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Anthony’s Baby Book: Happy, Flappy, Slappy

Anthony’s Baby Book: Happy, Flappy, Slappy

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When Anthony is happy (and honestly, that’s most of the time) he flaps his arms up and down, often slapping his hands against his legs, clapping them against his fat thighs. He grins huge with eight teeth peeking out of his mouth and drool dripping down his chin. “Happy, flappy!” Dom exclaims. “Happy, flappy, slappy!” I laugh back.

His happiness is infectious. Everyone smiles at babies (except for the grouches who don’t) but Anthony seems to evoke broader smiles and greater exclamations. His joy is infectious. He is fat and jolly. Enormous for his age, wearing size 18 month clothes at 8 months, he seems to embody the stereotype of the jolly fat man.

He’s crawling now. In the past week he’s picked up speed. He has discovered that he can crawl from one room to another. Oh what freedom to explore. He’s discovered a fascination with the bathroom, the room I always shoo him out of, picking him up when he refuses to budge and moving him to another place and shutting the door behind us.

The other night he was roaming about on the floor of the kids’ room while I was tucking Ben and Bella and Sophie into their beds. Before I flipped off the light Ben and Sophie requested cups of “cold ice water” so Ben and I went to the kitchen to get them. Before we’d finished filling the cups a beaming Anthony came crawling down the hall into the kitchen. “We’re just finishing up in here, Anthony,” I told him. And we headed back to the bedroom but Anthony headed on towards the living room. I stood by the door and called to him until he turned and crawled to me. I love the happy little crawler phase, such a fun though short-lived stage.

Anthony is also in the pulling himself up to stand stage. That seems to go hand-in-hand with crawling in my experience. Which of course means his poor head is all covered with bumps and scrapes and bruises from where he’s misjudged or lost his balance and banged himself on the corner of the table or on the floor.

Everyone loves Anthony and Anthony loves everyone; but Ben does have a bit of sibling rivalry going on.  Ben has claimed (or tired to claim) the top of the coffee table as his own special preserve for playing with his cars and trucks. After many pitched battles his sisters have almost given up the fight and have ceded it to him and moved their games to the windowsill. But Anthony wants to pull himself up on the table and once up wants to grab everything there and stick it in his mouth. I’ve come into the living room I don’t know how many times to find Ben shoving Anthony over. Once I saw Ben popping Anthony in the face with his fist. (Not a punch, it didn’t connect hard at all; but still… a fist.) And now when Ben even thinks that Anthony is getting too close to his precious trucks he preemptively starts shoving and pushing and tackling. Of course one of these days (and not too far in the future either) Anthony is going to be big enough and savvy enough to fight back.

crawling anthony
You can see Anthony’s happy leg slapping near the end of this video clip.

happy standing baby

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5 comments
  • Melanie,

    I would love to read Amy Welborn’s book but Amazon.com says it will not be out until Feb. 2012.  Is there another site I could try to purchase the book now?  Your review makes me want to get the book NOW!

  • Ann,

    I’m very sorry, It totally slipped my mind but I should have noted that I have a review copy. I’m afraid that you’ll have to wait. ๐Ÿ™

    But if you pre-order on Amazon then they’ll ship it as soon as it is released.

  • Several schools I am considering for my children have The Book Thief on the curriculum list. At least one of the schools was assigning it to 12th graders but in another school, it was being read by 7th graders! I have not read it but it just did not seem like a book for children and your review confirms that. Many schools apparently have reading lists filled with very dark-themed material. I wish I could homeschool but at the middle school and high school levels, the social factors prevail.

  • hope,

    I just re-read what I wrote very quickly when I was tired and realize I didn’t to The Book Thief justice. I really did like it very much. But you are right, it is a dark book and might be too much for many children. If I were a school teacher I’d be reluctant to assign it. As a mother, I might indeed read it with older children but that assumes I’d know the children and how sensitive they were and that there would be plenty of opportunity to discuss as we read. If we were doing a unit study on the Holocaust in high school, I’d consider this as an option to put on a reading list.

    Like I said, the narrator is Death. The protagonist’s younger brother dies in the first few pages, her mother gives her over to foster parents because she can’t care for her. Other major characters die. The protagonist gets into fistfights and steals. Characters are wounded in war, are beaten by Nazis. It is ultimately a hopeful book and a beautiful book and a very worthwhile book but it does deal with the darker things.

    I do think parents should be the judge about when their children are ready to grapple with such questions as the evil of the holocaust.

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