Benjamin Baby

Okay, can I just emphasize two, horrifying words from Kurt’s first post? FAILED EPIDURAL. If there have been two more cringe-worthy, dreadful words strung together, I have yet to hear them. I’ll spare you the gory details about what, exactly, that feels like but suffice to say that I no longer fear Hell. Oy vey…

Anyway, despite Kurt and I being his parents, the kid turned out damn-near perfect and super cute. Hooray for recessive, superior genes! Ben is amazingly patient with us, two people who have never babysat or changed a single diaper prior to this (as evidenced by the fact that we both made the poor kid pee in his own face when wrestling with an errant Pamper). The learning curve has been steep but we’re doing okay. Here are a few things we didn’t know prior to Benjamin’s world debut:

1. Babies sometimes turn really red when pooping and it doesn’t, in fact, signal Impending Death and certainly doesn’t necessitate an overnight trip to the local children’s hospital. Oops.

2. If breastfeeding, whatever mom eats, the kid does as well. Last night I noticed that Ben smelled like a third world country. What was causing that olfactory offense? And then I remembered the spicy Indian food I had for dinner and the odor suddenly seemed familiar, yet distressing when emanating from a 2 week old.

3. Ben’s forearm is exactly the size of Kurt’s middle finger. Kurt proudly announced this out of the blue and I’m hoping that his center digit becomes a standard unit of measurement (i.s. “You’ve grown! How tall are you now?” “I am 17.5 K.M.F. (Kurt’s Middle Finger”).

4. Psychosis sets in after 32 straight hours of Michael Jackson coverage on CNN.

5. The boy is so overwhelmingly wonderful that it’s going to be difficult to give him up for adoption if he doesn’t love Duran Duran.

6. The one not-cute thing about Ben (and there’s a whole lotta cute, trust me. In fact, his pediatrician had to drain some of the excess cute from him for fear of him O.D.ing on it. His extracted attractiveness is being used on unsightly, inferior babies) is the distressing Dick Cheney half-grin he does. Please, Lord, let him grow out of this and not be an indication of his future political leanings.

Enough babbling, you guys are just here for the photos, aren’t you? Can’t blame you. Without further ado…