IT

IT’S A BOY

The results are in. I’m having a boy.

Well, I’m not having a boy. I’m going to leave that up to my wife, who did a bang-up job on our first child. It would be wrong of me to mess with Mother Nature by trying to take over a role that was so perfected by my wife. In short, who am I to think I could ever master the beauty of childbirth as my wife has done?

So does anyone buy that? Man, even if I could, I would no sooner volunteer to give birth than I would volunteer to be Pavarotti’s personal bather. There are just some things in life that are not appealing to me. Sneezing a volleyball is one of them.

But I am very excited about having a son. Granted, I would have been excited about having another daughter. I have a daughter, and she is one of the cooler small people I know. For one thing, she thinks I am one of the funniest people on the planet. Granted, people sometimes start off thinking that, and then grow very tired of my humor, finding me located on the humor scale slightly above bread mold. I am pretty sure my wife has reached that level. When we met, I was a joke a minute. But 84,000 instances of “does you face hurt?” later, and my hilarity has been severely downgraded.

When I started telling people that I was going to have a son, several people commented something to the effect of, “Well, you’ll finally have someone to teach to play sports and stuff!!!!” Those people have obviously never met my daughter. Allie is a wrecking ball of a child. She knows no fear or pain. Her mother thinks this is a bad thing. I think it’s kinda cool that any time a young man tries to get fresh with her, there is a good chance she will have the ability to rip his arm off and beat him with it.

To date, Allie has actually seemed excited about having a sibling. She routinely goes up and kisses my wife’s belly and says, “Hi, baby!!!” Granted, she also does the same thing to the dog, neighbors, and other school children, so when an actual baby comes home, there may be a little reality check coming forward.

We have told her that she is going to have a brother. That is kind of like telling her she is going to have a toaster. She has no idea what a brother is, or for that matter why he is hanging out in Mommy’s belly. And, on occasion, she will tell my wife that (a) she loves her “brudder” or (b) she does not want a “brudder” but a “sidder.” I am pretty sure she has no idea what she is talking about, but it should make it all the more interesting when an actual human shows up requiring some of Mommy and Daddy’s attention.

My wife and I got her a book that taught about getting a sibling. It was a book starring Caillou, the bald Canadian power whiner on PBS. We thought this would be a good way to teach Allie about all of the exciting new changes that would come her way when her brother arrived.

Then we actually read the book. Basically, this book teaches a small child the numerous ways in which to torment a child, which include throwing the child across the room. Now, I’m no child psychologist, but I’m just guessing that the overall message of the book will be lost on a two-year-old. Instead, the message she gets will be, “Throw child.” I feel confident when I say this is not the message to teach our daughter.

My wife and I have tried to include Allie in as much as possible to make her a part of the new addition. We want her to understand that she has a very important role as big sister. She will get to teach her brother, to guide her brother, and to blame countless things on her brother.

But we’ll get through that. Older siblings learn to love the younger ones. I have three older sisters, and I know firsthand the kind of character-building structure an older sister can bring. Basically what I’m saying is, if my son receives 1/3 of the wedgies I did, he’ll be a-OK!

I know there is a lot of pressure for a man having a son. What if he’s not good at sports? What if he’s not handsome? What if he’s not a ladykiller? That of course, will not be a problem, what with the deeply entrenched genetics of a good looking lady’s man jock like myself. (Editor’s note: It’s like written paregoric, isn’t it folks?)