My grandma has always referred to my sister and me as
”
my babies.
”
As a kid and then a teenager, I never quite understood the
reference. I was far removed from diapers and I knew how to walk
and talk, so why the insistence on calling me a baby?
It was after I had my own children a decade ago that it started
to make sense.
My grandma has always referred to my sister and me as “my babies.” As a kid and then a teenager, I never quite understood the reference. I was far removed from diapers and I knew how to walk and talk, so why the insistence on calling me a baby?
It was after I had my own children a decade ago that it started to make sense.
People always say that if you blink you’ll miss your children growing up. With my youngest son – my baby – turning 10 last week, I realized that I had just blinked.
On the night before his birthday, my wife pointed out that both of our children were going to be in double-digits age-wise now – just like we are. That happened way too quickly.
Though I’m glad my son is growing up healthy and happy, and it’s cool that our conversations get deeper and his sense of humor expands, it feels like a threshold has been crossed. Somehow, 10 seems way older than 9.
And I feel way older knowing that my sons are on the footsteps of their teenage years. Two blinks ago, I was a teenager whose mom wondered how I got taller than she was so quickly. Now, my sons are pointing out that they are getting closer and closer to making direct eye contact with their mom.
Andrew, my newly minted 10-year-old, has always done things his way, which is either an admirable trait or plain hardheadedness.
The ultrasound technician told us that the image was inconclusive but our fetus could be a girl, which we would have called Amanda. Andrew, clearly upset by the misdiagnosis, decided to show up three weeks early as bouncing baby boy.
Shortly after he was placed in his mother’s arms, I could tell he was thinking, “Do I look like an Amanda to you? Watch me whiz on something.”
The endless baby pictures we took of older brother Michael, who was born 22 months before Andrew, showed a gregarious, smiling kid who loved to ham it up for the camera.
Andrew however, was a different story. He treated the Kmart portrait photographer like paparazzi – he’d pop on the dark glasses and a hooded sweatshirt every time we went near the place. As soon as the teddy bear came out and the Kmart lady started saying “Who’s a happy baby?” as she tried to coax a smile out of him, Andrew would turn away incredulously as if to say, “I got your happy baby right here, lady. How dare you invade my privacy! I’ll be photographed when I want to be photographed.”
The kid could care less what people think of him, and I think that’s great. It’s not that he’s overtly rude to people; he just talks to the people he wants to talk to and doesn’t talk to those he doesn’t want to talk to. He’s fiercely protective of his mom and doesn’t like that she thought former Giants’ first baseman J.T. Snow was cute.
He’s as sweet as can be, giggling if he sees my wife and I kiss. He likes nothing better than lying on his aunt’s or grandma’s or mom’s lap and being tickled.
But he is also pure boy. If he’s not shooting hoops in the backyard, he’s hitting Whiffle balls in the front. If he’s not wrestling with his brother in the family room, he’s playing baseball on the PlayStation. If he’s not riding his bike, he’s climbing a fence or a tree.
My youngest son is entering fifth grade next month, which I can’t believe. Just like the baby who set his own delivery schedule, Andrew the 10-year-old is now becoming his own little man out to conquer the world. Doubters had better beware of him or get out of the way of the whizzing. He has left the single digits behind, but this little man will always be my baby boy.
Adam Breen teaches journalism and yearbook at San Benito High School. He is former editor of the Free Lance.
