Barnabas Monkeypants

On Wednesday, I flew out to New Jersey — to my company’s home office — for a planning session.

Now a significant part of my job is traveling, and each year I have to go on around 12 business trips. The bad thing about these trips is that it takes me away from Kristen and Henry. The good things are that the trips are short (no more than 2 days) and I’ve been accumulating a lot of airline miles so I can get a couple of free flights this summer if we decide we can (afford to) go on vacation.

This trip was no different. Off I went Wednesday afternoon, and I walked through the door this morning at around 10:30. And as I’ve done this many, many times, Kristen has gotten to be quite an expert at doing solo parenting in getting Henry up and dressed in the morning and feeds, bathes, and gets him ready for bed in the evening. He’s a pretty easy going kid, and even when there’s just one of us around, it’s not too difficult.

Well, according to Kristen, that’s changed a bit now that Henry is not only mobile, but super mobile.

We used to be able to sit him down with a toy (or toys) and walk away for a minute (with an eye on him, of course) and get dressed, make lunch, brush teeth, etc. But no sitting any more for our Henry. He’s running around like a mini-madman just as he needs to get his shoes on or his coat or hat.

We’ve been thinking about attaching a tether to his pants so he can’t get very far or, if he does start wandering, it’s just in a circle, like some May pole in his bedroom.

I don’t have to travel again until consecutive weekends in March, so who know where he’ll be by then. Likely plotting the overthrow of the household as Kristen is making his oatmeal.

So, other than Henry getting to be a handful, what else have we learned this month?

Well, we learned that Henry’s learned how to throw a tantrum. Not terrible ones, yet, but when Kristen went to pick him up from our nanny-share’s house on Wednesday, he just didn’t want to leave. There was just too much fun to be had, you see. So Henry dropped to the floor, going limp as a noodle, and he screamed bloody murder. Kristen and super-nanny Silvia just looked at each other as if asking “what the heck just happened here?” as he writhed on the ground. Kristen picked him up (not without some difficulty), gave him a smooch and a hug, and he got better, but this is surely signs of things to come. Shudder.

We learned that Henry’s vocabulary has continued to expand, and each day it’s a new word or two. (Today, we taught him “pocket” and “potato”.) The funny thing is, he still babbles incoherently, but it’s mixed up with real words. So he might say, “open up jee joo rah lah lee apple button.” Henry, what does “jee joo rah lah lee” mean, exactly? He’s also stringing words together. So it’s not just “more”, it’s “more hummus.” It’s not just “bath”, it’s “go bath”. Soon he’ll be composing poetry. We’re certainly bad parents in that we haven’t been writing down all his words, but I guess it’d be around 40 or so. Fun stuff.

We learned that Henry has become an expert at flicking light switches. Now he’s been turning lights on and off for a while now — it’s nothing new — but now when we hold him up to the switch, he’ll flick it up and say “on” and flick it down and say “off”. (Actually, he says “oss”, but we know what he means.) I don’t know why this makes me so happy.

We learned that Henry still has all his hair and is still in his crib.

And we learned that there is nothing more fun than having Henry go over to the bookshelf in his room, bring one of his favorites to you, back up into your lap and sit down, and follow along with the story. His body is always warm as he rests against your chest, his hair smells fantastic, and when he holds onto your hand in between page turns, it melts your heart. It’s wonderful when he repeats words from the book (dog! horse! feet!), and it’s wonderful when he mimics what’s on the page (play the drums, blow the dandelions, pick a booger [yes, because from Yummy, Yucky, “burgers are yummy but boogers are yucky”). As much as I love playing with him and feeding him and giving him a bath, there’s nothing better than reading him books.

I don’t know when this happened, but out of nowhere, Henry is running. While he’s no Carl Lewis (does that date me a bit?), he has decided that walking just isn’t good enough and he needs to go, go, go as fast as he can, wherever he can, whenever he can.

It’s great to watch him run. His arms are in the air, he’s usually making some king of screeching, happy noise, and he’s going in any and every possible direction. While I love this to bits (and I’ll talk more about it a bit later), it has meant that there have been a few more bumps, bruises, and bleeding of late.

He’s run head first into the corner of tables, he’s tripped over toys, shoes, and rugs, and he’s even fallen on his face for seemingly no reason (although it’s usually when he’s getting tired). On Sunday morning, he got a big bruise on his forehead when he banged into a door, and ten minutes later, after his tears had been cleaned up and he was back to his old self, he proceeded to fall down and get a bloody lip.

In ten minutes time!

I don’t think he’s particularly clumsy and I’m not really worried. I just think that he’s just a toddler.

Henry and I went to a coffee shop/indoor playground right before New Year’s, and it seemed like every kid there his age was covered in cuts and black-and-blue marks. It’s like a rite of passage or something.

So here’s my favorite running story that I promised above.

Yesterday, being a holiday, I had off and Kristen had to work. (She works every day, it seems.) So Henry and I got to play together and go have some Thai food (he loves those noodles) and get some much needed undershirts at Target.

Right before heading out for our errands, I had to use the bathroom. So what I did was close all the doors in the house, and “trapped” Henry in the hallway. On one end was the bathroom, and on the other was… Cecil.

Cecil’s not one of the brightest animals on this planet (in fact, he’s fallen into the 3rd percentile), but he is good at keeping Henry occupied.

So, as I’m doing what I have to do (and that’s all I’ll have to say about that),  Henry is running up and down the hall, chasing the cat. Every time they get to the end, Cecil stops, slides on the hardwood floors, runs in place (like Scooby-Doo), and then comes running the other way, with Henry following.

This went on for about 3 laps back and forth, each time with more screams from Henry, and all I could think of was, “why the heck do I have to be on the toilet at this time without easy access to a camera!”

Luckily for everyone, there were no injuries sustained, and both Henry and Cecil got good and tired and Henry was nice and calm for our car trip and Cecil slept for four hours straight.

Good times.

As Kristen and I have both written lately, Henry was eating everything in sight. Any foodstuff within arm’s reach was quickly gobbled up with a cry of “eat! eat! eat!” While that has subsided (he’s back to his standard meals and snacks), the outcome of the gorging has finally arrive.

Henry’s clothes suddenly no longer fit.

Yesterday, Kristen was dressing Henry and put on his classy Spider-Man t-shirt, and the sleeves, that once comfortably went down to past his wrist, are now barely past his elbows!

This morning, she put on his spiffy plaid pants, and they rested just below his knees!

(Of course, being good parents, we didn’t change his clothes. Although we did vow that it was the last time he’d wear them. If we remember.)

This, of course, shouldn’t be a surprise. I mean, he’s nearly 17 months old (gulp), and that is at the end of the 12-18 month clothing range. But I was hoping that he’d be able to stretch out the use of this lot of clothes for another few months.

Unfortunately, we’re probably going to have to do the clothing purge (where we go through his drawers and pack away all the too-small shirts and pants) and head off to the mall to get him some replacement garb.

And you all know how much I love the mall…

My last two years of college, I lived in apartments pretty far away from campus, first on the edge of Shadyside and East Liberty and later in Friendship (yes, that was the name of the neighborhood). The University of Pittsburgh is in Oakland, which was a 45 minute walk or 15 minute bus ride away, and I was more than happy to be a little distant from campus.

The only problem was on (those few) evenings I wanted to hang out with friends who lived in Oakland (especially South Oakland, where the apartment buildings were extensions of the dorms, it seemed), I would end up having to crash on their couches instead of trudging home. (In Pittsburgh, not every bus line ran 24 hours, and late at night, their frequency left much to be desired.)

This wasn’t a terrible thing, as sleeping on floors or sofas isn’t uncommon to most 21-year-olds.

The exception was with my friend Missy Jo. When I went out with her and her friends, I always ended up sleeping in bed with her. No hanky panky, people. It was just that Missy had the uncanny ability to fall asleep and never once move until she woke up.

She would get into bed, lie as close to the edge as possible (giving me plenty of room), fall asleep, and remain completely motionless. No head turning. No flipping. No restless leg. Nothing. Completely still.

I mentioned this to Kristen the other night, and she said that she didn’t move when she slept. Hogwash. While she’s no Exorcist girl, she’s been known to give me a few good kicks to the shins.

Anyway, I bring Missy Jo up not because I’m reminiscing about the good old days of Pittsburgh but because of Henry. (Of course.) You see, I’ve been thinking of when to start to transition Henry to a toddler bed. The crib he’s sleeping in now has a side that can be converted to a shorter (and open) railing, one that will make it easier for him to get in and out (when he so desires). Most experts say to wait until your child is around 18 months (just 2 1/2 to go) before you do this, but I think that we may have to wait a little longer.

Why, you ask? Well, Henry is a whirling dervish in the sack. He twirls around like Curly Howard, always finishing up his nap/sleep in a different position than when he started. Sometimes he’ll be curled up in a corner; other times he’ll be splayed out in the center, his body perpendicular to the wall behind him. Often, all the blankets and stuff animals will be thrown out of the bed, but just as often, they’ll all be collected into the middle of the crib, like a plush monument to sleep on which he rests.  (That was poetry, my friends. Poetry.)

The other thing about getting Henry out of his crib is that he’s still sleeping in a SleepSack. These are really great for keeping him nice and cozy when he sleeps (and when we put it on him, it’s always a good signal that it’s time to calm down and get ready to snooze), but they’re not so good with walking.

In fact, he can’t walk in them at all.

So before we change the rail of his crib or get him his own “big boy bed”, he needs to do two things: stop moving so darn much and move to a wholly blanket-based sleeping experience.

(I’m completely insane, people. Completely.)

Kristen and I have written about Henry’s pants problem numerous times, but if you’re a new reader (ha! fooled you! like we get new readers), here’s the gist of it:

Henry’s tall, lankiness has made it difficult for his pants to stay up, and we’ve had to resort to rolling his pants at the waist to keep them up.

But here’s the thing. We were wrong.

You see, for the past couple of weeks, ever since he kicked his cold, Henry has been eating like a madman. And all that eating has made him get a little chubby again. (Never as chubby as when he was a baby, because that’s just too much and too precious and likely never repeatable in this or any lifetime.) His arms and legs have meat on them, and his stomach (especially after a big meal of pierogies and applesauce) is good and round.

And yet, his pants continue to slip down.

Now, I’m a scientist (in my own mind), and if you state a hypothesis (Henry’s too skinny) to get the reasons for a problem (why are his pants falling down) and said hypothesis becomes null and void (he’s not so skinny any more) and yet that problem is still happening, you’ve got to go back to the drawing board.

And that’s what I’ve done.

So I can confidently say that the reason for Henry’s pants problem is this: he has my butt.

I have many physical faults. My eyesight is terrible. I’m highly uncoordinated. I don’t digest dairy products particularly well. But my biggest fault is that I have a completely flat behind. If it weren’t for obvious anatomical characteristics, I doubt you could figure out where my back ends and my butt begins.

And Henry, poor, poor Henry, has inherited said butt.

This is going to cause many problems in the future for him (namely, it’s very difficult to get down on the dance floor while trying to shake something that just isn’t there), but it’s also causing problems now. Any and all pants, whether they’re buttoned or snapped, with elastic or without, all slowly creep off his person. It’s a tragedy.

I’m sorry, son. I’m so, so sorry for what I’ve brought upon you.

Can you ever forgive me?

Year in reviews tend to be a bit schmaltzy and usually include some sort of photo montage of people who’ve died. I’ve started and deleted and edited and started this post again and again and again, and I can’t seem to find the right things to say.

I mean, I don’t know if Henry will have another year where he’ll change more. He started off being the cutest ball of chubbiness, then went on to being the cutest ball of rolling chubbiness, to a lanky spaghetti of sitting up, to a wonderful crawling monkey, to where we are now… a kid who runs around the house and tires his parents out quite quickly.

(In between, of course, there were a lot of other milestones and weight fluctuations.)

But I don’t want to look back. No, here are Barnabas Monkeypants (with the newly designed logo), we only look forward. For 2010 (which is so strange for me to type), we’re looking forward to Henry talking in full sentences, jumping, becoming completely potty trained, transition him to a toddler bed, begin learning calculus, and more. Much more.

We’re going to try and travel more, too. Henry’s a free ticket until he turns 2, so I’d like to drag him and Kristen along to some of my work trips (it looks like we’ll be in New York City in March and we’re definitely going to make our way down to Florida soon) and have him charm the pants off of people in many, many states.

We’re going to continue to experiment more with food, making sure that Henry is comfortable eating everything. (Our child is not going to subsist on chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese, I’ll tell you what.)

We’re going to try and keep Henry away from the television.

We’re going to start Henry taking swimming and gymnastics classes, to make sure that he is properly prepared to win gold in the 2028 Summer Olympics in New Delhi.

And we’re going to continue to make sure that Henry is the happiest kid around, that his laughing will never stop.

That’s not too much to ask for, is it?

Last year I had most of December off from work. This meant that I took care of Henry while Kristen had fun at her job (oh, yes… fun). And while I love that boy more than anything, I have to admit that watching a 4-month-old for 12 straight hours isn’t that exciting.

There were a lot of naps and bottles and diaper changes and book readings, but in between, he pretty much just… sat there and giggled.

Does it make me a bad person that, looking back, it was a little boring?

Because this December, as I spent a lot of time home (both on vacation and bed-ridden with the flu), it was so much different, so much more fun. Henry as a toddler is fun all the time. ALL THE TIME.

While there are still plenty of naps (he still takes two, 2-hour snoozes) and a diaper change here or there, now we play and run and laugh and eat things with forks and spoons instead of bottles.

The only problem that we’ve had is that as Henry has begun experimenting with new foods (Mexican, Chinese, garlic-filled mashed potatoes), he’s been having some — how do I say it nicely — gastrointestinal issues. Every time he eats something with a little spice or a little kick, it comes back to haunt him (and me) later on. Many, many times.

I’m sure you’re all saying, “Well, don’t let him eat this stuff!” and that may be all well and good. But as Kristen mentioned earlier, when Henry spends most of the day walking around saying “eat, eat, eat”, you have to fill up his stomach with something.

And as we know, the more often you fill something up, the more often it has to empty.

But hopefully as he matures in all those exciting ways (like saying more words and running faster and trying to climb up onto anything and everything), his stomach will also begin to mature. Soon. Please.

Henry’s cold is a bit better now. While he was really sick, he wasn’t very interested in eating much, but now that he’s on the mend, he’s been eating like a sumo wrestler in training. In a single day, he’ll eat yogurt, oat meal, fistfulls of Froot Loops (I can’t believe I’m publicly admitting we’ve fed him Froot Loops), endless slices of Land O’Lakes white American cheese, a big bowl of homemade vegetable soup, beans and rice, and pound cake. Oh, and hummus with everything. He loves hummus.

We went out to dinner on Saturday (Tex-Mex at Uncle Julio’s) and Henry surprised Raphe and I by snarfing down most of our chili con queso appetizer. Yesterday he went bananas in the produce department (ha-ha) of our local Dominick’s as we walked past a display of apples. “Apple! Apple! APPLE! AP-PLE! Apple apple apple apple apple!” We bought apples. The kid is eating us out of house and home!

We couldn’t be sicker (Raphe’s still hacking away, I’ve got awful nasal congestion, and Henry’s pediatrician diagnosed him with his first ear infection this morning), but we are still in good spirits. We wish you all the very best this Christmas. And may 2010 be largely snot-free!

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.