Baby-ful Weekend

Last Saturday S. and I headed north to New York. He was fulfilling his godfather-duty at a christening and I was along for the ride and a visit to my cousin.

Highlight: During the christening, just as the priest was calling on the young children to "reject sin", beautiful baby So., dressed in a most demure christening gown, threw her legs in the air and performed a perfect spread eagle.

Lowlight: Sharing one bathroom between 9 adults and four children.

The weekend was full of babies and pregnancy talk and breastfeeding and formula mixing. We stayed in Brooklyn (Flatbush to be more precise - and every time I say it I think of the joke: "what do nylons and Brooklyn have in common?"), which is a virtual breeding ground with young families packed into fixer-uppers that look like more work than raising the kids!

Spending all this time with young, newly minted parents makes me think about what it must have been like for my parents when I joined them. With the best good humor, there were many instances this weekend where we laughed AT these babies and their tantrums (did my parents do that? it seems kind of disrespectful, and yet it's impossible not to giggle, I'm sure they did). I guess if I had a younger sibling I would have seen a baby-parent model, but as an only child, and with my memory being as it is, I only have an inkling of how my parents parented from the 3rd grade onward.

I do recall going to parties with my parents and hanging with the other kids, happily playing with legos while the grown ups drank beer and laughed loudly in the other room. It was a little strange - those parties gave me an awareness that my parents were more than just my parents. I remember sometimes being a bit weirded out by it all and not quite sure how I fit in when they were in this other role.

Now, here I am on the other side, no kids yet, but I'm part of these parents' "other life", not the kid in the other room wondering what the adults are finding so funny. And it's not strange afterall. It's perfectly normal that these parents love their children with all their hearts and still like to p-a-r-t-y.