How Henry Gets His Beauty Rest...

A future bookworm like his dad, right? Well, I can dream.

Henry has had a really bad cold for the last few days. He’ll start screaming in the middle of the night because he can’t breath through his nose and one of us will have to go in there and snake out his nose. How do you snake a baby’s nose? We have this plastic thing called a bulb syringe, you stick the thing in his nostrils and you suck the mucus out. It’s gross work because the only way you know it’s worked is that a big string of snot practically flies out of the kid’s nose. Anyway, the funny thing is that half the time when Henry starts screaming at night, I’ll go in his room, turn the light on, pick up the kid put him on the changing table grab the snake and realize the kid still has his eyes closed, he’s figured out how to scream in his sleep! Imagine finding a way to get what you want, keep your parents up half the night, and still get your beauty rest.

But in a weird way I feel like I should be thanking Henry. He’s started this thing where he walks up at 5 am in the morning screaming and won’t go back to sleep unless you rock him to sleep or bring him into our bedroom and cuddle up with him. As some of you may know I’m a night owl, so sometimes I don’t get to sleep till 2 am. The reason I can get by with such little sleep is that I sleep very deeply. I mean the fire alarm can go off and I just think it’s my alarm clock and roll over. I somehow get like a full night’s sleep in half the time by entering some sort of near comatose state. But the one problem with this sleep schedule is that I almost never remember any of my dreams. Carol loves to tell me all about the dreams she had in stunningly complete detail, but I remember nothing. However, almost every time Henry wakes me up early, when I go back to sleep it’s a much lighter sleep and I remember all my dreams. So thanks for that Henry, I’m starting to develop a coffee addiction from being constantly sleep deprived, but it’s neat to remember how I defeated the dragon with the silver sword of truth and found out one of my bosses was secretly attending sewing conventions. (That’s just what I was dreaming).

But, I really feel closer to Henry because I’ve had to take care of him. When he was a few months younger and he had a little cold, I put him in his bouncy seat and it kept from rolling onto his stomach and even kept his head elevated, but he’s too big for that seat now, so the only way I could keep him on his back and his head elevated was to sleep on the floor of his room with my arm around him until his breathing cleared up enough to put him back in his crib. I kept thinking I’d fall asleep and I’d wake up to Carol snapping a picture of the two of us because it was probably the cutest thing ever.

But geez, this post has been all about how he’s had a cold, it sounds like he’s sickly or something. He’s had some trouble breathing through his nose at night and in the day he’s had a cough and his nose has been running, but other then that he’s been his bright and cheery-self most of the time. He uses that toy car that’s big enough for him to sit in to help him walk across the room. He stands behind it and uses the car like it’s a walker. He is also pulling up on walls, baby gates, couches, computer desks, floor lamps, and anything else he can find. But he still doesn’t have the balance to stand on his own.

It’s funny he stays home two days a week with Carol and I take care of him on Saturdays (Sundays we tag team it) and the other three days he’s at daycare. And they always say at daycare that he’s a perfect angel and he’s no trouble and Carol and I just look at each other and say he’s great, but he isn’t perfect. At home he spends half the day going for the heater, or the cat box, or the computer, or the lamp. And we tell him “Henry, No!” and he smiles at you and goes for the thing again and then you have to pick him up and put him somewhere else and he screams. But I figured it out. The daycare rooms are like super baby proofed. It’s like he can crawl around there, mess with anything in his reach, and he’s not breaking any rules. That’s one of the reasons why he enjoys it there so much. It’s like when you’re a first time parent people are always telling you that kids need structure and they do, but they are also happy when they can do their thing and crawl around the room and touch everything and not have to remember that they aren’t supposed to touch about half the things in the room.

When Henry is older and he asks where he came from I plan on saying I picked him out at the supermarket. And look I even have the photo evidence. And in an outfit that sharp, what shopper could resist?