cat named pig

Matt and I were in Michigan this past weekend. I may have Twittered about the fact that we were in the car almost as long as we were in Marquette. This was not to complain about the trip, which I was happy to take in order to attend my friend Heather’s baby shower, but rather to emphasize just how very far away Marquette is from Minneapolis, and how much that sucks.

It sucks because when this baby arrives, he is going to need to be held, a lot. They all do. And his parents will be great at holding him, but they will also get tired sometimes, or want to load the dishwasher, or occasionally take a shower. When they want a break from holding him, I would love to be there to step in. I’m great at holding babies (I’m very careful, because I am secretly terrified that I will drop someone else’s baby — that the baby will slip right through my arms — and that would be the worst thing in the world, to drop someone else’s baby. I mean, dropping your own baby would be horrible enough, but at least it would be your baby. Your responsibility. You would be the one who would have to live with the consequences, as with any parenting mistake. But to drop someone else’s baby — that’s grounds for severing a friendship, for filing a lawsuit even. I think I’m digressing here; the point is, I am the most cautious babyholder you could ever find because I have this paranoia.)

Since my kids are more likely to tackle me to the ground and sit on me than allow me to just hold them, I am more than ready to hold other people’s babies. Actually, my kids are still pretty cuddly, but I end up getting head-butted or kneed in the underwire or somehow injured every time I hug them. Holding Heather’s cousin’s adorable three-month-old Julien over the weekend, I remembered how nice it is to hold a baby who is too little to squirm his way to the floor when he is done with the holding. 

Anyway, the one good thing about Heather and Sean living so far away is that we can make a nice little family road trip to visit them after the baby comes. (I am not sure if that is meant sarcastically or not; I will let you know after the trip.) Siena is excited about the baby, of course, but also adores Heather and Sean’s two dogs and regularly asks me for updates on them. And when I was leaving town for the baby shower, Siena sent some very specific instructions with me:

“Mama, when you go to Heather and Sean’s house, you have to tell me what color the baby’s room is. And, does it have a mobile? And tell me how the two puppies are doing.”

Photos from the shower are here, including one of me playing The Price is Right with baby products. Everyone said “Oh, Laura has two kids — she’ll be great at this,” but I wasn’t — I sucked. Apparently I was too sleep-deprived during the days when I shopped for these products to have any concept of how much I was spending. Which is right where the companies selling these things want you to be. That explains why our house is full of broken, worthless, child-proofing devices that do absolutely nothing they are supposed to, and “educational” toys that have taught my kids nothing but how to rip pages and scatter game pieces like dandelion fluff on the wind.