Breaking a Promise of Taxes and Balls

for a moment of maternal coveting pining appreciation

Menfolk: unless you enjoy outpourings of baby-yearn and explicit ovary-talk, avert your eyes. Really, no one should read this. Everyone! Avert your eyes!

Yesterday, Wendy and I traveled over the river and through pines to visit my friend Kari in New Jersey. Kari is one of those creative, funny, lovely people who makes you happy that people exist at all, because she is just so awesome. She has these gorgeous green eyes and perpetually smells delicious. However, the purpose of this visit was not to sniff Kari's hair, but to ogle her delicious nugget of a newborn baby.

He is only about two weeks old, and still has that wrinkly, watery, womb look about him. The wise tadpole look. The Yoda look.

Here's the thing. The thing is this. After all of the anxiety and soul searching and hair-tearing that was Wendy's first two years, I did not think that I would want another one. This appears to be kind of like how I said I would never wear leggings. You see where I'm going, right? I'm going here:

He is so tiny...I forget every time that they can be this tiny.

There was another one at the New Year's party. She was heftier; three or four months worth of solid, cheeky baby. Flocks of women passing her around the kitchen and singing happy wordless songs; men straggling around the fringes, casting unheeded hairy eyeballs at their mates; ovaries bursting in a symphony of recognition.

Carl's no help. He has weathered a more few rounds of life's highs and lows than I have. He has a sixteen year-old and a three year-old. What can scare him now, really? He just watches this angst-filled argument between me and my eggs with patronizing amusement.

I only held him a little bit, because he looked so happy and peaceful draped over his daddy's forearm, or snuggled against his mommy...but I did sit close enough to smell his milky skin.... That baby smell. It's like a hypnotic drug.

And somewhere in the background, Wendy was fake-crying in a heap under the pillow fort she constructed, wailing "Iwannagohome! I. Wanna. Go. Home!" indicating the ease with which I might expect to introduce someone new onto my lap. I could mention our current financial situation and our uncertain future in our house...but I'm sick of mentioning it.

All of that logic stuff doesn't really matter, because that baby? That baby looked at me. He gazed right into my eyes with that hazy, alien look from beyond. That look that says, "do not ask for whom the bell tolls. Also, I have to fart."

Thank you Kari, for giving me a good dose of that baby stuff. He is beautiful. I'm doomed.