A couple weeks ago, while on the floor and playing with Tyler, a mischievous little smile danced across his face. Luckily, those looks don’t instill fear in me. Yet. I’m sure the day will come where I’ll find myself in fear of what he had planned or already done. For now though, I had time to register mild curiosity before Tyler charged across the floor and bonked me in the head with his own. I am really not sure who was more amused over the event between the two of us. I said “BONK” while he laughed. Then he gave me that look again. Tyler rocked forward and thumped me again.

”BONK”, I gleefully reported back.

I backed away a few feet, hunkered down on all fours and echoed Tyler’s sly smile. His smile grew larger with each thump, thump, thump of his hands as they marched across the floor towards me.

BONK.

”BONK.”

We played this spin of “cat and mouse” that Tyler developed for about six or seven more BONKs. The light splashed across Tyler’s face just right and I noticed around ten red marks on his forehead. I checked the mirror to see that I had a similar pattern of marks on my forehead. For fear of giving Tyler brain damage, or him doing the same to me, I had to halt the game for the evening. We’ve played this game a few more times – actually, just about every day since the first – and he’s been BONKing me harder and harder each time. Thankfully, I can stop short of saying that it’s painful, but the boy definitely likes to BONK.

A few days ago, I was videotaping some of Tyler’s activities (which I’ll share very soon) when he saw the camcorder on the tripod. Just as I released the camcorder from it, Tyler grabbed the tripod, pulled it over, and BONKed himself real good in the head. Good enough to make him cry. I believe his tears were alligator tears and while I’m sure he was shocked, there’s no way it hurt him based on how hard he had previously been BONKing me in the head.

Yesterday, we were all sitting on the couch. I can sometimes get quite animated when I tell stories to people. I was telling Sarah something about Tyler and stood up while doing all sorts of hand motions to better emphasize my point. Tyler was sitting on the couch, facing the back of it and grabbed for Sarah’s phone. In the split second that we both had our attention diverted, he leaned back. Since he was facing the wrong way, he had nothing to lean back against, aside from air. Unfortunately for everyone involved, air can be displaced quite easily and provides little to no resistance. Imagine a scuba diver who just falls backwards off a boat into the water. Except the water is a floor, the scuba diver is an eight month old baby, and the boat is a couch that is a few feet above sea level. The sound of his head BONKing on the floor stopped my heart cold.

When Tyler hits his head, or gets smacked in the face by Delilah’s tail, a few things happen. First, I try to evaluate the situation and decide whether the incident would likely hurt an eight month old baby or not. Then, I purposely blank my face and look at him indifferently. If he starts crying and I’ve decided that it probably did hurt him, I pick him up and comfort him. If he cries and I’ve decided that – without a doubt – it did not hurt, I tell him, “That didn’t hurt baby boy.” If I’ve decided that it did hurt but he doesn’t cry, I modify my standards for Tyler’s pain threshold, and pretend nothing happened.

I was absolutely certain that this hurt Tyler.

In the times that I’ve observed Tyler with his fake tears and with his real tears, I’ve found that I can judge when he is legitimately hurt about 95% of the time. If he just starts yelling and crying, he’s probably faking it. He did not just yell and cry this time. He did the other thing; the thing that tells me he is really hurt.

It starts with no sound at all. First, he draws his lower lip up and pushes the corners down, into an open-mouthed frown. Then he pushes his bottom lip out into the common “pout” look. After this, he will then take a few hitching breathes while he opens and closes his mouth, ever so slightly, in time with the hitches. At this point, the cries will begin. That pouty face is the signal that he isn’t faking. I know that he’ll soon realize the power behind the pouty look, but I can definitely use it to my advantage for the time being.

Bumps, thumps, bonks, cracks, smacks. All this and no worse for the wear. This parenting this isn’t so bad.

It took around 8 weeks for Tyler to learn how to smile. He got that trait, presumably, from seeing Sarah and I smile at him. All. The. Time.

How is it, then, that Tyler – and, I would assume, all babies – has pouting built right into his genetic code? It’s one of those “pre-programmed” things that guarantees that he’s going get whatever it is that he wants. He was completely passive about everything the day he was born. I thanked the Lord up above for giving us a calm, quiet baby. Twenty-four hours later, I cursed the devil-nurse that gave Tyler his first (sponge)bath. It was then that Tyler realized that his lungs served another purpose than merely providing oxygen to his blood vessels and, in turn, life to his body. Thanks to this she-spawn of Satan, Tyler discovered the art of crying. I just want to pass along a little nugget of information to all of you. Babies do not cry, they scream. Tyler has cried fewer times than the number of fingers I have on one hand. One such crying incident was yesterday, and it was COMPLETELY my fault; I’ll blog about that later. He has screamed loads of times, though.

Let’s get back to what this nurse – who managed to stand up straight, despite the fact that she had no spine, and had a small, black heart, completely devoid of love and compassion – and what she did to my son. His cryscreams were quiet, almost cute, but I knew what they would become as his lungs matured, and it scared me. This nurse… This… This… This… Devil incarnate, has the nerve, the AUDACITY, to tell me that it’s good when babies cry because it opens their lungs and clears out the mucous in their throats. Hogwash!! I laid witness, not 24 hours earlier, to an amazing surgery – a surgery where I saw parts of my wife that I never wanted to see – which swiftly disproved the “a stork delivers a baby to your porch” myth, and you’re telling me that you can’t just stick a turkey baster down his throat and suck all that crap out, effectively negating the need for crying? I say again, hogwash.

*deep breath*
*deep breath*
*deep breath*

What was I saying? Oh, crying. In the moments before he unleased about 95db of ear piercing goodness, Tyler had a blank face, completely content with everything he had experienced thus far. My face was about 10 inches from Tyler’s face. When the wet, soapy devil-rag was pressed against his belly, he looked at me – still blank faced – for about another second. Then, his bottom lip started to push out and the corners of his mouth drew down into a pout.

I can tell you, with absolute certainty, that Tyler had not seen a single frown nor pout while “on the outside”. I’m slightly less so, but still fairly certain that he had not seen those looks on the inside either. Therefore, he somehow knew how to pout without ever seeing it done before.

Most people would then deduce that smiles are a learned trait, and frowns/pouts are an instinctual trait. Luckily for you, my brain doesn’t work like most peoples’. Through my superhuman logic and powers of observation, I now know the truth, and am ready to pass it along.

I submit to you, dear reader, that frowns, pouts, AND smiles are as instinctual as breathing or swallowing. I submit to you that if your baby didn’t start smiling until 8 weeks after birth, maybe he or she just wasn’t happy until that point. Ever think of that?