Barnabas Monkeypants

It’s probably no exaggeration to say that Henry is the most popular guy at the Kennebunkport resort we’re staying in. Yesterday alone, he charmed the teenaged wait staff of the hotel restaurant (we could hear them chatting amongst themselves about “Baby Henry”), the people sitting at all the tables surrounding ours at breakfast (including one older couple from Plymouth Meeting, PA, the female half of which died and went to heaven when we saw them again this morning and let Henry sit on her lap), a tour group outside The Clam Shack at lunchtime, some eight-year old girls we met at the beach, various shopkeepers in town, three tweenage boys sitting at the table behind ours at Nunan’s Lobster Hut, the hotel’s concierge (she held Henry for awhile, too), a retiree sitting in the hotel lobby that Henry crawled right up to (he ALSO held him for a little bit)… the list goes on. No one is immune to our little boy’s charms. He’s not shy – he makes eye contact and smiles at everyone. We walk down the street and people stop to wave at the happy little guy in his blue stroller. Raphe and I are starting to feel like we’re part of a celebrity’s entourage.

Anyway, on with this vacation edition of What We’ve Learned.

We learned that Henry has made some developmental leaps in the past week or so. Now in addition to spilling or dumping toys OUT of things, he is interested in putting those toys back IN. So instead of just dumping all the blocks out of his shape sorter, now he is trying to figure out how to get them back in. And instead of just pulling all the rings off the stacker, now he’s putting them back on. Very cool.

Henry also recently came to the realization that those things that we spill on the tray of his high chair (intentionally or not) are actually food, and not just some other random object for him to roll around in his mouth and probe with his tongue. Suddenly he understands that there is this category of stuff that is edible as opposed to just sand and paper towels and flip flops and other miscellaneous crap. And piggybacked onto that understanding is this idea that, hey, I can feed myself. Every now and then I catch Henry tasting things and putting actual food in his mouth with the intention of eating it. It’s a new day.

Things that are not jarred pureed baby food that Henry will eat:
1.  black beans picked out of a Chipotle burrito
2.  ice cream, any flavor
3.  homemade blueberry buckle
4.  baby teething biscuits
5.  the sweet and sour sticky rice that came with my monkfish tonight

We learned that Henry will now play peek-a-boo with wanton abandon. It used to be that Raphe or I initiated peek-a-boo and did all the peeking. Now Henry will pull a blanket or a shirt or whatever over his face and raise and lower it to do the peeking himself. He cracks himself up doing it. It’s adorable.

We learned that jumping on the bed is some kind of primal urge. Obviously, Henry can’t jump yet, but he sure does love bouncing, and he realized that bouncing on the bed is loads of fun. Raphe or I will do the actual bouncing, and Henry mimics the movements we make. I’m pretty sure he thinks he’s the one doing the bouncing. Little does he know.

We learned that traveling with Henry is still (almost) easy as pie. You might recall that we took him to Florida earlier this year for his first airplane trip, and that it was a raging success. Well, this trip was largely the same. No tears or fussing on the plane, although he melted down in the car on the way up to Kennebunkport when we got stuck in traffic about a half-hour away from our destination. However, I’m going to chalk that up to being crammed into an airplane seat/clamped into a car seat for too many hours of the day, and not to him being a poor traveler.

Henry’s also very easygoing at restaurants. As long as we take him well before bedtime (we’re the only earlybirds under 65 these days), he’ll sit at the dinner table with us (in his little portable highchair), eat some yogurt, some jarred food, and some of whatever we’re having that’s non-allergenic and that we can easily chop down small enough. And, of course, he’ll smile his face off and wave to anyone who will give him the time of day. Yeah, it’s fun to take him out.

The last thing we learned this week was really just a reinforcement of something we’ve known all along: Henry is truly the Best Baby Ever. We’re so lucky we get to spend our lives with him.

And now for some vacation photos!

Henry loved playing in the red Step2 car with Jodi at Magic Beans in Brookline! Raphe hopes this big hunk of plastic doesn’t end up in our home, but realizes that is probably futile!

We had fun rolling around in the grass on the resort’s lawn. Henry ate some leaves and flowers and gnawed on the camera case.

Henry thoroughly enjoyed his first trip to the ocean. He ate plenty of sand, of course.

We ate at The Clam Shack twice. Their fried clams are stupid good.

The dinner special at Nunan’s Lobster Hut was two 1 1/8lb lobsters for $24.95. Dinner included pickles, a dinner roll with butter, and potato chips. “I can’t eat TWO lobsters,” I declared to no one in particular as I read the specials board while were lined up outside waiting for the restaurant to open. “Sure you can,” one of the men in front of me said, “they’re just small soft-shelled lobsters. Two are no problem.” Okay, who am I to argue? There were four lobsters on our table and they tasted amazing!

Henry took a giant dump while we were at Nunan’s and we had to change his diaper in the trunk of the rental car. It was a mess. He rode back to the hotel with no pants on. He was thrilled, as you can see.

Tomorrow we drive back down to Boston, and the wedding is on Saturday. I can’t tell you how excited I am about this! Recap coming soon to a baby blog near you.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 7:49 pm and is filed under Poop, 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.