Adding To the Family

There’s nothing quite like holding a newborn in your arms. You get to cradle a fully-formed mini human being in your arms. They have all ten fingers and all ten toes, each with itty-bitty little finger- and toenails. They have a little bit of fluffy hair on their heads (or on their ears, but that will go away soon enough.) They have those perfect little baby noses, and those cute little baby mouths. They have those baby blue eyes, which don’t quite know how to work together so when they open them to try and get a look at who is holding them they go a little cross-eyed. They wiggle and squirm without any real purpose, other than their basic reaction to stimuli. They can’t even fully straighten their arms or legs yet. And they smell like baby. And that is just an indescribable smell that ought to be bottled and sold for a fortune because it is beautiful. Don’t let anyone tell you babies smell like sour milk and poop. Babies. Smell. Awesome.

It’s enough to make you want one right away. Ha. Or not. No, I didn’t have any immediate urges to procreate when I held my newborn nephew. But I did have the thought that one of my own might be nice, someday. Such are my vague conclusions about possible eventual motherhood.

But holding Li’l Grumpy is a real treat. I’ve decided on “Li’l Grumpy” as the most appropriate nickname for the fellow. Together with Mr. and Mrs., they make a whole Grumpy-pants family. Not that Li’l Grumpy was particularly grumpy. In fact, over the four days I spent with the new family, Li’l Grumpy grumped less than Mr. Grumpy-pants in total. (“Don’t touch that button!” “Pay attention when I’m telling you how to do these things!” “Who moved my over-sized barbeque spatula?” “No we don’t have any Diet Pepsi in the house! Nobody here drinks Diet Pepsi. GEEZ!!”) Li’l Grumpy is, in fact, at this stage a pretty fantastic baby. He sleeps for long periods of time, wakes up when he’s hungry, grumps a bit before feeding, grumps a lot when his diaper is changed and then usually peacefully falls off to sleep for more hours at a time. Not a bad way to live.

And Grumpy Jr. looks exactly like Grumpy Sr. looked when he was a baby. My dad went through his photo archives to pull up Mr. Grumpy-pants old baby photos, and the resemblance is remarkable. They look exactly the same through the eyes, nose and mouth. I would normally at this point insert a sarcastic jibe about how sorry I am that Li’l Grumpy is going to look like my brother – the poor thing – but I’m still in the midst of gushing about how beautiful a baby he is, so maybe I will save that for when the tyke hits the awkward teenage years. Li’l Grumpy’s ears seem to have come from his mom, and we’re all thankful for that. Ears on our side of the family are ill-proportioned, enormous affairs with giant earlobes that, much like shark teeth, never stop growing. So Li’l Grumpy definitely got lucky in the genetic lottery on that one.

Mr. and Mrs. Grumpy-pants are quite the doting parents. And it is a joy for me to see the look in Mr. Grumpy’s eyes when he looks down at his son while burping him and talks to him. “The nurses thump you harder on the back to get you to burp, but Dad’s not quite that comfortable right now. Yes, Dad still thinks you’re fragile.” A-dor-a-ble!

I also love to hear the proud parents say things like “Oh, he always sleeps like that,” or “Oh, he never wants to wake up,” and such. Because I thought “always” and “never” seem like such funny terms to use when you’re talking about a baby that’s only been able to breathe independently for forty-eight hours. And then I thought that if anybody were to know what Li’l Grumpy always and never does, it’s his parents. They were there to usher the babe into existence. And since then it’s like they have been cataloguing his every ability, preference, reaction and personality quirk. So then the terms just seemed so fitting. A-dor-a-ble!

Right now, Li’l Grumpy sleeps all swaddled up in a blanket. But he’s a good little wiggler and no matter how tight you swaddle him, he will always get his arms free. And then he will sleep with his arms raised above his wee head and Mr. Grumpy-pants will look at him and smile and say “He looks like a hockey player already. Just look at him with his arms in the air like he’s just scored a goal. GOAL!” A-dor-a-ble!

The first week of his life is almost entirely under Li’l Grumpy’s belt now. And there’s a whole future waiting ahead of him. He has mastered sleeping, crying, eating and pooping. He can already hold his head up on his own for a little while, and voluntarily turn it from side to side. And he can roll himself up onto one side already, but he can’t quite flip all the way over on his own. Soon enough he’ll be rolling and crawling, and trying out new foods, and then walking and running on his own, tying his own shoes, learning to read and write, learning to skate and putt. He’ll learn how to ride a three-wheeler. And then a two-wheeler. And then he’ll learn how to play kissing-tag. And soon he’ll be learning how to drive a real car. And getting to vote. And he’ll go off to school and learn how to derive differential equations and defend unifying theorems and he’ll read Shakespeare, Whitman, and Fitzgerald. It’s really not a bad way to live.