Barnabas Monkeypants

While Henry has a pretty robust vocabulary, if push came to shove, he could go through his days saying only three different words: up, open, and apple.

Up is, of course, the signal for one of us to pick him up. But it also means put me down. Or carry me over there. Or let me run into the living room. It’s pretty much the catch-all for him moving (or being carried) somewhere.

Now open can mean opening up a box or opening up a jar or opening up a door. But it also means doing something, just about anything, to an object. Just as “up” is to Henry, “open” is to everything else.

And apple is food. Any kind of food. And not really apples (which he likes okay, but isn’t that big of a fan). When hungry, Henry will walk around saying “eat, eat, apple.” This means that it’s time for a snack or a meal.

I love Henry’s voice. It’s high and clear and without a lisp. (Kids tend to have a lot of those, don’t they?) He has a little issue with words that start with “s” (for instance, “sit” comes out as “shit”), but other than that, he’s golden.

He still talks baby talk (gobbledygook that makes no sense), but he’s starting to string a couple of words together into proto-sentences. And he tends to enjoy repeating sounds over and over instead of words, so he’ll say “woof woof” instead of “dog” or “ooh ooh” instead of “monkey” and he repeats “ee ai ee ai oh” over and over and over (although sometimes it comes out as “oh dee oh dee oh”).

I can’t wait for him to really start talking, long rambling sentences that make no sense but mean everything to him. Won’t that be wonderful?

So other than Henry talkin’ up a storm, what else have we learned this month?

We learned that Henry loves hummus like his daddy loves comic books, and he’s begun to ask for it by name. Sometimes it comes out “hummy” and sometimes “hummees”. At every meal, it seems that if whatever we put in front of him is not to his liking, we’ll take a tablespoon or two of hummus, plop it into a bowl, and let Henry at it. Letting him at it often means scooping it up deftly with a spoon (he’s become quite handy with utensils), but just as often he goes at it with his hands, mashing his fingers in and then licking them clean. He loves hummus so much that we go through a tub (a Costco-sized tub, mind you) every other week. If only the smell of hummus didn’t make me want to retch. (Why couldn’t he be so enthralled with chocolate sauce?)

We learned that Henry likes the Christmas tree, but he’s still a bit hesitant around it. He’ll waddle up, touch a branch, then quickly step away. He’ll say “hello” to the tree, but he’s yet to really get into it. Maybe the wonderful pine smell is just a bit too much for him right now. I’m sure he’ll come around to it some more when he wakes up Friday morning and sees toys sitting underneath.

We learned that Henry likes cars (“beep beep” he’ll say playing with them), trucks (“vroom”), and trains (“choo choo”) more than just about anything. I think that anything that has a wheel is like magic to him. This will make it very easy to buy him presents for the next four or five years.

We learned that even though he’s not even a year and a half old, he’s already learned how to embarrass his parents. We were out at the grocery store a couple of weeks ago when he saw a woman wearing a large, bright red coat. Every time we passed her in the aisle, he yelled out “Elmo! Elmo!” Oh, joy.

We learned that while Henry has yet to come around to kissing ol’ mama and dada, he’s okay with dogs. Starting this month, we have a new addition to our nanny share. Now, three days a week, we take Henry over to Anisha’s house, a lovely, nine month old girl who already has more hair on her head than Henry will have his entire life. While Henry is indifferent to Anisha (she is taking Silvia time away from him), he absolutely adore Odin, one of the two dogs that live at the house. Odin is a three-year-old lab mix with wonderful ears and a ton of energy who is more than happy to have someone to play with. This means that Henry chases him around the house and then Odin chases Henry. And every day that we drop him off, Odin is waiting for him to arrive so he can get a nice big kiss. I don’t get a kiss, but the dog does. Harumph.

And we learned that when you’re sick and coughing and feeling terrible, a hug from Henry makes everything all better.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 at 9:56 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.