Simon: an intro

This is Simon. He is cuter than anyone you have ever known or ever will know. He is possibly the cutest member of the human race ever.

Yes, those eyelashes are for real.

Simon is just about this smiley all the time. I have it from other parents that not all babies are this smiley. Somehow my kids just know from early on they’re going to have a good time.

Simon, like Sophia, was born two weeks earlier than my due date. Clearly it only takes me 38 weeks to make a baby. Which is great, but I was also much sicker throughout this second pregnancy than I was with Sophia, which is not a big inducement to have many more.

The smile, though: that could con a woman into doing stupid things. “Wait…the first two were so unbelievably cute…”

Simon started smiling before he was two months old, and it wasn’t any of that “gas” crap, it was smiling. He started laughing around the same time. He has a deep belly laugh that makes anyone who hears it start to laugh too.

At a few days old his first nickname was “Mr. Snooty,” because whenever he slept he always had his head back and his nose thrust upwards. After a little while he became “Lord Grunty,” because his main form of communication was (and is) grunting. Fernando shortened that to “L.G.” Simon’s babysitter called him “Señor Guapo” (Mr. Handsome), which I then made “Lord Guapo.” He’s also “El Coqueto,” because he’s the biggest flirt in the known universe. He still grunts, but it’s cute grunting.

At 7.5 months, Simon can sit up and I think he’s started to crawl. There’s certainly enough stuff he wants to get to.

He completely adores his older sister, even though she’s got a nasty habit of taking whatever toy he’s playing with from him. (This behavior does make him cry often enough, though.) He loves other babies. Hearing Daddy’s voice coming up the stairs makes Simon turn and give Daddy the most gigantic grin in the universe. Sometimes this makes Mommy jealous. But it’s too cute to be angry about.

I still wonder sometimes how raising a boy will be different from raising a girl. There were two girls in my family, so I know about girls. There were three boys in Darin’s family, so he knows about boys. Maybe there’s nothing to know, maybe I just have to treat him like a little person and let him figure out what kind of man he wants to be. But there are warning signs, for me, about how I have to act, what I have to say — and guard against saying. At gym class a few weeks ago a little boy — all the kids in the class were under 3 — started crying and his father kept saying things that I can basically sum up as: “Boys don’t cry.” I felt so sorry for that little boy, because it seemed like all he wanted was a hug.

I like hugging my little boy. I’m not looking forward to the day when that’s not okay any more.