Mama-Come-Lately

Yes, it was nearly a month ago. Yes, I should be writing a post about the baby’s (very exciting!) haircut or how I can’t believe he’s 11 months old now. But Christmas is what I can’t stop thinking about.

Well, not the holiday itself, so much as a few things that happened during ours.

We have a photo of my nieces on the fridge. A couple of times a day, we take the baby by it and say their names. You know, “This is Blanche. That’s Matilda.” When we arrived at their house, Baboo had had half an hour of his usual four hours of nap time. He was discombobulated. And when he saw my older niece, his face completely lit up.

The girls had a lot of questions about the baby. Can he stand? Does he talk? What can he eat? I told the almost-four niece he could have tiny bits of bread. Every so often, she’d hand me a crumb and say it was for the baby. I would thank her profusely.

The girls helped me give the baby a bath. Okay, they watched and said cute things. But the older niece (six) asked if she could get a towel for him, and I said yes, that would be very helpful. She came back with a (very lovely) hand towel. Small creature, small towel, right?

My younger niece said Baboo could play with her Duplos (which he loved) but not her new, Christmas Duplos, because she didn’t want him putting chew marks in them. Fair enough. The kid is a gnawing machine. And she’s almost-four.

The baby met many, many family members, and with most of them, he was his usual reserved self. But he seemed to really connect with two people: My cousin’s wife, who is tall and pretty and has long, blond hair (which he had never seen); and a dear old friend who was born with some sort of baby and kid magic. By the end of the visit, Baboo was reaching out to his face, something he only does with me, my husband and my mom.

My husband, the baby and I stayed in my older niece’s room. A few times, I said to her, “Blanche, thank you so much for sharing your room with us, it’s so nice of you.” Each time, she shrugged and say, “It’s okay, I’ve done it before.” We were there for nine days, and every time she needed to go in there to get a pair of socks or a book or a toy, she would come ask one of us if it was okay. Nine. Days. Six years old. That is one well-raised little girl.

After either Christmas Eve or Christmas night dinner (it’s hazy, because both were grand affairs with phenomenal food, lovely wine and The Good Plates), we sat around discussing (among other things) babies. There were folks there who will have some, and folks who already have them. There were a lot of lovely things said about feeling the baby move and holding the baby for the first time.
I sat there mostly listening, and thinking about the shock of the size of the love you feel for your kid. How you think falling in love with your partner is the most amazing set of feelings you will ever feel, and how you realize once the kid comes along how puny that is in comparison. It’s not that it isn’t fabulous, the love you have for your co-pilot, but it seems like a speck of dust in comparison to the Louvre that is Baby Love.

Happy holidays ex post facto, y’all. Hope yours were as tender-sweet-delicious as ours.