All The Small Things

Newsletter 2023-10-05

My life is being overrun by small things. For once, I’m not talking about my kids. They’re actually quite large, at least compared to what they used to be. I have it on good authority that each of them used to weigh less than eight pounds. If they keep up this exponential growth rate, they’ll eventually tower over the house. For now, though, they only loom large over their cousins. My girls are the oldest grandkids on both sides by several years. My siblings and siblings-in-law waited for me to get all the mistakes out of the way before giving it a try themselves. Even the devotedly child-free are getting in on the act. My friends Peter and Lila recently began fostering four black kittens. Their once immaculate house is now a disheveled fortress, with various doorways and furniture blocked off by baby gates, tipped-over card tables, and anything else that might make a reasonable barricade. Not that any of that stops the cats. They can clamber up or jump over practically anything. They’re small enough that gravity barely applies to them. Watching them frolic about in the most destructive way possible has made me very grateful that human babies can’t climb. They’re hard enough to deal with when they’re completely helpless.

Recently, Peter and Lila invited my wife and I plus my brother and sister-in-law, Jerry and Alice, over for an afternoon of board games. Alice and Jerry brought their newborn baby. That meant there were five infants of various species in the house. It was chaos. Somehow, the one that couldn’t move under her own power was the most disruptive. My infant niece was furious. She was tired and didn’t know what to do about it. Falling asleep never occurred to her, so she went with her next best option, which was to scream. That’s usually my default solution, too. Alice and Jerry couldn’t get her to conk out, and their ongoing attempts made her furious. Kids are always the worst for their own parents. As the cool uncle, I swooped in to save the day. Not really. I probably made some comment about how I used to be good at getting babies to fall asleep and Jerry told me to prove it. I had absolutely no desire to lull this child to sleep or to interact with her in any other way. I can barely manage to suboptimally raise my own children. There’s no room in my life for another kid for me to borderline neglect. Nonetheless, when Jerry made it a challenge, I had to accept. It doesn’t matter if the task is combat sports or soothing an upset baby; once another man says I’m incapable of doing something, I dedicate my entire being to proving him wrong. The challenge doesn’t work when it comes from the opposite gender, though, which is why I never fall for it when my wife challenges me to see who’s better at vacuuming or folding laundry. With grim forbearance, I picked up Jerry’s baby and got to work. My entire reputation as a human being was at stake.