« Open mouth, insert speculum...I mean foot | Main | Birds, bees, FETs... »
05/09/2008
Little Boy what now?
Not long before Charlie was born, I issued a manifesto, a list of promises I have mostly managed thus far to keep. No Lunchables? Check. Ridiculous getups? Check. No full frontal nudity on display? Check, although I do have a single photo of him sashaying around the back yard, naked but for his Crocs, a pair of giant rubber oven mitts, and a seraphic whole-face smile. (I have named the picture blackmail.jpg, and I have backups in two separate places. Bring on the teenage years. I am fully prepared to fight dirty.)
I've spent a lot of time marveling at how different this pregnancy has been, from its earliest days onward. This time, instead of thinking to a baby I haven't yet met, I hold Charlie close and make him more silent promises, a lot more complicated and even more heartfelt. Knowing him now, I'm much less articulate, and sometimes I count on my body — the way I persist in roughhousing with him, unwieldy midsection notwithstanding; the fact that I still carry him now and then, just because I feel like it — to tell him what's hard to say. I think he is listening. He hears me. "Mama, I always want you to hold me," he tells me, as I hoist him with some effort. I will is what my grunt says.
Charlie is perfectly delighted. We told him several weeks ago that this summer he'd have a baby brother. He gets it, as much as a three-year-old can. "He's growing in your belly," he says, repeating what we've told him. "He'll come out when he's big enough." And not a moment sooner, I think, smiling and nodding my encouragement. And then, inevitably, "Where will he come out?"
Why, the hospital, of course! Now! Who wants something delicious? A little something I like to call...a Lunchable?
He's taking this all quite seriously. He is full of plans. This time around, he's the one making promises.
"I will sing our baby brother some lullabyes to help him get to sleep," he says, and proceeds to demonstrate. [Deep breath, bellowing.] "JOHHHHHHN JACOB JINGLEHEIMER SCHMIDT! His name is myyy name toooooooo!"
"I would like to go to the toy store," he casually mentions as we pass. When I tell him that we're not buying any toys for him today, he looks genuinely aggrieved. "But for our baby."
In the middle of the evening routine, he declares, "My baby brother can share my bathtub." Rinsing him, I mention that we have a bathtub that's just the right size for a baby. "But I will wash his mighty hams." Three and a half years in, apparently I am in no hurry to teach him they're called thighs.
"I will name the baby...Isaac."
"I will name the baby...Little Boy Blue."
"I will name the baby...Natalie." Because I guess I'm old school when it comes to gender identification, I gently opine that Natalie is usually a girl's name, and he gives me a steely look, then speaks as if I were the three-year-old and he a Prussian schoolmaster unimpressed with my unruliness. "The baby...will be named...Natalie."
"My baby brother can share my big-boy bed." I suggest that a baby might need to be more securely contained. "I'll teach him how to sleep in it without falling out." I explain that babies don't understand such things, not right away. "Mama, he'll want to be near me." And of course I tell him he's right. Of course baby Natalie will.
