Fake Coughing and the Scream-Fart

I am strangely and repeatedly surprised that Henry continues to grow.  I seem to expect him to be a static being who will remain a baby forever, but he isn't so little anymore.  He has 8 teeth now and he tears around the house like a super-commando on his belly.  He yells, "Muh!" when I bug him too much.

I have always been fascinated by human behaviour and have found parenting an infant to be a veritable fun house of stimuli, reactions and reinforcement.  Henry, as I'm sure all munchkins are, is extremely observant of his surroundings and continually tries out different sounds and actions to gauge the responses.  I have two favorites.

The first is fake coughing.

Henry loves attention.  He loves people watching what he's doing and getting to make his funny faces and noises.  He is a shameless flirt and is quite confident in his ability to amuse someone once he has hijacked their consciousness.  He has a large bag of tricks to get my attention and could write a manual on how to make his Mom laugh if his little fingers could type.  His dilemma, however, has been how to reliably gain a stranger's attention.

When he was smaller, people would fall all over him.  But now that he's a grabby shopping cart monster that does a lot of random yelling and hooting, passersby are quicker to write him off as a bratty kid and continue without notice.

The little turkey, in his infant wisdom, has overcome this barrier.  He has discovered that if he coughs loudly, people will always look.  It works 100% of the time.  It's also a brilliantly broad-targeted strategy as he will wait until we are near 3 - 5 people before he begins to "choke".  This will cause at least 40 - 60% of the unwitting strangers to turn suddenly to see if he needs infant CPR, giving him a variety of suckers to choose from.

Then he can turn on the Henry show.  They are putty in his hands.

The second thing he's doing started quite innocently last night as I was putting him to bed.  We had been to two separate Superbowl parties, so he was pretty wound up from being Party Baby for several hours.  I sat in the rocker and held him while he got all of his alligator-twists and owl-hoots out.  

As he was just starting to really settle and drop his head into the crook in my neck, I felt his little body tense a bit.  Certain that he was going to thrash one more time before conking out, I was unconcerned.

And then it cuts through the darkness - the scream-fart.

Henry gets a bit backed up now and then with all of the new solid foods and he used to cry when his tummy would hurt.  It seems that he has again evolved.  The scream-fart is a combination of a fart worthy of a large adult man and a shrill scream.  It appears to relieve the pesky abdominal pressure whilst providing a reason to randomly screech.  The two things together are certainly greater than the sum of their parts.

In the darkened room, time slowed down and I tried to tell myself to behave like an adult and not laugh as he was almost settled to sleep.   I knew he couldn't see the expression on my face, but I was unable to control the massive belly laugh that the scream-fart had caused.  I lasted about 4 seconds and then busted out laughing.

Henry, now extremely pleased with himself, also begins to chuckle.  So there we are in his dark little room, strongly reinforcing the scream-fart.  This is not recommended in the Baby Behaviour Manual.

I eventually got him to sleep and then went to tell Mark about our adventure.  I hoped that Henry would forget about this, but I underestimated the positive reinforcement combination of Mom laughing, the relief of farting and screaming at the same time and getting to stay up later.  The scream-fart has visited us again today, unfortunately for me, with the same response from me.

I've always wondered how I would handle opportunities to be a proper, adult role model.  I assumed that it would be tough to keep a straight face at times, but I had not anticipated this level of assault.  I am powerless to the scream-fart.  I am, however, really looking forward to the next thing that is too hilarious not to laugh at.  I can't even guess what it will be.

The Peanut Butter Barrier

I'm certain that this will make me a pariah amongst my peers, but I proceed anyway.  I gave Henry, who is 8 months and a few days old, peanut butter with his apple this morning.  I know.  If anyone needs a few seconds to compose themselves, please enjoy this video I found.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMNDdnYOjWw

Recent thinking generally dictates, with respect to introducing little ones to certain foods, to withhold eggs, milk, peanuts, wheat, soy, tree nuts, fish, and shellfish until the child is a year old.  I did some more reading online, though, prior to my extreme experiment, and it does seem that attitudes are beginning to shift (back) towards a higher variety of food earlier . This article, dated November 23, 2011, details some of this newer thinking: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8909837/Children-allowed-to-be-picky-eaters-develop-allergies.html

 

So, I used my decision-tree skills and reviewed the facts.  Solid food has been going well.   Henry has liked everything we've given him so far and his throat hasn't swollen shut once.  Neither Mark nor I have any specific food allergies and we live within walking distance of the nearest hospital, so should the little guy react poorly, we'd certainly make it there in time.  Just to be safe, I had Mark ready the car seat and start the car.

What an awful way to have to think.

I have found that a lot of parenting advice and literature is based in fear.  Fear of illness and fear of vaccines.  Fear of choking.  Fear of accidents.  Fear of abduction and evil people that put razor blades in candy apples.  Fear of post partum depression.  Fear of jaundice and anaphylaxis.  Fear of germs and dirt and animals.

I try to keep my head about me, but I fall prey to this stuff all the time.  When we were still in the hospital after Henry was born, we were bombarded with educational material.  We were given a video called The Purple Cry.  We were told (as I'm sure is the standard operation procedure, by every health care professional that entered our room) that we must watch this video to prevent us from wanting to shake our baby.  We were asked skill-testing questions about material from the book at regular intervals throughout our four day stay.

Now, to be fair, there was an incident in a Sears baby section where Mark had words with one of the  styrofoam practice-babies after it didn't want to fit into a baby carrier.  So realistically, we may have been singled out for the video.  But, I just remember thinking, "Is this going to be so hard, that I have to receive education on how not to shake this little creature to death?"  That's tremedously extreme for a first time Mom.

The other main piece of literature that we received was a tome, entitled "Baby's Best Chance."  I wondered what titles didn't make the cut: "We Think Your Baby May Be OK if We Send Him/Her Home With You," or, "Baby Might Make It," or my favorite, "Good Luck Suckers."

I'm a realist in many senses, but one of my absolutely favorite things about having a baby is the pure sense of optimism and wonder that comes from this little being.  He is a blank slate, and through the examination of my values, virtues and flaws, I can carefully encourage him to become a fantastic, well-rounded little person.  I will keep him safe through the use of common sense, calls to my mother and high school physics knowledge.

I fully believe that we, as parents, are innately programmed to care for our children.  I do see the value in child-care information, but as a back-up.  As reference material.   I think that the current fear-based way in which a lot of this material is delivered ultimately does a disservice to new parents. There is no chapter on trusting your gut. There is no video pep talk about reminding yourself that you're doing a fantastic job even if you're having a bad day.

This would be my preferred approach to new-baby literature.  It would be a big picture book, like Henry's board books. 

The first chapter would show a maniacally desparate Mom holding a tiny, wailing creature with a clock that reads 4:36 AM.  The caption would say, "I better you never thought you'd be this tired and not die.  But 6 months from now, you'll miss how little she is." 

It would then have a picture of an extremely tired Mommy holding a screaming baby with two little teeth buds in his bottom jaw, with a caption that reads "Teething.  It sucks.  But it will pass and you're doing a great job." 

There would be a section that showed a frustrated Mommy trying to stuff food into a child that is swinging his arms like King Kong while twisting out of his highchair like a crocodile in a death-spiral.  She and he would be covered in the food, and none of it would be in his mouth.  The caption would read, "He'll have to feed himself at some point.  It not, he'll just live in your basement forever."

Real life stuff.  From experience.  Not from fear.