I’m six months old. I understand more than I get credit for, and as near as I could figure it, I was in for a time this evening not unlike the moment I emerged from my mommy. Except worse. Instead of a doctor, a nurse and what I’d come to realize as my “parents,” my birth -as inexplicable as that was – was a quiet, unremarkable affair compared to this so-called “Christmas Eve party.” As with just about everything in my life so far, I have many more questions than answers, and my “why?” years are apparently still a ways off. Suffice it to say, I’m about to get blitzed with faces and fingers, giggling, people pinching my cheek, grabbing my hands and speaking complete gibberish. All in the life of a newborn, I suppose. But it’s the kind of encounter that mommy and daddy should know by now should not be tackled without the beneficial effect of…a…rock…solid…nap. Hello?… preceding it. Even if that means being late to the party. I’m a baby. They’ll cut me that slack.

   To make a long story short, without that nap, I show up like four miles of bad road. I didn’t want the giggling, the gibberish, the finger grabbing or the cheek pinching. And since I missed my window, I didn’t want to nap anymore either. We’re simple creatures, us newborns. We sleep, we eat, we poop and we sleep. And once we find a rhythm that works, we like to keep it that way. Upset that rhythm and expect to pay the price.

   To make a long story short, without that nap, I show up like four miles of bad road. I didn’t want the giggling, the gibberish, the finger grabbing or the cheek pinching. And since I missed my window, I didn’t want to nap anymore either.

   But I think they learned their lesson, because the next day is another blast of humanity, but I had one of those naps that you usually only dream about, and I show up this time like the final airport scene in Love Actually. I’m giggling my tiny little butt off, grabbing fingers, cooing to every pinch of my cheek and joyously screaming out the only two words I think I know. (It’s “momma” and “dada,” but nobody is really sure.)

   I’m the baby again with the thousand watt smile from all those pictures they’re posting of me on Facebook. It’s not rocket science, folks. Give me a good, solid nap, and I’ll put on a show. I was being passed around like a plate of pasta, and I made sure everybody got a finger grab and a gurgle.

   A couple of parting comments. I’m feeling really lucky with this crew, as they call themselves. It’s kind of a nice ego boost to be the center of the universe. That won’t last, of course, especially after I get the knack of crawling down pat. That’s when I’ll get bombarded with the toddler’s version of the N-word: “No!” The house will look like the border wall, and it’ll seem like everything I do will turn into some interminable “teachable moment.” And wait until I figure out how to climb!

   That’s when I’ll look fondly back to a simpler time, when everything I did was cute and worthy of shameless praise. Ah, the good old days, I’ll be thinking, sitting on that potty, wondering why diapers were suddenly not good enough anymore.

Photo Credit: Mimi Deutschman