Furniture four babies

In which our Hero props up a Fridge with a really good grip and can’t seem to put some cake in the Oven

Fridge is 1 now, and the family coagulated in the middle of nowhere that his parents have moved to for a birthday party. It makes me happy to see him and his brother, but it’s easy to see how much better they know their closer uncles and aunts.

Most times, I say hi to the babies, and then I move on. The start of a party is an onslaught of strange, barely remembered faces, with loud voices, stupid jokes, and generally scooping them up and taking them from the people they’re comfortable with. And so I let them be, figuring it’s the nicest thing I can do for them.

Besides, they’ve got each other, new toys and their cousin S who needs a name and us grown-ups are largely just in the way of their playing.

Later in the evening, Fridge is standing on the couch, propping himself up with the back, and bobbing on chubby legs, grinning his sporadically toothful grin. And as I talk to someone, I just bob my head along with him, and encourage him by repeating “Jump Jump Jump” and to my vast amusement, that’s enough to intrigue him.

Creeping like time-lapse frost, he bobs closer, and closer, grinning at me and then back to the wall, until he’s inside my reach, one hand on the sofa back, one hand perfectly centered through the collar of my shirt. Not that he’s looking at me, he’s still grinning at the bare wall and bobbing like his life depended on it. And then his chubby little fist curls up in that way that babies have, and suddenly that tiny, delicate hand has my chest hair clenched in an unbreakable grip.

I laugh, out of amusement at my predicament, and at the deja vu. And then wince, as he adds some leverage to a bob using his arms. It’s isn’t comfortable, but hardly requiring urgent attention. Still, someone catches the wince, and takes the baby away.

Thus ended my moment with the baby. Even if it wasn’t his moment with me. He was fixated on the wall, and I was just a grippier part of the couch. Furniture that loves him.

Another family there is another playmate from childhood days, if not really a friend. We were little boys together, and now, his i-think 8-month-old is a tiny scrap of girl. I can’t tell if she’s just small compared to fridge, or small for her age. Neither can I tell if the oddity of her face is sign of an health issue or just her mom’s face growing in.

But tiny or not, gorgeous or not, she climbs, and to the amusement of all of us standing by the stairs, something almost smaller than our feet is intently and fearlessly (or obliviously, who knows) climbing up the stairs. And from either side, me and her dad are putting our arms through the rails to guard her from falling back before she gets to the landing. My old playmate looks tired, but you can see something in the way he looks at his daughter. Love. Pride. Slight exasperation.

The group hoots, and teases, and cheers, as she makes her precarious traverse. But she’s alone as she climbs, there’s nothing else in her world either. Just the next stair. And then the next.

Later, as she tries to escape with a ball she’s captured, I notice that we really kind of make it hard for our baby girls. She’s in a cute and simple little dress, but as a result, she’s crawling over her own hem. She has to work so much harder for her every step. Not sure what the lesson is exactly, except that if I ever have a girl, she’s not getting stuck in frocks when she’s crawling.

Fridge’s older cousin is 3-and-change. And she’s trying to keep all the balls for herself. But holding four balls in her arms all at once is proving very difficult. I step in to help, putting one in reach. And as she gets her grip on the new one I’ve added, I peel another one out from underneath. She catches that move, so I offer her that ball, and twist another one away from her grip. She misses it, but I offer her this “new” ball and the next “new” one. She doesn’t seem to notice that her pile isn’t getting bigger, even after I add three or four new balls to her pile of three.

Oven plops himself down on the couch in the middle of us Bobs so quietly that half of the room doesn’t realize he’s there. And he sits quietly, swigging grape juice from his sippy cup like a tired prospector in the town saloon. Minding his own business. Till the Bob’s start playing with my phone.

Then he’s all curious, and I turn on the doodling application and make a mark for him. And, fascinated, he presses down hard with his finger and starts drawing. Nothing but squiggles, but he doesn’t need colours, he doesn’t need anything except to draw. I stop being there except as a phone holder.

When the screen gets too full, I clear it, and let him go to work again. And again. Until finally I’m done and take the phone away. Which is when I discover his finger smudge isn’t just finger, and there’s a souvenir film on my phone I can’t just buff away with a breath and my shirt.

Then Oven starts noticing that people have been getting slices of birthday cake and starts saying “cake.” So I scoop him up, and take him to the kitchen, where I discover that he doesn’t want any. He just wants to say “cake.”

So I put him down. And a little while later a ball comes rolling by so I send it his way. And he’s delighted to have a playmate, and so we play with the ball for a while. Him throwing wildly, me trying to catch, and then rolling the return back. Occasionally one of the others “plays through,” such as the baby girl charging after one of the balls, but amidst the madness, it’s mostly just him and me.

When I get up to get my mother something from the car, I tell him I’ll be back. My mother tells me later that he ran after me to play more, and I feel awful for not noticing him over grownup cares. But then my mom pretended to cry because nobody would throw the ball to her, and Oven took care of her.

Crazy woman. Sweet boy.