The BoyChild

I don't write about the BoyChild very much. After "he's adorable," what's left to say? As his mother, I'm suppose to think he's really, really smart. But Baba thinks he's one of the smartest children he's ever seen, neck and neck with the GirlChild, and there's a disinterested opinion if ever there was one.

I love the way he struts around the room with his hands clasped behind his back, sticks his baby belly out, throws his head back and laughs.

I love the way he gives me open mouthed, sloppy, wet kisses when I ask him for one.

I love the way he looks at me and jabbers in his baby babbling language just like we are having an understandable conversation.

I love the way he comes running whenever I come home and wraps his arms around my legs and buries his face in my knees.

The BoyChild is fascinated with the telephone and the TV. remote control. He seems to think they serve the same purpose. You put them up to your ear, walk around the room and jabber at them. I think he must have learned that from the Baba and GranMa the DearHusband and I don't talk to the TV. remote much anymore. In fact, the DearHusband and I don't talk on the telephone enough to justify having one in our home.

The BoyChild is a lover of music. At Mass he sings with the choir. Off key, loudly and he doesn't always feel like stopping when everyone else does, but it's clearly singing.

He loves to dance and even has a certain amount of rhythm. When we are going some place I'll look at him in his car seat and he'll have a Ray Charles sort of weave going, back straight, bobbing from side to side.

I was trying to get him to sing for Baba. I was singing my best rendition of OKLAHOMA! for him and he started pounding his feet and going around in circles. I'd stop and so would he. I'd start singing and he'd start dancing.

Tonight the GirlChild and the DearHusband went to a birthday party. Actually they started out to go to soccer practice. At our house we have a rule: If you sign up to do something, like soccer, and something more interesting comes along at the same time, like a birthday party, you have to go to what you committed to doing, in our example soccer practice, instead of what might be more fun, the party. We're trying to teach her responsibility and all that crap. Well apparently not all the parents of the children on the GirlChild's team feel that way because they had to cancel soccer practice because almost everyone on the team was going to this party.

Anyway, while the GirlChild and her friend and the DearHusband were at the party, the Boychild and I decided to go visit the Baba who was, as usual, still at his office at 6:30 p.m. on a Friday evening.

The Baba and the BoyChild have some kind of weird bond. I suppose it's hard to not be taken in by the BoyChild's big blue-grey eyes, and his impish smile. I think the thing that steals the Baba's heart the most is the way the BoyChild wiggles like a puppy and breaks into a big toothy grin whenever he sees the Baba.

The GirlChild too has this same bond. After the GirlChild spent the night with the DogDoc, she came back with a tree frog. We decided that the tree frog would be much happier living at Baba and GranMa's house, where they have several small ponds in the back yard, rather than our house which has a dearth of water features. We stopped at Baba's office after leaving the restaurant. The DearHusband asked "are we all going in or should the BoyChild and I wait in the car?" and the GirlChild responded, "no, you'd better come in, Baba will want to visit with me."

Sometimes I feel like I'm living in the Invasion Of The Body Snatchers whenever I see the Baba with my children. The GirlChild can call him and say "Baba, we need to go to McDonald's to eat dinner" and he drops everything to eat a yucky filet of fish sandwich with her. I want to ask "who are you and when did you replace the man *I* grew up with?"

Every morning the GranMa comes to our house to pick up the BoyChild. She snatches him and leaves, sometimes even before the GirlChild and I have to leave for school. I thought it was a little strange until this summer when the GrandMa took care of the GirlChild and the BoyChild after the DearHusband started back to school. I asked the GirlChild something about her day and she told me that every morning they go back to Baba and GranMa's house to eat breakfast with Baba before he goes to work. I began to quiz her.

"Every day?"
"Yep."
"Doesn't he have to go to work?"
"Not until after we've had breakfast."
"And then he goes to work?"
"No, sometimes we go for a walk after breakfast."

Who is that person who has invaded my father's body?


10/15/2003