What We’ve Learned: Week 51
I want you to scroll down to the last post and check out the first picture of Henry. I’m talking about the one of him with the Batman t-shirt (a gift from his aunt).
What do you see?
Do you see a little baby? Because I don’t. I see a toddler. And it’s killing me.
I hate to be one of those parents, but Henry was (is) an astonishingly cute baby. He has wonderful cheeks and a terrific smile. His ice-blue eyes are beautiful and his skin is the softest thing I’ve ever touched in my life.
And I don’t want that to go away.
I know he has to grow up. It’s biology and it’s inevitable. But that doesn’t mean I like it.
Lately, I’ll look at him sitting playing with his Elmo or his blocks and he’ll be BABY. Then, he’ll pull himself up and start cruising from the couch to his walker to Kristen’s legs and he’ll be TODDLER.
That is frightening.
I knew that the infant period didn’t last long. Two, three months tops. But somehow I thought the baby stage went through 18 months or so. But no.
I have to admit I don’t even really know what comes after toddler, and I have to say that I don’t even want to know. This stage so far is pretty good (I mean, did you see him with his walker? Is that great or what?), so I want it to last for a long, long time.
So other than Henry being this close to shaving, what have we learned this week?
We learned that going on vacation for a week does wonders for Henry’s nighttime sleep. For the past 10 days we’ve been struggling to get him to bed at night. While there is no problem during the day and he doesn’t fight going down for his two naps, night is a different story. He will eat his dinner, have his bath, “read” a few books, then have a night-cap before being rocked a bit and then placed into his crib. That last part — into the crib — is where everything goes wrong. His eyes will be closed, a smile on his face, his breath steady… all the signs of someone ready for sleep. Yet when he is slowly, calmly, lovingly laid down on the mattress, all hell breaks loose. He immediately becomes super alert, completely awake. He’ll get up on his hands and knees and then pull himself up with the crib rails, and he’ll wail.
WAIL.
And not stop.
For what seems like 5 or 6 hours. (Slight exaggeration.) We tried to let him cry it out a couple of times, but he just would not stop. Finally, after an hour of tears and heaving (he’s good at that), either Kristen or I would rock him until he finally falls asleep. Sometimes this takes 45 minutes. Sometimes he falls asleep in our bed. Sometimes Kristen and I want to cry.
Tonight he went to bed fine, asleep as soon as he hit the sheets. Maybe he knew I was going to write this. Maybe tomorrow he’ll be back to terrorizing us. But we hope that he’s turned a corner and tonight is the first night of many successful bedtimes.
We learned that Henry’s two top teeth have broken through the gums and are now out for all to see. This is cute, of course (baby teeth are adorable), but it comes with one unpleasant side effect. He’s started grinding his teeth. Now he doesn’t do it in his sleep and it seems like it isn’t something compulsive. He just likes the noise. Henry loves making strange noises with mouth. Clicks. Smacks. Gurgles. And now the grinding. Hopefully once his top teeth come in more — and others around them — he’ll stop, because it is not my favorite thing.
And we learned that Henry loves getting in the lake. For the past couple of months, Kristen and I (and super-nanny Silvia) have taken Henry down to the Lake Michigan beach so he could play in the sand, smashing sand castles and shoving as much of it in his mouth as he can before we stop him. But each time we tried to get close to the water, Henry would kick his legs (not the happy kick) and tightly grab onto us, making it very clear that he did not want to get wet. Well, this past week, when he and Silvia and (his girlfriend) Vivienne went down to the beach, Henry started to crawl to the water. And he didn’t stop until he was sitting in 3 inches of the lake. And he started to laugh and splash and, of course, eat sand. Because we’re those type of parents, we’re already looking into swimming lessons.
August 14th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
i’m glad that henry is playing with his cow xylophone that his favorite second cousin gave him. i was talking to someone on the phone the other day and she was spelling her name for me and it had an “x” in it. I said, “X” as in “xylophone” to clarify and she said, “I don’t know, I guess so.”