Day Two: Mission Manny

Day Two:

Most people know my family is unusually close. Most people believe it is because of the drinking but my mother likes to think it was due to our Hispanic upbringing. Because of this goodbyes are very long and extremely difficult to make. The new day brought my parents extended vacation to a close while my new journey began: my first time alone with the baby.

After a quick dose of drugs (the nice pharma non Anna Nicole kind) I started my day by sweeping, making an omelet, and washing dishes. The rain didn’t let up at all which meant that my mother and the family were trapped in doors with a digital camera. My mother is a paparazzi in training. In the mid-1980s (also referred to as the dark ages or B.I.) my mother would buy stacks of Polaroid film and regular film by the case (just for fun). Which is probably why Polaroid announced it was having financial problems around the time my mother got a digital camera for Mother’s Day.

My mother taught my sister and I how to drive. This wasn’t because my mother was the best driver (she isn’t) nor was it because she wanted to (she didn’t) or because she was a patient person (she definitely isn’t). My mother taught us to drive because she had no choice but to for her own survival and because my father was out of the country for work. So my parents and our insurance company was thrilled when my sister stopped driving to go to college. When she left the states to live in Europe she only had to drive on rare occasions and even then it was just driving on the wrong side of the road. I only bring this up because my sister now has to drive on the wrong side of the road and in the wrong seat. This makes my parents, myself, and any sane driver in Australia nervous. The rain was coming down in sheets and so the decision was made to leave me behind at home with the baby while my brother-in-law and sister drove to the airport.

One would think that leaving a 32 year old single guy that has (at this point) in time not touched your child due to his quarantine would freak out any new first time parents. Ironically, it was my parents that objected to this plan that was suggested by my sister and my brother-in-law. Thankfully, I have been babysitting since I was 10 and that included a newborn a fact that my sister has painfully made me aware of. My mother was trying to walk me through every possible scenario that could happen including how to change a diaper while my sister just calmly wrote down a list of numbers for me to call in case of emergencies.

That is when I finally got to hold my niece for the first time.

It isn’t that I am a first time uncle (I got three other notches on my belt), or that I am inherently bad with children (except for some reason I only like McCains) but there is something different with this child. It isn’t to down play my connection to the other kids especially since my McCain kids are the closest experience to my own children that I am planning on ever having. I think the difference with this particular child is I have been there the whole time with this particular child from concept to implementation. I was there when my sister found out. I was talking with my sister throughout the journey of pregnancy and the delivery and to now to actually hold this baby in my hands and touch her skin, smell her hair, and gaze into her beautiful blue eyes made me misty. Eliana of course takes after me because her reaction to this profound moment was to spit up on my Bumblebee tee shirt.

After that, she got a little fussy so I decided to do a trick that use to work on Kelly when she was younger and fussy: bouncing while singing Disney songs. El liked the bouncing but was not a Disney fan. Between the blue eyes and lack of Disney gene I am not so convinced this is the right kid and some baby swap may have happened. So I switched gears and went with Da’ Train a Patrick favorite. Yes, Da’ Train song as in “Come on ride that train and ride it. Come on ride dat train and ride it”. This also did not work. Which kind of makes me happy in a sick way because now when I think of “When You Wish Upon a Star” and “Da Train” will always be exclusively reserved for them. What did work for El was the Rolling Stones “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “Part of Your World” which is a good enough DNA test for me.

We made it through our first three hour session alone and now the parents have returned. Mission Manny Accomplished.