Barnabas Monkeypants

Yesterday was Henry’s 10-month birthday and my first Father’s Day. (We had donuts to celebrate.)

Overall, it was a great day and weekend, somewhat dampened by the cold that Henry was fighting (and losing). Friday night his sniffles turned to an all-out mucus fest, and he spent most of the time moaning in his sleep. Saturday morning we took him to the doctor’s where we were told that he was a terrifically well-tempered patient and, more important to the issue at hand, just had a cold and nothing worse. (I’m looking at you, swine flu.)

Just a cold didn’t stop him from having some spectacular mucus episodes, but I won’t get into the gory details. Instead, I’m going to get into even more gory details. (A warning: if you’ve got a delicate stomach, you may not want to read further.)

On Sunday evening, Kristen, Henry, our downstairs neighbor Lillian, and I all cooked out and had a wonderful dinner on the back patio. Henry was much better than Friday or Saturday (sniffles nearly gone, no fever), and he was bouncing about and having the time of his life making everyone else laugh.

At about 6:45, though, he started to rub his eyes and make some unpleasant groans, signalling it was time for bed. So up Kristen went (I stayed down and finished my dinner, since I had been holding Henry while everyone else had been eating), and she put his pajamas on and fed him and put him in the crib.

Now, when Henry is placed in his crib, he does one of three things, each happening about an equal number of times. The first is that he immediately rolls over to his side and falls asleep. The second is he doesn’t fall asleep right away, and instead starts chattering to his blanket or his fish mobile until, after 5 minutes or so, he zonks out. The third (and most unpleasant) is he starts acting generally unhappy when we walk away, leading to moans, cries, and crocodile tears, which necessitates one of us going in and rocking him for a while (or, in even worse situations, rocking him and feeding him and comforting him for a long while) until he’s so exhausted he has no choice but to fall asleep.

When Kristen walked away, Henry was doing the second option. By the time she got back down to the patio, three floors below, he was closing in on the third, and it was quickly escalating. So I shoveled the last of my dinner in my mouth and went back upstairs where, after only 2 minutes or so, Henry was in the middle of a spectacular meltdown.

He was there, on his hands and knees, wailing, the tears jumping out of the corner of his eyes like a cartoon. To make matters worse, he had also a full (and quite smelly) diaper. So I swooped him up in my arms, held him close, and told him that everything was going to be okay.

This did nothing to lessen his anguish, however, and he cried even more, now with the tears splashing onto my glasses so I was nearly blind. (Slight exaggeration.) Just as I was walking him over to the changing pad to get him out of his dirty diaper, he got very rigid, placed his hands on my chest and pushed so that he was looking right at me, and proceeded to vomit. All… over… the… place.

It was on my shirt, my shorts, my shoes.

It splashed on the floor behind me and on the curtains.

It drenched the small throw rug I was standing on.

And it smelled like rotten cheese.

And then, because it wasn’t horrible enough, he did it again.

After he finished (there was nothing left in him, I reckon, after two purges), he looked up at me and smiled.

So I kicked off my shoes, walked to the back door, stuck my head out, and yelled for Kristen to get up here.

She came running up and we got everything clean and ready and stripped Henry down (and got my shirt off) and headed off to the bathroom for another bath (for him) and shower (for me).

But here’s the kicker: as we’re walking down the hall to the bathroom, both Henry and I smelling something fierce, me not in the best mood of my life, he puts his head on my vomit-y shoulder, smiles, and says, “Dada.”

What a great Father’s Day.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 9:06 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.