Barnabas Monkeypants

We had some friends over for a cookout today, and as we were all sitting around eating hot dogs and hamburgers and drinking wonderful Mexican Coke, someone said (and I don’t remember who) that next month Henry will be 1 year old.

Next month! Jiminy!

Now sure, July has just started and Henry’s birthday is not until late August, but this just reinforces everything I’ve thought (and people have said) about how fast the first year goes.

A month ago, he wasn’t crawling.

A month before that, he just started to wave.

A month before, he had  learned how to get on his hands and knees.

And so on and so on.

I don’t know to feel about all this. Should I be happy and excited that he’s growing so fast, doing all these new and exciting things every day? Well, sure. But I don’t seem to have the time to savor any of it.

Last Saturday, we went to a friend’s baby shower, and Henry decided that it was time to pull himself up using the handle of a baby walker and take a tentative step with its help. Everyone thought this was such a wonderful and terrific thing, but I wanted it all to stop, to slow down. (Thank goodness I was in a different room when this happened or I may have started crying right in front of all those people.)

What’s a father to do?

Nothing, obviously.

But I just want to make everyone know that while Henry may be turning 1 next month, IT’S STILL SEVEN WEEKS AWAY!

So other than dreading Henry growing up, what else have we learned this week?

We learned that Henry attracts some strange people. Today we went to the post office and this husband and wife standing behind us wouldn’t stop talking about him. “He’s an angel. A cherub! Where are his wings?” “Look at those eyes. You can tell he’s smart. He’s going to Yale.” “No, not Yale. Dartmouth.” Henry, of course, is hamming it up the whole time, smiling and laughing and waving. At least it makes standing in long lines a little more tolerable.

We learned that Henry, always a great mimic, has now mastered the “mwaa” of a kiss. This is a great improvement of previous kissing attempts, which usually meant a wide open mouth, a lot of slobber, and ferocious (yet loving) bite with his two teeth. (Kristen would get these kisses on her cheek; I would get them on my nose.)

We learned that Henry is starting to actually enjoy “reading” books and not just gnawing on them. For the past couple of months, whenever we would sit down with a good book (The Very Hungry Caterpillar, for example), Henry would grab the book and (like everything else within his reach) start chewing. We could hardly get past page 1. Now, however, he’ll sit there with us, turn the pages (maybe a little too soon), and make it through at least half the book and sometimes an entire one… or two. I’m thinking by next summer, our nighttime reading will be War and Peace.

And we learned that watching Henry crawl around the house is always good for hours of fun. That boy can move.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 9:50 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.