WE’RE HAVING A BABY!
Technically, no. There is no bun in my oven. Although you would never know it by looking at me. Legally and physically, we are about to become aunt and uncle, and the new baby boy will live 500 miles away. But we are out of our minds with excitement! And you know why? Because it’s way better to be aunt and uncle than parents.
Because we are not the parents, we can still lay up in the bar all night without the fear of the baby calling me Pam. (Vintage Chris Rock; Google it.) Not that we would because we are old and weak, but it’s good to know you can if you want to. We will never hear a kindergarten teacher explain to us ‘’there are no bad chairs; there are bad decision chairs.’’ We can continue to curse like sailors without worrying baby’s first word will be the f-bomb. No debate over to vaccinate or not, no chicken pox, no colic, no explosive diarrhea or vomit. Nothing but joy.
Aunt Robin and Uncle Mike get to show up and shower the baby with drum sets and squirt guns, get him all hopped up on Nerds, Twinkies and Mountain Dew, and return him to his parents before the puking begins. We do not need to concern ourselves about whether Baby ZTI (pronounced ziti—explanation to come) has eaten a nutritionally sound meal or if his WVU t-shirt is socially acceptable to his peers and/or parents. No worries about getting into the right preschool. No college fund. No breast pump. Again, nothing but joy.
My method of showing an overabundance of joy is buying every single baby boy outfit that I can find in stores and online. I am completely out of control with the onesie purchases. So much so that chances are good his parents will never need to buy Baby ZTI a stitch of clothing. Well except for the part where they probably won’t care to have him draped in WVU gear for the rest of his life, what with his dad being a die-hard SC Gamecocks fan and all. But there will be plenty of dog- and Star Wars-themed clothes to choose from if that is the case.
My husband, who is a total bad ass (paid to say that), is showing his joy by working with the daddy-to-be to come up with the most ridiculous baby name imaginable. The name they have invented—Zoltan Thorgrimm Ironfist–is so long that I use only the initials, hence Baby ZTI. He (my total bad ass husband, not the baby; all the baby doing right now is making his Mama buy bigger pants) is also expressing his excitement by heading to the basement to dig out his 9000 boxes of Legos and Star Wars dolls, I mean action figures, and building a suit of toddler-sized cardboard armor so there can be sword battles waged as soon as Baby ZTI learns to walk, if not sooner. Note to self: add plastic swords and light sabers to the shopping list.
Up next will be the baby shower. I’m hoping men don’t go to those now like they do bridal showers. Let’s face it, men are ruiners at a shower. And they only attend because they are forced to go by the women. No one likes a mopey-faced-because-I’m-missing-the-game man at an event that should be all about estrogen and cake.
Which reminds me… We are not pregnant. We can be expecting; the woman is the only one pregnant. Until men figure out how to squeeze a human out of their pee-hole, the ‘we are pregnant’ phrase needs to be lost. Of course I just saw a quote from Mila Kunis that said the same thing, so now I have to rethink this.
Either way, Baby ZTI is coming soon! Relatively speaking, just like we’re having a baby relatively speaking, and couples are announcing “we are pregnant” relatively speaking. In summation, it’s all relative…
Ralphie Nugget 