My nephew and his wife recently had their first child, a daughter and she really is a cute little snippet and cute right from the beginning, you don't see that too often. She has the perfectly round head, the clear inquisitive eyes, the little rosebud mouth that pouts on cue for the professional photographer. Her mother's family is a handsome tribe, and we have a few cuties on our side, a few.
Babies are a controversial issue. They inspire us to heights of filial tenderness and threaten to plunge us into depths of embarrassment and despair if they don't walk or talk on schedule. Americans are competitive to the point of intrinsic pain and we insist our youngest and most innocent get in the race pronto.
I was a young mother of two-year-old Jason and he didn't chatter aimlessly like the son of a friend of my husband's and his awful wife and their kid was born just a couple of days after my boy. Janet was an obnoxious, crude horror of a human being and unfortunately, she reproduced. The two boys were playing and Janet did not notice that her prodigy was punching my son. Jason was giving me a heavy-lidded glare because he was not allowed to hit and how should he handle this situation if not to knock the daylights out of this monster playmate. I finally said, "Janet, tell your kid to stop hitting my kid." She stood up, raised her arm and whacked little Davie across the back causing him to fly across the floor. "Don't hit him," she thundered. It doesn't take a team of crack engineers to understand why young Dave liked to hit and often. Janet and her son were barred from the house and it was just a few weeks later that Jason started speaking and it was a complete sentence. "Mom, I don't want you to drive me around anymore." I and I alone know the reason behind that comment and I'm taking it to my grave.
The horizon for young Lily looks promising. She has the best of both worlds. A father home schooled in the safe confines of the Midwest, surrounded by cousins and grandparents, fresh corn on the cob and sleeping under patchwork quilts and a mother, a Christian college graduate and professionally devoted to children with unfortunate deficits in home and parental involvement. Lily will fill in the spaces, whatever they will be when her time comes.
Babies are a controversial issue. They inspire us to heights of filial tenderness and threaten to plunge us into depths of embarrassment and despair if they don't walk or talk on schedule. Americans are competitive to the point of intrinsic pain and we insist our youngest and most innocent get in the race pronto.
I was a young mother of two-year-old Jason and he didn't chatter aimlessly like the son of a friend of my husband's and his awful wife and their kid was born just a couple of days after my boy. Janet was an obnoxious, crude horror of a human being and unfortunately, she reproduced. The two boys were playing and Janet did not notice that her prodigy was punching my son. Jason was giving me a heavy-lidded glare because he was not allowed to hit and how should he handle this situation if not to knock the daylights out of this monster playmate. I finally said, "Janet, tell your kid to stop hitting my kid." She stood up, raised her arm and whacked little Davie across the back causing him to fly across the floor. "Don't hit him," she thundered. It doesn't take a team of crack engineers to understand why young Dave liked to hit and often. Janet and her son were barred from the house and it was just a few weeks later that Jason started speaking and it was a complete sentence. "Mom, I don't want you to drive me around anymore." I and I alone know the reason behind that comment and I'm taking it to my grave.
The horizon for young Lily looks promising. She has the best of both worlds. A father home schooled in the safe confines of the Midwest, surrounded by cousins and grandparents, fresh corn on the cob and sleeping under patchwork quilts and a mother, a Christian college graduate and professionally devoted to children with unfortunate deficits in home and parental involvement. Lily will fill in the spaces, whatever they will be when her time comes.
1 comment:
Jason was an enlightened one even back then.
Post a Comment