Kissing Week, Part I

It’s been a red-letter week for hugging and kissing, both by babies, and by strange men.

Yes? Yes. Okay, first thing first.

By Babies

Henry has taken to approaching me with a large wide-open mouth, which he very gingerly places somewhere on my head. Cheek, eye, mouth. He waits for a beat and breathes out. Sometimes he licks me a little bit, sometimes he brushes me with his teeth.

Aside from my fear of being experimentally bitten, it’s the best.

It happens a lot first thing in the morning, if we are snugglenapping because I’ve gotten into bed with him (no, not his bed, a big normal bed in his room) in order to get a bit more sleep.

It also happens on the changing table, after I save him.

When you lay Henry down to try to change him, which I only do when it’s absolutely necessary, he acts like you are crushing out the very light of his soul. He acts like a person about to throw himself upon a funeral pyre. Unhappiness is all relative, I guess.

Sometimes it gets so bad that I help him stand up again just so he can catch his breath. Then he sees me as an ally and is so relieved to be upright that he hugs me tight and kisses me on the head. This is ironic, of course, because I am the person who made him lay down on his back in the first place. Is this Stockholm Syndrome? Not quite, I don’t think.

I also, ironically, get lots of hugs because I can’t seem to keep the fire alarm from going off, and Henry feels sick with fear and tries to clambor into my own skin with me. The fact that I keep thwacking the offending machine with a broom until it falls off of the wall, 10 feet to the floor where the battery shatters out of it, might not help. However, this is the only way I can definitively get the beeping to stop. I hate that he is scared. But I do love when he hugs me. That is not why I fill the house with smoke, though. I think there is something wrong with our stove. Or maybe it’s our pans.

Part II, By Strange Men, will come next.

Thanks to Jannie-Jan on Flickr for Creative Commons use of the lips pic.