Barnabas Monkeypants

Henry still wakes up in the middle of the night about 5 out of 7 days each week. It can happen anywhere between 11:30 and 3:00 in the morning. When we hear him crying, Kristen will shove me and I’ll trudge back to his room to get him.

(By the way, it’s not real crying. There are no tears. It’s more of a loud moan, accompanied by a “wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa”. And when I get back there, he immediately stops.)

Here’s the thing: even though we’re waking up from a dead sleep and usually leaves us less than fresh the next day, it’s a good thing because after he has his midnight snack, I get to carry him back to his crib. You see, as I’m walking back to his room, he’ll always put his head on my shoulder and fall asleep, right in my arms.

This is the thing with Henry. Every thing that may not seem great ends up being completely wonderful. He throws up all over me? Sure, but then he says “Dada.” I don’t get more than 4 straight hours of sleep? He falls asleep in my arms, his head resting on my shoulder, his hand grasping my thumb.

Week after week, any negative is completely overshadowed by something ten times as wonderful.

What a baby.

So other than completely adoring this baby, what else have we learned this week?

We learned that summer has finally hit Chicago, and Henry is experiencing real heat for the first time in his short life. Other than a little prickly heat, he’s dealing with it splendidly. His father, on the other hand, is not enjoying it one bit. I hope that he takes after his mother in his sweat production.

We learned that Henry has learned to turn when crawling. This is more difficult than you’d think. He’s gotten pretty darn good at going in a straight line (even better if there’s a cat or a shoe waiting there for him), but to turn or come back, he has to sit up, pivot on his butt, get back down on all fours, and start crawling again. This is both time consuming and full of wasted movement, and something had to change. And change it did, as today, he crawled all around Kristen, with nary a pause or butt pivot. (This reminds me of the one and only time I ever went water skiing. It was on the Delaware River about 20 years ago. Out there on the skis, I could get up fine and ski for a few hundred yards, but as the boat turned, I was unable to stay upright as I leaned into it. I tried and tried and tried, but nothing. Luckily Henry has no such problem on his hands and knees. But wait’ll he gets on the water!)

And we learned that Henry enjoys eating sand. Yes, sand. He won’t put a Cheerio in his mouth without gagging, but he has no trouble shoving a handful of beach into gaping maw. What a baby.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 9:52 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.