Barnabas Monkeypants

Henry is breaking my heart.

As Kristen has risen to sainthood in his 22-month-old eyes, I have become a second-class citizen. He had always asked for Kristen when he woke up, even as I was standing in front of his crib.

“Mommy?” he’ll ask.

Yes, mommy. With facial hair and a not-so-pleasant smell.

No, Henry, I’m not mommy. I’m the other one. The one who loves you just as much and is more than willing to play with trains and cars and airplanes until we’re all blue in the face.

Sure, I’m not as soft and I don’t smell as good and I was never able to breastfeed you. But I’m still your flesh and blood!

This adoration got even worse when the three of us went to Florida last week, albeit in two different locations. I headed to beautiful (horrible) and sunny (miserably hot and humid) Orlando for the American Diabetes Association’s scientific sessions (oh, the stories I could tell you about pancreatic beta-cell apoptosis) while Kristen and Henry flew to Tampa to visit her father and grandmother.

So while they as much parent-child bonding as you could ask, I was alone, eating crummy room service food, and pining for the love of my child.

And while he seemed very happy to talk to me on the phone about his airplane trip and Opa and cars and farmers, when I got home on Tuesday, Henry seemed more than content to still cling to Kristen and leave me in the dust. “Can I have a hug?” I asked, having not seen him in 6 days. “No.”

Sigh.

Yes, I know this is a phase. And, yes, I know that there will be a time in the distant future where he’ll prefer my presence to Kristen’s. But frankly, I don’t care. I want him to call out “Daddy” when he skins his knee and “Daddy” when he wakes up from a nightmare.

Is that too much to ask for?

(I’m finishing this post from the wonderful city of Orlando. That’s sarcasm. There’s nothing wonderful about this place. Sorry for the delay — we’ve all been sick.)

Last week, Henry said his longest sentence yet: “I want a taco, Mama.”

Since we all love tacos (and, luck have it, we were making them for dinner), he got his request.

For the most part, Henry’s vocabulary has grown by leaps and bounds, to the point where we can’t even keep track of all the new ones, but we couldn’t be happier. His many, many words mean that he’s able to ask for things (toys and/or tacos), can tell us what hurts (tummy, toes), and tell us when he’s unhappy about a certain situation (a request for more toys and/or tacos).

He’s pretty good with his pronunciation, which is something that can always be an issue. When he says something, you know what’s going on. He’s also good at enunciating. So “again” sounds like “again” and “I want it” sounds like “I want it.” One of the few phrases that doesn’t come out perfectly enunciated is when here says, “here you go.” Now, I realize that “here you go” isn’t the most proper of phrases, but it gets the point across.

Of course, instead of sounding out each word, we get “higgum.”

“Higgum, mama,” and he’ll hand her a truck.

“Higgum, daddy,” and he’ll hand me a piece of cheese.

I actually like the “word,” and I’ve started using it myself when giving things to people at work. “Higgum the executive summary, boss.” (I’ll get a strange look, but then, I get those most of the times anyway.)

We don’t correct him when he says it, because he’s good enough at saying everything else, that why take away one of the cutest things to ever come out of his mouth?

So, other than us preparing to submit “higgum” to the Oxford English Dictionary for placing it in their next edition, what else have we learned this month?

We learned that Henry loves to describe the goings on outside when driving in our car. I may have mentioned it before, but we get a running commentary of what cars, trucks, buses, bicycles, motorcycles, and trains are around at all time. He loves them and gets really excited, and we’ve begun to use that to our advantage. Several times during the past month, we’ve been driving home just in time to get Henry to sleep for the night or down for his nap, and he’ll begin to fall asleep in the backseat in his car seat. As we’d rather he’d stay awake (it makes it much easier for him to fall asleep in his crib if he hasn’t just been woken up), we’ll often say, “Look, a plane!” or “Look, Henry, firetruck!” or “Wow! Look at that train!” when no plane, truck, or train is in eyesight. But it gets him alert for another minute or so, long enough to get us home again. Yes, we’re lying to our son already. We’re just preparing ourselves for Santa, I guess.

We learned that Henry has started giving us kisses again. It’s a month-on, month-off sort of thing, but for the past few weeks he’ll give us a peck on a cheek and a hug every so often. Toddler kisses are pretty nice.

We learned that Henry wants a dog. That’s a good thing, because I want a dog, too. The problem is, there is no possible way to fit another breathing creature into our place without one of us sleeping on the couch. (Me.)

We learned that when both mommy and daddy are sick, taking care of a kid is a challenge. Last week, Kristen had terrible food poisoning, so bad that she ended up in the hospital to get fluid, and I had a horrible, lingering flu/cold that knocked me out for several days. We would trade off in 15 minute shifts for looking after Henry or making him dinner or giving him a bath while the other parent was huddled in a mass on the floor, moaning.

We learned that Henry likes thunder (“noise! loud noise!”) but isn’t so fond of lighting (“scared!”).

And we learned that Henry still has all of his hair. We’ve yet to get it cut, and that’s mostly because of the humidity that usually sits over the city of Chicago for the summer months. During June, July, and August, the dense air can be stifling (especially to someone like me who hates the heat with a passion), and I like to sit inside in the air conditioning as much as possible. Henry, however, has no such qualms, and in fact, the humidity makes him hair curl up like nobody’s business. I have no clue where these curls came from. Both my hair and Kristen’s are perfectly straight, and neither of us had much wave when we were kids (Kristen more than me), but Henry’s locks are ridiculous! When it’s wet, his hairstyle is all mullet, but when it’s dry and there’s moisture in the air, it’s the most perfect mix of waves and Shirley-Temple locks. I’m afraid that Kristen will never let him get it cut, and he’ll look like a blonde Tarzan, with hair down his back, when he goes off to kindergarten.

Now that’s a look.

We had fun. Hope you did, too.

(Sorry for so long between posts. We’ve all been sick.)

As I’ve mentioned in the past, Henry tends to sweat a lot. Like father, like son.

While this really doesn’t seem to make his life any better or worse (other than it helps make his hair nice and curly in the back), it does make Kristen and I worry. How so? Well, when we check on him at night right before we go to bed (Henry, of course, has been asleep for hours), we’ll usually feel the back of his head. Invariably, it’s sweaty, his hair damp. And this causes us nothing but worry. Is he too hot? Does he have a fever? Are there too many blankets?

Nearly all of the time, the answer is “no” to all of those questions. He’s just a sweat-heavy kid.

As I worry about nearly everything, I’m always concerned that Henry’s going to get dehydrated as he sleeps. About 6 months ago, we started to keep a sippy cup in his crib at night, mostly because we were worried he’d get dehydrated due to the radiators drying out everything our apartment. And we’ve kept up with this even with the heat off.

But here’s the thing. With all the water he’s drinking at night, he fills up his diaper. (We even use the extra super capacity overnight Pampers.) When he gets up in the morning, the thing is packed to the gills, and he plods around in it, the crotch hanging down to his knees.

And yet, he somehow likes it. He’s never been fond of the diaper change, but the first-one-of-the-day seems to be even worse. He’ll squirm and protest, just so he can keep it on. When we finally get it off, it takes a forklift to carry it to the trash can.

Ultimately, the big problem with the sweat/sippy/urine conundrum is going to come when he goes without diapers overnight. This summer, we’re starting to use training pants now and again, and we’d love to have him diaper-free during the day before the end of the year. Overnight may be a different story.

Do we try and phase out the sippy cup? Do we just try and wake him up every 5 hours to go pee? Do we have him wear plastic underpants? Do we just let him wet the bed until he’s 10 like his father? (What? Who? What?)

Parenting is never easy.

Henry is right-handed. He holds his crayons with his right hand, throws things with his right hand, and picks his nose with his pointer finger of his right hand. The only thing he doesn’t do with his right hand is shovel food into his face.

Of late, he’s been very unhappy with anyone else feeding him (or even deign to help him), and he has to do it all by himself. This he announces by yelling “Self! Self!” (This, in itself, is strange, because he’s regularly speaking in 3 or 4 word sentences. Except when he wants to do something on his own. Then it’s just “no”s and “self”s.) He’s also started drinking out of a cup when he eats his meals. (“Cup! Cuppy! Cup!”)

As much as he likes feeding himself and drinking out of an uncovered cup, it tends to get on the messy side. Food drops off his fork. It tumbles off his spoon. Milk pours out of his mouth. And all of it falls onto his bib, his shirt, and his lap. When feeding him particularly messy stuff (spaghetti, soup, etc.), we’ve started to take his shirt and pants off first.

That’s classy, my friends.

Class is when your son is sitting in his high-chair, his hair a flowing mullet, wearing diapers and a bib, with food spilling out of his mouth and all over his person.

Of course, he is using a fork, so it’s all for the sake of growing up.

Raphe and I have a ridiculous game (if you can really call it that) we sometimes play in the car on the way home from work:  when there’s a lull in the conversation, one of us says, “Guess how many people are in Harold’s?”And then we each throw out a number. There is almost always someone in the  Harold’s Chicken Shack on Clark Street, and more often than not, there are usually several people there. Whoever comes closest without going over the actual number wins. There is no prize but the glory of being right.

Last Friday night, instead of Guess How Many People Are in Harold’s, we played Guess How Many Times Henry is Going to Say the Word Airplane Before Bed. (Mind you, his bedtime is 7pm and we get home from work at 5:30.) Hoping that Henry had worked all of the airplane energy out of his system during the day, I guessed a rather conservative 12. Raphe was more ambitious and guessed 32.

We were both wrong.

I lost count after Henry said airplane 60 times.

To say he’s obsessed with airplanes is a gross understatement. Henry is endlessly fascinated by airplanes. He cocks his head when he hears them and scans the skies to catch a glimpse. He’s got several airplane toys (they get very heavy play time) and several airplane books (which we’ve read 76 million times). He doesn’t have the vocabulary yet to say much about airplanes, so he just says the word over and over and over again, with subtle variations in inflection. AIRPLANE! Airplane. AIR-plane. Air-PLANE. Airplane. Aaaaaaaiiiiiiirrrrrplane.

You know how if you say a word too many times, it loses all meaning and starts to sound really strange? We’re way past that.

While Henry still rejects fruit like a nudist rejects underpants. Meaning, we can buy it for him all we want, but when push comes to shove, he’s naked.

That really didn’t make any sense…

Anyway, fruit aside Henry loves to eat, and is getting pretty good at the spooning and forking and general shoveling. He’s still wearing a bib (when does that stop?), but usually he’s not so filthy after he eats that we have to immediately give him a bath.

The biggest problem is that, given a choice, Henry would eat pasta and cheese exclusively.

“Henry, what do you want for breakfast?”

“Pasta.”

“Let’s think of something different. How about some oatmeal? Or a waffle?”

“Cheese.”

“How about sausage?”

“Sausage!? Uh…” (It is here that we think we have him, because usually an offer of some sort of encased meat will get to him. But, no…) “Pasta!”

Sigh.

Luckily, Henry’s love for pasta and cheese encompasses all their variants. So he’s not just eating American cheese or mozzarella string cheese. He loves feta and sharp cheddar and blue, and has, of late, been devouring this garlic cheddar like it’s candy. (For him it is candy.) And it’s definitely not just macaroni and cheese or spaghetti with Ragu; he loves ravioli with spinach or stuffed shells or chunky (ie, full of tomatoes and onion) sauce.

Last night, we were downstairs in the back patio area of our building where there are tables and chairs set up. Our neighbors were there eating their dinner (a pesto tortellini) and the one neighbor foolishly offered Henry some. A few minutes later, half her plate was empty and we were dragging a crying baby away.

“Pasta! Pasta!”

He doesn’t cry for me, his own father, but he’ll wail for food. Lovely.

Although I’ve never written one, I assume that writing (and drawing) children’s books are not easy. I make that assumption because so many that I’ve read are really, really terrible.

And the few that aren’t terrible, are often not really books for kids at all. I mean, I love J. Otto Seibold’s books (Mr. Lunch Borrows a Canoe is great, as is Quincy, the Hobby Photographer), but try and get a kid to sit there and look at the strange pictures with you, and you realize it’s no easy task.

So it’s nice when you find books that are for kids — young kids, like Henry — and that they’re well written and drawn –for someone like Henry — and that they tell a nice, quick story. One that if you’re asked to read again and again (4, 5, 6 times), it doesn’t take too long.

So when we discovered Byron Barton, we were really happy. His books don’t seem like much. The art is pretty simple. There may be no more than 75 words in an entire book. And it all is pretty straight forward (no subtleties for Mr. Barton). But for a boy Henry’s age, there may be nothing better.

When Henry’s love of moving things morphed from cars and trains to airplanes over the past month, we knew where to turn. So we bought two books — Airport and Planes – and they’ve quickly become regulars.

Why am I writing about Byron Barton and these two books? Well, in the Planes board book, there is a page that illustrates a skywriting plane and its message: drink milk. (Henry does so with much vigor.)

But for some reason, every time you say “drink milk” to him, he starts cracking up. At times, he’ll laugh so much, he’ll roll on the floor. I didn’t think people did that except in the movies.

I’ve tried to say other tw0-word combinations to him in hopes that they, too, will be gut jiggling, but to no avail.

Instead, we’ll just have to show you video proof (of the book, the laughter, the potty, and Cecil trying to get everyone’s attention.)

So other than videotaping Henry on the pot, what else have we learned this month?

We learned that while Henry loves to be in the pool, he really doesn’t like to do anything in the pool. Each Saturday morning, Henry and I (and sometimes Kristen) head over to a local high school for swimming class. And each Saturday, Henry screeches in delight as we get in the water. And each Saturday, Henry doesn’t want to do any of the games. No blowing bubbles. No floating on his back (with my help, of course). No arm strokes. Nothing. He just wants to be in the water splashing. This is okay — he’s still really young and we’ll probably end up signing him up for another class in the fall to see if he gets any more interested in swim-type activites. Anyway, the pool water always makes his curls go nuts, which is really cute.

We also learned that Henry has a very narrow range of temperature happiness. By this, I mean, he gets cold easily (like his mother) and sweats like a beast when it gets too hot (like his father). At swim class, he rarely makes it for the full hour because his teeth are chattering away and his lips are turning purple. And today, when the temperature reached 85 for the first time this year, he was sweating buckets when we went to the park. (Don’t even ask what I was doing.) I think for the cold part, he just has to get some meat on his bones. (He’s really skinny, and no matter how many pounds of food he devours daily, he’s not getting chubby at all. He’s skinny as can be.)

We learned that Henry going down to one nap a day lasted all of 4 days and then he was back to two. He’s pretty much off and on, two one day, one the next. We gauge how tired he looks and if he looks like he’s going to zonk out any minute, he’ll be rushed off to his crib. It’s also pretty easy to decide when he stops playing, crawls up on top of the couch and says, quietly, “nap.”

We learned that when we go out for a walk or are in the car, we never have to worry about missing a dog or a car or a truck or a bike or a plane or a bird or a flower. (And so on.) Because Henry keeps a running commentary at all times. Often, when there isn’t anything that exciting happen, he’ll say “shovel” or “digger”, probably hoping that if he says it often enough, a large machine will magically appear out of nowhere.

We learned that Henry really likes taco night. Once a week, it seems, Kristen and I make tacos for dinner. They’re easy to make and tasty and they’re fun. I mean, you make your dinner… and then you get to make your dinner again! Cheese? Check. Tomatoes? You bet. Sour cream? No way. Anyway, we always give Henry a large plate of ground meat (with spices), beans, cheese, and a pile of guacamole that you’ve never seen in your life. That kid loves avocado! We’ve gotten to the point that he eats about 70% of what we’re eating for dinner, which is a great thing. It’s easier on everyone and it introduces him to new flavors. Now if he only learns how to wash the dishes.

And we learned that Henry is back to giving quality hugs and kisses. Nothing better than a nice smooch right before bedtime.

We’d like to think that Henry is advanced in everything that he does. (He is my son, you know.) But it’s not true. He’s definitely nap delayed.

What’s that, you ask? Well, when most babies his age were at three naps, he was at four (or sometimes five). When he finally dropped to three naps, other kids were at two. And it wasn’t until Saturday — yes, this past Saturday, when he’s nearly 21 months — that he dropped that second nap.

We have friends with kids Henry’s age who so.me days don’t nap at all. At all.

That’s incredible.

So when we decided that it was time for him to get rid of the morning nap, we were a bit worried. You see, Henry loves to sleep. Loves it. We put him in his crib and he’ll roll over and fall asleep right away.

But his sleep during the day was cutting into his night-time sleep, to the point that he was starting to wake up at 5 in the morning. While this was okay for Henry (what’s 5 to him?), it was brutal for Kristen and I. The remedy we thought was cutting out a nap.

On Saturday morning at 8, instead of putting him down for his first nap of the day, we all stayed up. We went to his swim class at 10, had some lunch after, and had him in bed by a little after noon. By the time he finally fell asleep, it was obvious that he was really tired. But there were no tears. No tantrums. No throwing of toys. He happily fell asleep and ended up taking a three-hour nap.

Sunday was the same. We kept him busy all morning (so he didn’t even have the chance to even think about a nap), and when he finished lunch, he slept the sleep of a contented youngster.

On Monday and today, Super-nanny Silvia did the same as we had over the weekend, and Henry was perfectly fine.

And best of all, he’s been waking up a little later in the morning. Today, in fact, he slept until nearly 6:45. SIX-FORTY-FIVE! Halleluja!

Of course, we’re all giddy now, but we’re dreading that day when he goes completely napless. That could mean the end of all the goodness in the world. Hopefully, we have a few more years until that happens.

Moments later Henry was shouting “MY TURN! MY TURN!” and trying to wedge himself in CC’s little house.