While I love the ending of the famous Rudyard Kipling poem, Gunga Din for the delicious cadence to the rhymes (and here I show off by paraphrasing from memory: Though I've beaten you and flayed you/ By the living Gawd that made you/ You're a better man that I am, Gunga Din!) I have no earthly idea why I would ever want my baby to wear this onesie. In case you're wondering, I found this by randomly searching, "Rudyard Kipling baby quotes." That's the way my brain works in these fast and furious (or should I say, 2 fast 2 furious!) days of impending fatherhood. I was thinking about ol' Imperialist Kipling and therefore found some way to Google his name along with something relating to babies. In truth though, my favorite Kipling poem is the one I decided to live my life by around age 14 (and gave up around age 15, though I still keep it as my lofty ideal). It's the famous, If and if you haven't read it (or memorized it, really) do so immediately. If - Rudyard Kipling If I have a boy this is going above the headboard of his bed and I'll force him to recite it like a prayer every night (and if he doesn't then I'll beat and flay him Gunga Din style).
Let's dance past all this nonsense and get down to what really matters - BABY CLOTHES. Margaret and I, along with Clayton and some other fools who I don't know (but love dearly, I'm sure) went to our first Braves game of the season on Sunday. We lost 3-0 but that isn't what's important, as it was fun and sunny and we ate hot dogs and drank beer (Margaret not included) and sang Take Me Out To The Ballgame and booed the Phillies and participated in all of the things that make live sporting events so great. We also went to the big Braves gift shop to look for Mag a Chipper Jones shirt and I got distracted in the baby clothes corner. I'm sure it was a strange sight, some disheveled, long-haired creeper thumbing through Brian McCann onesies, but that's just the way the cookie crumbles. My baby is two inches long now, I have to start thinking ahead!
On Monday one of my many brothers turned 10. This was a strange occurrence as his birth is the first I really remember experiencing as an, "adult." I was old enough when he was born to really watch this kid grow up, and really, it's happened rather quickly. Not as super fast as all parents pretend, "You blink your eyes and suddenly they're going away to college!" but he does seem to have reached this age pretty quickly. I remember being 10 pretty well, and it just doesn't seem like he should be that age. Part of that is the difference in birth order though, I remember when I was 11 years old and some dumb rednecks who I've never seen before were walking down my street and started yelling at me (I was playing basketball in the driveway by myself). They kept insisting they knew me, which they didn't, and that my dad was, "that lawyer!" I said he wasn't, and that I didn't know them, so they started screaming at me and calling me a liar and said they were going to go home to get a gun and shoot me. I suppose I should mention these rednecks were about 13, not 30, as you may have assumed. After they walked off I got very frightened and didn't know what to do but told myself, "You're the oldest man at home, Andrew. You have to defend your mom and siblings." (my dad was at work). I didn't own a gun, of course, so I went into the shed, got out my Louisville Slugger wooden baseball bat, and waited at the end of the driveway. Sure enough (rednecks don't make idle threats in Georgia) about ten minutes later the boys showed back up carrying a BB rifle and stood across the street, staring at me for a few minutes. I held my bat in my hands and stared back, and eventually they walked off without any of us ever saying a word. As soon as they left I of course collapsed to the ground in a bundle of quickly vanishing adrenaline and tried not to embarrass myself through vomiting or pissing my pants. Later I told my dad what had happened and said, "They said you were a lawyer, but I thought they said you were a liar, so I was mad." He told me, "A lawyer and a liar are pretty much the same thing." Never let it be said he missed an opportunity to make a bad joke.
Short story long, though, (and here you should stop and marvel at how I can use the opportunity to make my brother's birthday all about myself) ten seems young until I stop and think about how I thought, and felt, when I was ten. Then I have to think about whenever this little fetus turns ten, and what he/she will be like, and think like, and where it'll live, and whether it will have siblings, and how many, and all of those sorts of unknowable answers to questions that haven't even been asked. Also, at my brother's birthday party I told my six year old brother, "Did you know my baby is tiny and can hiccup and do somersaults?" His big blue eyes bugged out of his head as he gasped and said, "What? I can't even do somersaults!"
Let's get this zig-zagging ship back on track (to mix metaphors) and talk about what's actually going on with this little bugger. This week we had our second appointment with the doctor who is actually going to (presumably) deliver the child, and I met her for the first time. She said everything looks fine and dandy and on track for the November delivery. She even put the jelly on the belly and stuck some little portable sonar device into that. All I heard was a bunch of static and some dolphins swimming by but Mag said that she could hear a tiny fast heartbeat. In another few weeks we have an appointment in which we'll be able to hear it clearly, and then a few weeks after that we'll finally figure out the sex of this damn thing. It will be convenient to be able to talk about it without calling it an, "it" or having to write, "he/she" or, "they" as if my one baby is two - both a boy and girl contained in one body, fighting for control. We also, this week, got our first bill from the OBGYN, upon which we promptly contemplated suicide, and then robbed a bank instead. After talking to the folks on the phone, however, we discovered that it is actually a bill for everything we'll owe up until delivery, and not just for services rendered so far, which is a far, far better prospect.
Mag was complaining this week about how she feels bloated, and her stomach is poking out a tiny bit already. I hate all those girls on Facebook who begin taking pictures of their stomachs as soon as they find out they're knocked up and stick them out as far as they possibly can, willing them to grow. Mag isn't like that, so was a bit shocked to find that a 2 inch long baby can actually make your belly visibly grow. It's slight, to be sure, but it's funny all the same. Of course now she's worried as she is a bridesmaid to be in early June, and was hoping not to be showing by that time since she already has the dress. Other than that, things haven't changed much since last week. We only had one giant knockdown drag out argument (though, my lawyers have informed me, I should stress that there wasn't any actual knocking down or dragging out) and it was over the very insulting question, "Around what time do you want to go out and eat dinner at your favorite restaurant tonight?"
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| Squash ball is all the way on the right |
The baby is now about the size of a, "squash ball" whatever the hell that is, and is beginning to actually look pretty human. Sadly, it's cute little flippers are mostly gone. According to this book, the uterus is now to big to fit into the pelvis and is beginning to push into the abdomen (which I suppose explained the bloating/swelling of the belly). The book also suggests that this is the appropriate time to inform one's co-workers and distant relatives about the pregnancy. I guess we jumped the gun on that one a bit. But consider this - if you didn't know we were having a baby you couldn't stay up to date on all these super important stories!
Soon, hopefully, Margaret will be big enough to actually begin taking pictures of her stomach (at least until her belly button turns inside out, because that's just disgusting).
| This is what my baby looks like, though less rubbery. |
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