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| Brother love. From Hollands at Home 2011 |
Not to put too fine a point on it, but there is little more pleasurable in this world (so far as things you may discuss in mixed company) than coming home from work at the end of the day, saying hello to your six-month-old son and seeing him almost instantly break out into a grin so wide he also must flap his arms and kick his legs to fully express the joy your mere presence brings to him.
Of course, I am not the one who stays home with Charlie (and Jack and Max) all day every day while also being his only source of food. So I realize that all the things I love about Charlie do not come hand-in-hand with all the things that make him a terrible amount of work. Yes, I woke up three times the other night just to stick my thumb in his mouth until he went back to sleep. But that hardly compares to ceding one’s body for 15 months now just to keep this tiny creature alive.
I don’t just write things like that because I have to write things like that. I really do mean them. However, I also am absolutely serious when I say having a six-month-old baby in the house again is completely awesome, even as it also is awesome to have a 7-year-old and 3-year-old who each bring their own positive attributes to the family dynamic. But when you hold Charlie and he looks at you and smiles and squeaks you find yourself saying things like, “This is why people keep having babies!”
Peek-a-boo!
(Perhaps you, dear reader, have not had this experience, because in all likelihood if you have actually held Charlie, he did not look at you and smile. What can I say? He loves his parents. And he is nowhere near as particular about this issue as Max, so we’re considering it a victory. Who knew how spoiled we were by Jack’s absolute lack of concern for who was holding him from the very first moment?)
Of course, there are lots of reasons people don’t keep having babies, and all it takes is a cursory look at my Facebook news feed to encounter friends who are beyond uncomfortable in the later terms of their pregnancies, friends who have just brought home newborns in the last week or so and are therefore deprived of not just sleep but all rational thought and friends who, in the absolute worst-case scenario as far as my bride is concerned, have given birth to twins. This is written not to give any insight as to whether Charlie will be the last baby we make as much as to say: I know babies are a pain in the rear but gosh darn it I love them anyway. But only if they are mine.
For someone who is so enamored with being a father and, in some weird way, the particular challenges of very young children (yes, I’m talking about myself), I have long been uninterested in anyone else’s baby. I will look at the pictures, and sometimes seek them out, but I don’t really want to hold it. When friends are heading to the hospital I am always concerned that everything goes well ever since Max taught us full term pregnancy does not mean smooth sailing in the delivery room. But once the bundle of joy is out and safe, that’s good enough for me.
Maybe my tune will change when one of our siblings invents a cousin for our boys, but I’m not exactly holding my breath on that front. Kristie’s cousin, in fact, has had two children, including one very recently. I’m very happy for her and her husband, but should we encounter their entire family, I’ll be the one trying to connect with the 2-year-old boy while everyone else coos over the newborn girl. I’m not sure if this does or should say anything about me, but I feel compelled to share for some reason. Perhaps you can suggest why that is; I haven’t a clue.
As for the specifics of Charlie, I can report the following, some of which might not be new information: he is not close to being able to sit up. He seems to be far away from sprouting teeth. He regularly sleeps from 9:30 or 10 p.m. to almost 6 a.m., though he still is in a little seat in his room (strapped in) and has rejected my few attempts to get him to sleep in his crib. He will not use a pacifier, but he is in no way shy about isolating one of my thumbs and jamming it in his mouth. He likes to grab pretty much everything, with a special affinity for the short hairs on the back of Kristie’s neck. She does not enjoy this.
He has eaten trace amounts of baby applesauce (still heavy in Max’s rotation), mostly off a parents’ fingertip but once off a spoon, so there’s a chance this part of his diet will increase in the very near future. Kristie just recently put up the fancy-pants high chair we bough for him more than a year ago, but he’s not yet had a seat. He is on occasion quite happy to be in his Jumparoo, provided a parent is continually in his line of sight. Usually this contentment period ends without warning, and then he must be picked up.
The Jumparoo.
He is quite fond of being “worn” in any manner of slings, wraps and harnesses we have laying about the house. I suggest if we took the money spent on these apparatuses and invested it the boy might have a sturdy college fund in 18 years. But I am reminded some of them were bought for older boys, many were gently used and therefore came at a reduced cost and, really, what is the price tag on a wife’s sanity? (You guessed it: there is none.)
Charlie prefers to nap when being worn, which is good on the one hand because we have a reliable “get that kid to sleep” trick. On the other, it’s not that easy to be productive with a sleeping child attached to you, especially when your other, older children are wide awake. I am fond of strapping Charlie to my chest and heading off for a robust walk through the subdivision (past many very well engineered cul-de-sacs), and while it has not yet failed to secure at least a brief nap, it also is very good at making both of us sweaty and is avoided altogether when the heat and humidity are unfit for man and beast (and baby). If push comes to shove, I’ll drive him to the mall and walk around there.
Another downside of his constant physical connection to one of his parents (and also to summer being a harder time to get any boys to bed) is we’ve been staying up too late pretty much every night simply to give ourselves a chance to type two-handed, watch a television show featuring real humans instead of animated characters or simply eat without interruption. It has so far not made the days unbearable for lack of sleep, but at some point we will not be able to push it this hard. These are not uncharted waters for parents of more than one child, but at least we have the benefit of a DVR to store all the shows we swear we’ll get around watching before the season premieres start next month.
As I write these sentences the clock is rolling past midnight and so any earlier reference to today now refers to yesterday, if you’re keeping score at home, so apologies for that. I’d still like to find a photo or two to go with this post, so I’m going to cut it short. And maybe after 1,400 words on the subject I just don’t have that much more to say.
These first six months, on balance, have gone remarkably well. The next six months get Jack in second grade, Max starting preschool and Charlie hopefully learning some independence while also being the cutest damn thing you’ve ever seen on this planet, not to mention all the holidays, fall and winter coming back and a bunch more snow to shovel. Hard to believe how different things were six months ago tonight and how different they will be again six months in the future. Life with little ones moves at a remarkably quick pace while also being the most time-consuming activity possible. Such is life, and what a life it is.
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| From Pops and K's |
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