fast asleep.

So it wasn’t hunger or basketball or a soiled diaper that was making him cry for 45 minutes. It was gas.

That’s our baby.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 30th, 2009 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Barnabas, Health. 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.