a new mom
a change has come over me recently, cresting last week at the birth of my new baby, kylie. i think i get to legitimately call her "my baby", though i had nothing to do with her conception and will have nothing to do with funding her college education. but still, she's mine, maybe a little more so than my new nephew griffin, only because i was there with her a lot more. i found myself shouting questions to her in the general direction of her mom's belly, seeking her approval on cuisine choices when i took her mom out for dinner, or instructing mom to keep squeezing her in so she wouldn't be born when i wasn't around. as it turns out, i was around... so much "around" that i was in the operating room taking pictures and keeping mom focused? entertained? once a regular checkup turned in to one of those we-need-to-go-in-and-get-her,-like-now moments. so, as assigned by kylie's real daddy way back in october (before he was shipped far, far away, to a mythical zone of the world called afghanistan), i was kylie's stand-in daddy... though declining to cut the cord, because, um, ew.
i've never been much of a baby person... never got gooey-eyed over the small, often misshapen creatures, never appreciated their smell like a woman is apparently supposed to, never wanted to hold them or coo. but, now that i have 2 babies in my life that are, in one way or another, MINE, i find those maternal instincts that people always blather about starting to bubble up from some dark, dusty corner they've been hiding in. makes me sort of wonder what else may be down there. but, while i'm certainly not rushing out to get knocked up, the mere thought of it doesn't make me scoff or cower like it once did. i'm sure my parents are relieved about that.
current mood: welcome to the world, kylie valentina!