Baby dude

Sam turned one while we were on holiday. He celebrated by painting with chocolate.

I love the little man, but sometimes he reminds me rather too much of myself.

He can’t talk yet, or walk, though he’s getting close to both. Right now his favourite thing is to ride on Carrie’s hip and smack her collar and laugh. He loves nothing more than making a face and laughing. Just like me, he loves to tease whenever things get staid.

If smacking doesn’t work, Sam also knows how to make the most adorable pucker face. He does it just so that I’ll make it back. The pucker doesn’t show any emotion; it’s just to get a laugh, just for kicks.

And like me, and unlike Julia, Sam is almost never shy. He’ll make faces at almost anybody to get a smile. Old ladies, grumpy men, whatever. But, of course, I love it when he bats his eyes at pretty girls (and I keep some chocolate chips in my pocket to Pavlov him when he’s that good).

I made a pretty girl smile myself yesterday when she asked me why I had ordered the meanest coffee she sold. I said, “I have two kids. It’s wonderful. It’s the purest, truest, most intense love I’ve ever felt. But man, I’ve been exhausted for years.”

She could tell I meant it, both parts. And the love is the best part of being a dad. It’s like being 15 again, but my crushes love me back, at least for now.

The maiden melted, and I treated myself to some chocolate chips.

I’m the worst dad ever.

Sam has grown from a slug into a little man. A little, perverted, incontinent, babbling man—but a recognizable person nonetheless.

Sam talks now, in his own words. He waves a vigourous air slap and says “huwo”, or something like that. And he friendly: he gives the biggest, wettest, open mouth kisses. He doesn’t so much kiss as swallow your lips.

He really loves his dad, too, which is nice. When I come home from work, he reaches up to me and wants to cuddle. I feel like a millionaire every day.

And man, does he crawl. We’re waiting for him to walk, but I can’t see that he’ll be in a hurry. He crawls at a trotting pace. It’s amazing. And if I chase him, he laughs and laughs and laughs. It’s hilarious. All of dad’s concerns are hilarious. When he puts his heel in his own poop and I get mad: hilarious. When he rolls away and starts to crawl in mid change with a shit-covered ass high in the air: totally hilarious. Everything is hilarious.

I suppose that in the grand scheme of things, he’s right.

He really is a handsome devil.

Babies are the worst. They’re totally boring, but absorb every minute of their parents’ time. They just lie there, feeding off one’s intelligence, sleep, and good nature.

Thus, it is with, not pride, but some relief, that I present Sam’s first accomplishment: he rolled over.

Looking back over my posts, I can see how my faithful reader(s) might be led to believe that our house is run by watchmakers. From the outside, I am sure that we look coordinated like synchronized swimmers (and with nose plugs for Sam’s little problem), or like Marines on dress parade, keeping lockstep, in complete harmony, sharing one brain (and with Julia calling reveille).

Let me assure you, dear reader, that this is not the case. This happy harmony takes time, practice, and a certain amount of artifice. Behind the curtain, there is stagecraft (and much bumping into things in the dark). Things run far less smoothly than they might appear.

Take, for instance, this week, when Sam woke up. The first few weeks of an infant’s life are blissful; he sleeps all the time and poops scentless mustard. It is the child, in fact, who sings a kind of lullaby, soothing the parents into believing that everything will be just fine, that the horror stories do not apply this time, that their child is special.

And then the kid wakes up, focusses his eyes, looks out into the world, and starts being a part of it. Sam started announcing his presence this week by waking us up in the middle of the night with farts so loud they give me dreams of artillery battles. I had thought that farts were tuned like instruments, and that large, long, baritone farts require a large, long, sousaphonic colon. This would explain Carrie’s farts, which whistle so far above the range of my hearing that she can claim they don’t exist.

But it can’t explain Sam. His rippers sound like a lion’s roar or a tree falling. It’s like he harmonizes every inch of tubing from his bum to his eustachians to amplify what can only be will-o-wisps.

Carrie asked the doctor how it was possible; he said, simply, that Sam’s a boy. I know in my heart what that means, but I was hoping for something a little more Latinate, a little more italicized. Strangely, the doctor was also unimpressed, which only goes to show that we can become shamefully inured to all of nature’s marvels. My little man sounds like a whale spouting, sir! Open your eyes! The universe is sublime and you are sleepwalking!

But I digress: Sam woke up this week, and he started smiling. Whether this is related to his flatulence, I cannot truthfully say… but I have guesses. After all, he is, as the doctor says, a boy.

Carrie called me over to see his first smile, but I missed it trying to grab the camera. Ordinarily, I would post a picture of his second smile and lie, but this time to crack the curtain only a little, and only this once, I present to you the entire series: 26 photos of me wiggling his toes and making faces… to get that one good shot.

Sam and I have been making the rounds. We’re getting out of the house and touring the hood.

Strollers, of course, are ugly and unwieldy. They went out of style in 1942. The newest, greatest thing is to demonstrate one’s mastery of the principles of “ULP” (UltraLight Parenting for the unitiated). UL Parents travel light, move silently, and leave no trace. The know that parenting is like mountain climbing–or at least the gear can be similar.

And just as one wouldn’t push one’s supplies up a mountain, one should not push one’s child. The best thing is to carry one’s child in a harness suitable for tandem skydiving, the Baby Bjorn.

And that, of course, is what I do. I strap the little man to my chest and walk around the block. Nay, I do not ‘walk’. I expedition. I vanquish the block.

Why? Because it is there.