Barnabas Monkeypants

(This is nearly a week late, and I feel terrible. Work has been nuts, my traveling season has started up, and overall work madness had made it so I’m working most nights and full days and don’t have 10 seconds to string together a cogent thought.)

A few years ago, when we had three cats (none of whom are the insane animals we have running through our house now), I had this moment where I was completely amazed that living with Kristen and I were these creatures that just lurked around the house, ate, slept, pooped, snuggled, and sometimes broke things. It’s a strange feeling knowing you’re not alone in your own house.

The other day, this same thought came over me, but now, instead of Frank, Betty, and Sonja (poor kitties, all died too young), there is Henry. He walks around and does his own thing — playing with cars, eating a snack, chasing a cat. He doesn’t need me or Kristen as much (oh, there are still plenty of “Daddy help”; “Help what?”, “Daddy help PLEEEEZE”), and I spend a lot of time not playing with him but just watching him play. (It’s completely fascinating.)

But unlike the cats, he’s growing and maturing and changing and becoming a child — not a baby or a toddler — but a child. It’s completely amazing.

The past month has had its moments, of course. There was his first real tantrum where he just didn’t want to sit and eat with us, where the tears and screams flew out of him, and where the only thing that calmed him down was just letting it all out.

There was the fact that the plumbing in our kitchen (and in two other units’ kitchens) died and we were without water or use of a dishwasher for over a week. A large hole had to be cut in Henry’s bedroom wall (it’s only being repaired today), and this meant he spent several nights sleeping in other rooms (and even once, with us), and having his schedule (and ours) go completely kaplooey.

There was his poop regression, where he no longer wants to sit on his potty, and where we’ve begun to have to bribe him with M&Ms (which he calls “and M and Ms”) just so he will sit and at least try to go.

There was his throwing of toys at daddy’s head (ow!) and even a bite (double ow!) and the resulting meltdown when he had to have a short timeout. (Is 120 seconds long enough to be a living hell? Oh, yes.)

There were trips to Florida for a funeral and a visit from family that made him hyper and exhausted all at once.

And yet, through all of this, these were minuscule bumps in an otherwise great month. I am completely and utterly in love with the kid, and I really can’t think of life before him.

So, what else have we learned this, his first full month of being 2?

We learned that Henry’s love for all things cars continues to grow. I know I write a lot about it (when I do write), but it’s true. The past week, Henry’s woken up in the middle of the night a couple of times, and when I went back to check on him (too many tears and calls for us to try and let him just fall back to sleep on his own), the first thing he asked for, after Kristen, of course, was “I want to play Mater” (Mater being this character from the movie Cars, which he hasn’t yet seen, but has watched some of the 3-minute Mater’s Tall Tales that more easily fit his attention span).

When he wakes up in the morning, he wants to play cars. When we’re telling him it’s time for bed, he demands to play cars. He has cars in his crib with him, and has car clothing. It’s a disease.

We learned that Henry likes back and foot rubs, just like his mother. And, just like his mother, he tends to not be the most balanced person around. He doesn’t fall a lot so much as it always seems he’s going to fall. When he’s running around an playing at the park, I tend to hover around him, ready to catch him when he topples.

We learned that Henry likes the idea of Skype and phonecalls more than actual Skype and phonecalls. He’ll ask to talk when someone calls, but when we give him the phone, he’s usually silent. Same thing for when he wants to “Talk to Opa on the pater” (pater being what he calls the computer). I don’t know if he’s shy or just gets a little stage fright. He’ll get over it, and I’m sure will be chatting away (as he does when he pretends to call people) before we know it.

And we learned that Henry’s curls live on. After a haircut a few weeks ago, we worried that his golden curly locks would be gone, replaced by merely golden locks. But we worried for nothing, as his hair (when it’s humid or when he just gets out of the bath) has remained curly. I know we’re just tempting fate and that soon it will be as straight as Kristen’s or mine, but for now, it’s just plain wonderful.

I was away last weekend (Friday until Sunday morning) because of work, and Kristen, looking for fun things to do with Henry and without me, saw that there was a Touch-a-Truck event in neighboring Lincolnwood. (Lincolnwood borders Chicago up north where we are, and it’s only about 15 minutes from our house.)

It took place in the parking lot of the Lincolnwood Town Center (which I wrote about a long time ago, during Kristen’s pregnancy, as a place with the worst bathrooms in the history of bathrooms).

Kristen and Henry went with our friend Meghan and a couple of kids who she was looking after for the day, and it was, from the numerous texts and phone messages I received from Kristen throughout the day, possibly the greatest thing our son has ever experienced in his life.

Even better than Taco Night.

Henry (and all the other kids) got to run around in the rain and jump into fire trucks and ambulances and police cars and garbage trucks, honk the horns, push the buttons, do pretty much everything Henry loves to do. They stayed the full two hours, and I suspect he would’ve been happy to have been able to curl up in the passenger seat of the fire truck and take his afternoon nap there.

I’m sorry I missed it (but there were pictures).

I remember loving Legos as a child. And Star Wars toys. And comic books. But each of those were when I was older — 6, 7, 8. Before that, I don’t really remember anything specifically.

It’s not to say that I didn’t have toys or play with anything (I did), I just don’t remember them.

With Henry, however, his playtime history is recorded here, and we will all have the ability to go back and remind him (and hopefully his future girlfriends) about how much his young life revolved around cars. Cars. CARS!

It is an obsession that is never ending.

He wakes up in the morning, and the first word out of his mouth is “car”. Before he eats breakfast or even gets his diaper changed, he’s over playing with one of a dozen Hot Wheels or Matchbox cars we’ve gotten for him (a great gift at only 84 cents each at Target!), or Mater (from the movie Cars), or the parking garage we got him for his birthday.

He got a parking garage, people, and it’s the best toy a 2-year-old boy could ever have received.

When we get into the car, we have to let him sit in the driver’s seat and pretend to drive or play with the garage door opener or push the hazard lights button, and if we’re in a hurry and don’t have time to let him play, he gets quite unhappy.

We watch cars drive past. We watch car videos on YouTube. We draw cars with crayons and make cars out of PlayDoh.

The thing is, it’s not a strange obsession. He doesn’t line them up or count their wheels or recite facts about cars (“wheels”, “engine”, “gas”). He plays with them and makes silly noises and drives them around the house and on our heads and he laughs when they fall off the table or crash into each other (a “sorry” always follows).

Like any childhood obsession, I wonder if this is going to peter out or grow and grow and grow. (Have you seen how many comic books I ended up with? It’s not pretty.) But for now, it’s really great to watch him play with his cars and play with him and have him grab you by the hand and lead you to his parking garage so you can help him get the fire truck to the top floor or have the race car go through the car wash.

First off, my apologies for the lateness of this post. Henry’s birthday was last Saturday (more on that later), but in the week previous and the days following, Kristen’s grandmother and Henry’s great-grandmother (Oma) became very ill. Kristen’s father was to come up for the party, but he had to cancel, as Oma was admitted to the hospital with pneumonia (among other things).

Oma passed away on Tuesday evening.

Henry (along with Kristen and I) visited Florida three times during his first two years and he was able to meet  Oma and charm her (as he charms everyone), and that was something very important to all of us.

Kristen and Henry are down there right now and will be returning on Sunday. (Tickets were astronomical, so I am staying home.) And I miss them dearly as much as I know Kristen misses her grandmother.

Now on to something less somber. Henry’s birthday party.

Last year, when Henry turned one, the highlight (for me and I suspect Henry) was when our chubby cheeked boy devoured an extra-large cupcake to the amazement of all. (The boy can pack it in.) He could crawl at the time and stand up, but he wasn’t particularly mobile. He also pretty much just laughed and made silly baby noises.

A lot has changed since then.

No longer chubby (more on that later) and very mobile and talkative, this was a much different party.

An aside: another difference this year was the weather. For those of you (all 3 of my readers) who attended Henry’s birthday bash last year, you might remember that we had the party indoors. Not because of rain, but because it was freezing outside. On August 22nd last year (when we had his party) the high was in the low 60s, and even colder by the lake. (Naturally, we live very close to the lake.) This summer has been brutally hot and humid, and I feared that it would be so bad outside, we’d be forced to have it inside, with the air conditioners cranking. Luckily, it was perfect weather, mid-80s, low humidity. Thank goodness.

So the kids at the party today could all (except for two newborns) run around and talk and grab and be silly, and everyone had a good time. In the days leading up to the party, we would tell Henry that his “birthday was coming” and that he had every reason to be happy.

“My birthday coming?” he’d ask.

“Yes, on Saturday your birthday will be here,” we’d answer.

Over and over.

Then, on Saturday, with everyone having fun and sidewalk chalk all over the ground and bubbles in the air and hot dogs in the tummy, Henry came up to me and asked, “My birthday coming?”

“It’s here, Henry! This is your birthday,” I said.

“Birthday! Birthday! Birthday!” he yelled and ran around like a crazed monkey.

We had some great cake with an airplane icing on top and everyone got to take home some race car rubber duckies and as the party came to a close, Henry opened about 1/3 of his presents (with the help of a few young ladies who were more excited about it than he was), until it became obvious that he’d rather play with the airplane he unwrapped early on than get to any more packages, so we slowly wound down things and everyone went home. (Except for Henry, Kristen and I who were already home and our friends Meghan and Christine who demanded they stay and help clean up.)

Overall, it was a great party, and we thank everyone who came and celebrated with us.

So, other than having a shindig to rival all other shindigs, what have we learned this past month?

We learned that Henry is still very tall and very skinny. At his 2-year appointment on Monday, Henry was measured at 36 inches tall (that’s 3 feet for those who aren’t so good at math) and 26 pounds (which is just under 2 stone, if you live in the UK). When you put that in the handy-dandy chart, he’s 90th percentile for height and 15th percentile for weight. He is a spaghetti. (A wonderful, adorable, happy spaghetti.) So by the time he’s 20, it looks like he’ll be (doing the math, dividing by pi) 7 1/2 feet tall and a little under 65 pounds. Manute Bol.

We also learned from the pediatrician what we’ve already suspected. As Henry wailed way (he was not happy to go to the doc’s), he was talking up a storm. (We like it when he talks when he’s unhappy, as I’ve mentioned before. It’s much easier to help him out and make things better and explain to him what’s going on.) Anyway, Dr. Weismann asked how coordinated Henry was. The answer is so-so. He runs like a mad man, his arms and legs flailing about. He wants to jump and talks about jumping, but he hasn’t ever actually jumped. The doctor explained that there’s a spike in development in either the physical or the vocal, and one flies past the other. By the time 3 rolls around, they’re usually at the same spot. I don’t care if he can’t jump at 2 or 3 or 4. All I care is that when he’s 17, he’s ready to be drafted and play center for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

We learned that Henry has become complete and utterly terrified of bugs. Now Kristen’s not a bug person (especially moths), but she has been very good at hiding her buggy fears in front of Henry. Yet somehow, spiders and bugs and flies (especially the dreaded dragonflies) have become the most frightening thing on the planet. From a distance (and in books), he’s fine, but get one within 5 feet and he’s holding onto you for dear life saying, “I’m scared of bugs, daddy.” We’ve been trying to help him out a bit — let him know that they’re not going to hurt him, that they’re not really scary — but so far, no luck. Will he eventually grow out of this fear or will it drive him to a career as a Terminex man? Time will only tell.

And we learned that any day now — any day — we’re going to have to take Henry in for his first haircut. As the summer comes to a close and as the humid weather of summer will move into the dry cold of winter, those curls in the back are going to become flat and lifeless. And when Henry’s hair is flat and lifeless, it looks like a gigantic blond mullet. (When it’s really wet, it’s down past his shoulders.) Every time we say it’s time for the barber’s chair, he’ll turn around and show us the curls on the back of his head, and we’ll put it off for another week. But I think that pretty soon it will be time. The only question now is, how much of the hair will we save? All of it? Just the best 4 or 5 curls? It’s just so sad to think about…

If you’ve ever wondered to yourself, “Who are those weiners who actually use the grocery cart with the plastic car stuck on the front?”, I’ve got your answer:

FYI, we managed to make it home without the $8 butterfly balloon, but just barely.

Henry has mastered the skill of “milking it”. About a week and a half ago, while running down the street, he tripped and skinned his knee.

It was a pretty big owie (as we’re wont to call them), and there was a little blood and a lot of tears. The tears stopped after a minute or two, but the owie stayed around, scabbing over and generally looking like your standard skinned knee.

For the first couple of days after, you could tell that it still hurt a little, and Henry would often touch his knee or point at it and say, “My knee hurts”, and we’d remedy it with a hug and a kiss (on both a cheek and the knee). But after a week or so, the scab all fell off and everything was back to normal.

Or so we thought.

You see, Henry realized that he was getting a little bit extra attention when he complained, he got extra smooches and hugs (as if he could ever get more of those). So for the last few days, he’ll walk up to us and say, “Knee hurts”, make a little pouty face and whine a little until he gets the kisses and attention his joint so justifiably deserves.

Now the worry-wort in my heart at first thought that maybe his knee is irreparably damaged, that he will limp for the rest of his life, his (my) dreams of him winning Wimbledon shot before he even turns two.

But then after his knee kiss was over, he’d be off running and jumping and being silly, with nary a limp or any sign of injury.

I suppose this is all part of growing up, right? Little lies that make people fawn over you a little more. (It’s almost as if Henry’s a character in a Victorian novel who faints in the heat of summer so they can be rescued and swept off their feet by the handsome stranger with the large estate.)

I just don’t want it to get any worse. I don’t want him to lie about things — lie about a real injury or whatever — and yet I’m a bit worried that we’re allowing him to go on about a white lie.

Either way, he’ll never lack from hugs and kisses from Kristen and me.

Just a quick squirrel update. Last night, as Kristen, Henry, and a few neighbors were having a lovely dinner of hamburgers, hot dogs, corn-on-the-cob, and tater tots (oh, yes, tater tots), the brazen squirrel was harassing us.

He crawled around the back steps for a while, not 10 feet from our table, and scurried up and down the back gate as we ate… glaring his beady little eyes.

After we finished eating, Henry, Francesca (the lovely 3-year-old who lives next door), and I were running around (well, they were running, I was trying to catch up) when, out of the blue, the squirrel attacked!

Okay, it didn’t attack, but what it did was run underneath the table, scratching Craig (Francesca’s father) on the ankle.

Kristen saw this brazen behavior and screamed. Lillian, our downstairs neighbor who also was eating with us, saw nothing, but screamed louder. Craig, being a man’s man, grunted.

Well, all this screaming (and Lillian was really wailing) scared the bejeezus out of Henry, and he stared to scream and cry.

(Francesca and I had no clue what was happening. Neither of us shed tears.)

I guess we’re going to have to call the city and have them bring out a trap. Either that, or we’re calling Billy the Exterminator.

I’ve mentioned in the past that Henry’s talking up a storm, and that’s really great because it has made for a smooth transition between baby-hood and toddler-hood. Many a tantrum has been nipped in the bud because we’ve been able to ask Henry what was wrong or what did he need or whether or not he wanted yet another sausage link. (He usually does.)

And, of course, every time he starts to talk, he usually says something pretty hilarious (causing Kristen and I to have to stifle our laughter).

But the craziest thing that he’s been doing of late is telling us exactly what he wants to eat. No, not asking for tacos or spaghetti or ice cream. He’s been doing that for months.

What he does is ask for specific pieces of food on his plate.

You see, we’ll have a bowl of ravioli sitting in front of him, and after he’s done feeding himself and wants some help, he’ll direct us to feed him that-one-right-there-no-Daddy-the-other-one-yes-Daddy-that-one pasta.

“That one!” he’ll say, pointing to something that’s hidden under cheese and sauce.

“This one?” I’ll ask.

“No, daddy, that one!”

And so on and so on until the bowl is empty. And then he’ll ask for the pasta on my plate, and when that’s all done with, he’ll go after Kristen’s. (We think he’s going through another growth spurt.)

It’s not just pasta. It’s soup, it’s hot dogs, it’s ice cream (do you know how difficult it is to figure out exactly which part of the scoop he’s talking about?).

But at least he’s eating (and eating a lot) and he’s talking. We’ll gladly put up with the specificities.

So, other than Henry directing his every move, what else have we learned this month?

We learned that Henry can count up to twelve. Sure, he really doesn’t understand the concept of the numbers up that high, but it’s cute and wonderful and every time he does it, we all clap and give him hugs and kisses.

We learned that Henry’s hair is getting curlier and curlier. I don’t know where he’s got it from, but his hair is just going wild of late. When it’s humid out — and this summer has been brutally humid — it curls up like he just got out of the salon with a perm. His blond hair we can explain — both Kristen and I were blonds when we were really young — but neither of us had hair like that. Because of these remarkable curls (which at first were just in the back but now are at top of his head), Kristen has not allowed for scissors to come near his head. It will happen soon — maybe before he turns two — but for now, he’s still wonderfully shaggy.

We learned that Henry likes ice in his water. In fact, he demands it. He’ll grab a cup of water, look inside, and if he doesn’t see an ice cube floating, he’ll toddle over to the freezer and try to open it up. This really isn’t a problem — ice is plentiful around here — but it can get a bit rough when were outside or in the car and there’s no ice to be found.

We learned that sometimes Henry can say things and be cute and charming that would otherwise be a little bit… strange… if an adult said it. For example, he was on the potty and had a poop. It was a little poop, so when he stood up and looked at what was in the potty, he said, “Ladybug.” That was funny for hours.

And we learned that Henry’s idea of a perfect morning is to get on the CTA elevated train with Mommy or Daddy and just ride for about an hour or so. He loves everything about the train — the tracks, the stations, the people coming in and going out of the cars — and it’s inevitable that as we’re heading home, 10 minutes or so from our stop, Henry will put his arm around one of our necks, lay his head on our shoulders, and fall asleep. That’s when Kristen and I like the train.