Hutch is so much like a tiny little puppy that I’ve actually taken to calling him Puppy as a nickname. He bounces (the human equivalent to a wagging tail) when he’s excited (which is often), he pants and drools and gives the most ridiculously slobbery kisses. He follows me around on his hands and knees and begs for food, and when none is readily available he’s perfectly happy to eat fallen pieces of Cheerios off the floor under his high chair. His fuzzy little head is excruciatingly pettable and he loves having the spot behind his ears scratched. Also, he’s been known to play in toilet bowls (though he hasn’t sunk so low as to lap water from one yet).
The two things Hutch loves most in this world are his parents and toilet paper rolls—specifically unravelling them. We’ve taken to closing the bathroom doors when we’re not in them (see above re: toilet bowl antics), but on the rare occasion that he finds one open, he crawls to it at the speed of a very fast infant, positions himself on his haunches directly beneath the toilet paper roll, and tugs at it gleefully until it’s either completely unravelled (at which point he begins the daunting but obviously necessary task of eating it all), or one of us whisks him away, whichever comes first.
He is almost equally obsessed with the shiny stainless steel interior of the dishwasher door, the sound of which opening can draw him from literally any room in the house within fifteen seconds. It also makes doing dishes sort of cumbersome.
When I need a few minutes to get chores done without my little puppy underfoot, I start a load of laundry in the washer. Yesterday I did this and Hutch crawled up to it, settled in a few inches away from it, and sat transfixed for twenty minutes. When I checked on him about five minutes into the show, I saw he’d picked up a Cheerio from off the floor and was munching on it mindlessly, never taking his eyes off the spinning waterworks before him.
Not related: how do Cheerios travel so far in such a small space of time? I start most mornings by sweeping or vacuuming the house in anticipation of Hutch’s daily rounds, and by 10 a.m. I can usually find a Cheerio on the floor in nearly every room of our house. I will pay the researcher who can study and identify the cause of this phenomenon. (Payment made in tweets. Or pips.)
Hutch grinds his eight teeth (four on top and four on bottom) any time he doesn’t have a soother in his mouth for more than a few minutes, like he’s still kind of in awe of those sharp protrusions in his mouth. The noise is maddening but the face is adorable.
In the morning when Poor Kyle’s alarm wakes Hutch up at 5:50 a.m. (which it almost always does), I or Poor Kyle bring our sad and sleepy baby into bed to (with any luck) catch another few hours of sleep before the day begins. When this works, the heavens rejoice. When it fails, my day is ruined. I love my baby but I love him more when he lets me sleep. Sensing this, and knowing he’s on thin ice, Hutch bumbles adorably around the bed, four-by-fouring over pillows and blankets and parental limbs until he finally reaches his ultimate goal: the blinds shading the window above our bed.
He stands there, propped against the wall, flicking the blinds’ lowest slats contentedly for about ten minutes until one of us finally wakes up enough to realize the mayhem he’s causing. We lay him back down and it starts all over again. When he’s bored of that game he stops, looks between the two of us, and chooses which of our heads to maul until we fully wake up and give him the attention he deserves.
He almost always chooses mine.
When his dad comes home from work and tiptoes around the corner of whatever room Hutch is in to peekaboo hello, Hutch grins and squeals like he’s been given the greatest gift imaginable (a lifetime supply of toilet paper rolls is my guess). He then proceeds to crawl his little pigeon-handed monkey crawl as fast as he can to the outstretched arms of Poor Kyle.
Bouncing ensues.
Sometimes people ask me if I remember what life was like before I had this baby. I do—I remember well. I remember sleeping in lazily, waking to the sound of the cottonwood leaves rustling in the breeze outside our window. I remember luxurious showers not interrupted by tiny hands slowly inching the curtain over to reach in and grab the faucet. I remember Costco trips that took fifteen minutes, and when “in and out” was not a punchline but my reality.
I remember so many aspects of my life before this child, and while I didn’t set out to glorify parenthood—there’s enough of that on the internet to last us all our lifetimes—I can’t help but acknowledge how in the end, it actually is really very glorious.
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