Barnabas Monkeypants

Last Sunday, we all went to the Renegade Craft Fair. What is that, you ask? Well, it’s a craft fair where urban hipsters go to buy ironic t-shirts for $25 (and other handmade stuff, although all equally overpriced and ironic).

It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, it was in the mid-70s, and we were all in great moods.

That is, until we tried to put Henry in his stroller. Oh, the wails. He stiffened up and would not, under any circumstance, allow us to strap him in.

You see, although Henry isn’t walking on his own yet, he wants to. So we walked with him, holding his hands. Or we’d let him push the stroller along. And this was all very fun and there were loads of smiles, but it was also very slow. You see, Henry’s legs are short. And while he can boogie along, he has his limitations.

So still unwilling to get in the stroller, Kristen and I took turns carrying him back and forth.

And that, my friends, was the problem.

We walked around for about an hour and a half, and near the end, both of us were exhausted. I figure Henry’s only 22 or 23 pounds, but carrying that around for that long, half the time trying to make sure he doesn’t leap out of your arms and into a large pile of stuffed-animal monsters makes it even more difficult.

By the time we got home, we were all exhausted.

If that was all, everything would’ve been fine. But seeing as how neither Kristen nor I have exercised in a long, long time, carrying Henry around for so long caused some serious muscle aches the following days. My forearms, biceps, back, calves… everything on my body… was sore.

And it’s Thursday and I’m still aching. I don’t know what this means. It could mean that we have to start going to a gym. I’d like to think, however, that the solution is just to have Henry get taller and start walking, then we wouldn’t have to carry him as much.

So, other than the fact that we’re all terribly out of shape, what else have we learned this week?

We learned that Henry must be going through a growth spurt because he’s eating like a horse. Last night, we fed him a large bowl of pinwheel pasta, and after he devoured every last bite, he cried out for more. So we topped him off with a couple of tablespoons of hummus. He’s still not getting chubby (other than his cheeks); I don’t know where it’s all going.

We learned that Henry is stuck in the in-between stage of clothing. As the weather’s getting cooler, and his shorts and short-sleeve shirts are no longer wearable, we’ve started putting him in fall-weather clothes. But all of them are for 12-18 months. Now, you might say, isn’t Henry pushing 13 months? Sure, but his stomach isn’t that large, so his pants tend to fall down. And those pants which are tight enough are too long in the leg. Oh, the dilemma!

We learned that Henry’s becoming a person. What I mean is that his personality is coming out, and his likes and dislikes are coming out in full force. Not just that he likes yogurt and his stuffed bunny and his mother, but that he likes to play hide-and-seek and he likes to crawl away, stop, turn and smile, and then crawl back. He likes to play with certain toys by himself and other toys with someone else. And that he likes it when we take his shoes and socks off at the end of the day. Small things, really. But all pretty neat.

And we learned (or I learned) that this is getting too tough to do every week. While Henry is constantly changing and growing and maturing, it’s going a bit slower, and the new things that he’s doing are big Big BIG and deserve their own posts and not just a mention in the weekly post.

So I’m going to drop this to a monthly. If I feel that we need to push it back to weekly or bi-weekly, I’ll do it. But for now, we’ll find out what more we’ve learned in mid-October.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 9:16 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.