About an hour ago, Katie fell asleep with a small stack of books leaning on her. I spent the next 15 minutes strategically placing books on the edge of her leg, her forehead — places that would fall off of her when she suddenly woke up. Then I was about to suddenly wake her up and watch my Jenga-like vision come true.
It used to be cute when I could feel the baby kicking. Now it’s half cute, half Alien outtake. That kid is going to be a dynamite field-goal kicker / Prime Minister when he/she grows up. That’s all I’m saying. I think it’s possible to do both those things: field-goal kicking would be mostly night work, for example. Shaking hands, kicking three-point pigskins.
This last week we’ve been in Edmonton, visiting Katie’s friends and family. She’s got a lot of both. But instead of seeing them as “Cousin Lee” or “Sister Claire” or “Furnace-Laugh Becky”, how they were introduced to me, I kept imagining the new titles they’d have five weeks from now. Predictably, it’s the change in vocabulary that gets to me emotionally more than the new one-piece jumpers do (which really are very sweet, and thank you). I can only drink out of my dad’s cartoon-ivy-embroidered “There’s No Better Friend Than A Father, There’s No Better Father Than You” coffee mug ironically for so long. So try as I might, I could only see them as “Aunty Claire”, or “Don’t you call me ‘Furnace laugh’ anything, young lady/man…”, and so on. It was a strange experience.
Anyway, these ‘cute’ anecdotes could go on all day. I feel like everything Katie and I do together now becomes endearing and “Aww”-worthy just by virtue of the baby. We went shopping for milk today — aww. Did a crossword puzzle on the plane — aww. I stacked books on her sleeping body so they would fall on her later — aww. I bet even racists don’t get much flack when their girlfriends are pregnant. (It probably also helps us that we’re the prototypical ‘cute and harmless young couple’ that everyone seems to root for.) But Katie woke up on her own before I could do it for her, and the books didn’t really fall on her the way I envisioned it, and in fact she didn’t realize I had any silly plot whatsoever. She just looked up at me, smiled, squinted the way people who’ve just woken up tend to, and, rubbing her stomach, said, “Hi honey. Baby’s so big.”
Say it with me now: Awww. Yeah, yeah, I know.
It used to be cute when I could feel the baby kicking. Now it’s half cute, half Alien outtake. That kid is going to be a dynamite field-goal kicker / Prime Minister when he/she grows up. That’s all I’m saying. I think it’s possible to do both those things: field-goal kicking would be mostly night work, for example. Shaking hands, kicking three-point pigskins.
This last week we’ve been in Edmonton, visiting Katie’s friends and family. She’s got a lot of both. But instead of seeing them as “Cousin Lee” or “Sister Claire” or “Furnace-Laugh Becky”, how they were introduced to me, I kept imagining the new titles they’d have five weeks from now. Predictably, it’s the change in vocabulary that gets to me emotionally more than the new one-piece jumpers do (which really are very sweet, and thank you). I can only drink out of my dad’s cartoon-ivy-embroidered “There’s No Better Friend Than A Father, There’s No Better Father Than You” coffee mug ironically for so long. So try as I might, I could only see them as “Aunty Claire”, or “Don’t you call me ‘Furnace laugh’ anything, young lady/man…”, and so on. It was a strange experience.
Anyway, these ‘cute’ anecdotes could go on all day. I feel like everything Katie and I do together now becomes endearing and “Aww”-worthy just by virtue of the baby. We went shopping for milk today — aww. Did a crossword puzzle on the plane — aww. I stacked books on her sleeping body so they would fall on her later — aww. I bet even racists don’t get much flack when their girlfriends are pregnant. (It probably also helps us that we’re the prototypical ‘cute and harmless young couple’ that everyone seems to root for.) But Katie woke up on her own before I could do it for her, and the books didn’t really fall on her the way I envisioned it, and in fact she didn’t realize I had any silly plot whatsoever. She just looked up at me, smiled, squinted the way people who’ve just woken up tend to, and, rubbing her stomach, said, “Hi honey. Baby’s so big.”
Say it with me now: Awww. Yeah, yeah, I know.
posted by Michael at 11:56 PM
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