Barnabas Monkeypants

We can all agree with this: babies learn things in steps. Usually, they’re small steps. Often, we adults don’t even realize that these babies (Henry specifically) are on their way to doing something new until they do it in front of us. But probably in the days and weeks leading up to that point, they’ve been practicing small parts of it over and over and over again.

This is a terrific thing, and one of the things that I love most about Henry.

The only big problem arises when Henry half-learns something, gets stuck, doesn’t know how to get out of this new and precarious situation, and goes a bit nuts.

For example, he’s been rolling around like a Whirling Dervish for weeks now (note to self: remember to get Henry a fez), and sometimes, after coming to rest on his stomach, he’ll pull himself up on his hands and straighten out his arms. (This is sort of the like the upward facing dog position in yoga.) This is all well and good and it gives him a clear view of everything happening around him, but he tends to get stuck there and is unable or unwilling (it is a far drop) to get out of that position.

So he’ll start to whine and, if we’re not responsive in 5 seconds, whine louder, and, if there is still no response, cry. Getting out of this prediciment is easy, right? Just bend your arms at the elbow and lower yourself down. Tell that to a seven-month-old.

My mother likes to tell a story about how one day I learned how to pull myself up in my crib. She had put me to sleep, only to hear me crying a few minutes later. She came up to my room to find me standing there, in tears, holding myself up on the rail of the crib. So she hugged me, kissed me on my forehead, and placed me back down in the crib. A few minutes later, I was crying again and, when she came back to the room, she found me standing there unable to get down. So she helped me out, gave the requisite kiss and hug, and went off.

That went on a couple more times, me crying and my mother rescuing me, until she thought that, eventually I’d figure out what to do. That’s how you learn, right? Of course, I start crying again, but my mother figured I’d learn how to get down and she let me go. I cried for a few minutes, my mother feeling horrible listening. (Listening to your own child cry is a terrible, terrible feeling.)

But eventually I stopped crying.

Soon after, my mother went to check on me and there I was, asleep, standing up! Of course she felt terrible, but, really, what else was there to do? Even though I didn’t teach myself how to get down, I did teach myself how to fall asleep standing up.

Back to Henry. Last night (in the middle of the night, actually) he woke up, rolled onto his stomach, stretched out his arms, and got stuck. He started to cry, so I went to his crib, put his arms down by his side, and he fell back asleep. Until a few minutes later when he did it again. And (just like my mother 36 years earlier) I went back in and helped him out. And he did it again.

And just like my mother, I eventually let him cry himself to sleep.

So when I went back into his room to check on him (mind you, this is at 2 in the morning, so I want some sympathy myself), he was asleep on his stomach resting on his elbows! His elbows!

If it wasn’t 2 in the morning, I would’ve felt terrible, too.

So other than Henry being unwilling to bend his arms, what else have we learned this week?

We learned that Henry looks good in fringed leather.

We learned that being away from Henry and Kristen for several straight Saturdays is not worth the frequent flier miles. Spring is meeting season, when I have to fly all across the country to various cities to help with any and all editorial demands of said meetings. On Friday morning, I head to the airport and fly to Denver or Atlanta or (God help me) Atlanta again, hop into a car and head off to the hotel where I don’t breathe non-circulated air until late Saturday when I hop into another car and head off to the airport. While I’m there, I’m usually running around like a chicken with its head cut off and I don’t have much time to miss the family back home, but as soon as I take off my suit I realize that I’ve missed two baths and two goodnights and two struggles with oatmeal (he still doesn’t like food). With two down, another tomorrow, and then two more in the weeks to come, I can at least start to imagine a week that I won’t have to fly.

Until fall meeting season, that is.

We learned that the sniffles are a hard thing to kick, especially for a baby. Henry still has a cold, although at least his cough is gone and the hives never returned.

And we learned that Spring is never going to get here. Warmer weather will come, eventually, and when it does we’ll actually be able to go out for walks and head to the park and even take a dip in the lake (although the water probably won’t warm up enough until August). While there’s nothing better than playing with Henry in his room or in the living room or our bedroom, I imagine that going to playgrounds and taking long walks will be even better.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 9:14 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.