Henry is Benjamin's best and oldest buddy. They share a nanny, trade binkies, swap bottles, and tag-team the cat. Tight Terror Partnership aside, however, it would be difficult to find two boys of more divergent character. Henry is a long haired, wildly careening storm of a boy who has been characterized by his parents as "a child of thoughtless and reckless action." He walked at 12 months, and has been falling on his face ever since. Benjamin, on the other hand, is a ruminator: a fat, speechle
ss dwarf-Hamlet, parallized by girth and self-doubt. At 14 months, he is still firmly earthbound, and though he has shaken things up with the occasional plunge ( five steps = skewering Polonius), the ghost of the father is still breathing down his neck, asking when, when, when.Not that said father is any particular hurry to have this guy up and running. He is quite fast enough on all fours, especially right after a bath, when, stark naked save for a hooded towel draped cape-like from his head, he streaks from the bedroom, cackling at his own boldness and jeering at his pursuers. (To see a slightly subdued version of this Caper of the Fantasmita Azul, click here.) He has three major crawls, in fact: one is his Getaway crawl, a jaunty, hands-and-feet crawlwalk in which he can traverse a 20 foot room in about 5 sec
onds. The second is his Latin crawl, a butt-swaggling, head-bobbing dance of a crawl that he slips into on sunny days and whenever he has no particular destination in mind. The third is his Ninja crawl, where he holds himself vertically, sitting on one leg tucked indian-style under his butt and extending the other like a crab-claw, pulling his body forward in discrete, focused bursts. For the Ninja crawl, he either holds his arms akimbo, which makes it look as if he were doing ballet, or he holds on
e by his side and one pointed forward, as if he were leading a charge. I hope to have video evidence soon.For Halloween the boys dressed as the reverse of their natural temperaments: Wild Boy Henry was a cute yellow duck, sweet, tame, approachable, while Benjamin the Contemplator was a drunken sea captain, a Queeg in the throws of excess. Henry's parents had the good sense to go as themselves, while Benny's mom dressed as the sea and his dad as the Dali Lama. Is it any wonder the poor boy is doomed to a life of confused and timorous reflection?
In any event, the boy is up and tottering forward, as is this blog. (I tried to kick the habit, but after two months on the wagon, I fell for the charm of a Developmental Milestone, and here I am again, downloaded and outsourced in the blogosphere.) Stay tuned for more videos.
