I’m not trying out Yodaspeak, really. I’ve been listening to some of my favorite old REM albums while I drive the kids around in the van, and this is one of my more favorite misheard lyrics. (He’s really singing “all of a sudden, these days,” but I’ll always sing it my way.)
So, last week my nephew Max came to see us, and he made me want to make four more babies right on the spot. See?
Baby curls.
Wrist rolls.
Knuckle dimples.
I am so helpless.
Here’s a shot of how he will look as a teenager:
I’ve got one like this of Nate, taken when he was a little bit older than Max is here, and he’s already almost grown into it.
It was, of course, really good to see my brother and his wife. They are happy and they are tired. Max? He gets into everything in the most sweet and charming ways and he doesn’t stop moving unless he’s asleep. I remember that time, but not anywhere near as vividly as someone living it. It’s the hardest time, physically, those days from when they learn to walk until they finally get some sense and awareness. But it also never will feel better in your whole entire life to wake up first, before everyone else, when it’s still cool and dim, and then drift off and catch some extra sleep in the early morning in a quiet house. Or at least I believe you’ll never appreciate it more than you do then.
For awhile the girls were on me all day every day to marry SG already and make them a baby sister. I told them that my baby days are over, but they begged and begged. Until, that is, there was a baby at their after school daycare last spring. Then I started getting warnings about what would happen to me if I even thought, for one second, about having a CRYING baby. So, it shouldn’t have been too much of a shock the other day when Willow pulled SG aside and said, John B. (only she says it JawnBee), please don’t make sex with my mom.
And SG was all, UM?
And Willow said, Because then she’d have a baby and we’d have to listen to it cry all the time. OK?
So that was pretty funny in a horrifying sort of way.
“please don’t make sex with my mom”
oh, my. i do love your children.