crawly

warning: a few possible bad words in here, depending on how you read.

so the new nephew calls me today. "how long," he snarls, "will i have to continue this charade?" no hello, how are you or anything. we have been over this several times, but because he's only four months old, i'm trying to cut him a little slack. he is, however, really starting to push it. his impulsiveness and refusal to see any side of things but his own are reminiscent of one of his grandparents in the late seventies. but i love him and it is very, very difficult to be a supernatural child. "what is it you're having trouble with?" i say, light and cheery like we're in a restaurant and he got diet soda when he ordered regular. "have you seen her blog?" i have. he reads my blog pretty regularly, partly for practice and partly because he thinks i have a nice sense of humor. he reads his mom's blog for damage control.

"the crawling!" he wails. "and it's not just the video she made of me doing what you told me to do (i told him to hang back, that human babies develop agonizingly slowly and he doesn't want to blow his cover the first year- pretend it's tough learning to crawl is exactly what i said), it's the comments. everyone cheering for me if i roll over or poop or eat peas. are you kidding me? is this what regular humans do?" i try to think about my answer. i didn't make any of my own children so it is not what i do, but it does seem to be the way of things, at least in first world countries. which is what i tell him.

"and this is why i can't eat pizza?" he screams. yes, i tell him. i explain he will slowly be introduced to foods, one at a time to test for allergies. he interrupts. "allergies? you mean like weakensses? like kryptonite? regular people feed their children poisons to see what their weaknesses are? that's horrible!" i know it is. i've always thought so and i'm glad to have someone in the family of a like mind. "i can't take it. i'm gone!" he yells, but i yell back before he can slam the phone. "you sound like a teenager! cut it out. you know you're here for something better than eating pizza. get over it." he is mildly shamed by this and asks again how long he has to hobble himself, pretend he can't talk or walk or text message. i tell him when he's about eight he'll be competitive with most adults, but that walking and talking start this side of a year. i think he will be happy about this.

i mention the babbling. it is, developmentally speaking, time for him to start making strings of sounds, which must make him happy after being mostly silent for four months. i can almost feel his smile through the phone. "yeah, that's been pretty good," he laughs. i'm not sure what he means but he sounds suddenly like his other aunt and i worry a bit. "i babble all the time," he says. "they love it. they babble right back which is pretty funny, and they kiss on my belly and toes. and once in a while, to make it all a little more bearable and sort of pay myself for the waiting and pretending to be incompetent, i add in a little word or two. nothing they recognize." this is not good. not good at all. words like what, i want to know. "listen," he says, "i'm pretty good at it. babababaassssshitbrbrbrsnrkleeeeeeshitshitshitcoooheeprrrraaaaaaasssshit." he chuckles to himself. and i know the other aunt is teaching him this.