Back in the day when my boys were born—and believe me, that was many days ago—we had no idea what the gender of each child would be.
We could guess, and each time we had a 50-50 chance of getting it right, but we were never sure enough that we could paint the extra bedroom pink or blue (so I think we went with some sort of putrid yellow).
So that’s what we did each time: guess. And when our second son was born … well, we guessed wrong. We were so sure that we were having a girl that we didn’t even have a boy’s name picked out when we went to the hospital.
So when our little Kimberly turned out to be a bouncing baby boy, we had to think fast (and I had to rush home to change the nursery’s Raggedy Ann and Barbie theme to G.I. Joe and baseball!).
We thought about naming him after me, but calling him Little Dickie just didn’t seem right. So after studying him for a while, we decided—for a reason that now completely escapes me—on the name Kevin.
Of course, it didn’t take long for me to turn it into a nickname, so he immediately became my little “Kevi Bear,” a name—that even later when I shortened it to K.B.—he still hates to this day. But I digress.
I bring it all up now because things are much different today. Parents are no longer kept in the dark. They find out the sex of their child far in advance of delivery day, and they even go so far as to have something called a gender reveal party to let all of their friends and family members in on the secret.
And as it turns out, K.B. … I mean, Kevin, and his lovely wife, Chadia, had just such a party a couple of weekends ago.
Oh yeah, did I mention that I’m going to be a grandfather?
Sure, Natalie and I have grandchildren already—13 to be exact. But so far they have all come from her side of the family. This is going to be my first!
And a couple of Saturdays ago I found out that the baby I’ve been calling MacJake (a combination of the names they had picked out, Mackenzie and Jacob) is a girl!
We all discovered—Chadia and Kevin included, since they asked their doctor to write down the gender and place it in a sealed envelope so they, too, would be surprised—that MacJake was actually Mackenzie when Chadia sliced the reveal cake at the weekend party. If the cake under that slab of frosting was blue, it was Jake … if the cake was pink, it was Mackenzie. And only the baker knew for sure (well, the baker, the doctor and Chadia’s sister, Shiren, who took a peek in the sealed envelope before delivering it to the bakery).
When Chadia discovered that she was having a girl, she squealed with joy! Kevin’s face was covered with a broad smile, too, but it almost seemed that behind that toothy grin was the realization that every first-time dad experiences at some point: “Oh, my God, we’re going to have a baby!”
I know that’s what I felt when his older brother, Mike, was about to be born. We had had puppies before, and even a kitten or two … but a real live human being? It’s quite a reality check.
So let me share a little fatherly advice with my son before he, too, becomes a dad.
First, as his mother and I quickly discovered, the hospital staff will be helpful, but when they send you home they don’t give you any directions. Heck, even the car dealership gives you an owner’s manual after you purchase a new vehicle! (I guess Dr. Spock’s “Baby and Child Care” book was the closest thing to it that we had.)
And second, don’t worry—parenting just seems to come naturally.
Well, there was that time … actually, the first time Mike’s mom left me alone with him while she ran up to the store. It was all fine until I had to change his diaper (yeah, back in the days before Pampers when we used cloth diapers and pins). When I sat back in the chair to rock him to sleep, everything seemed to be going fine until … the explosion hit!
I quickly discovered that I didn’t know much about diapering, because yellow baby poop (actually, about the same color as we had painted his room) shot out from every possible angle. It was all over him, all over me and all over the chair we were sitting in. If you can picture the sight of me sitting in the chair, holding Mike in the air, both of us covered in poop, then you can imagine why his mother burst into uncontrollable laughter when she walked in the door 10 minutes later.
Ah, the joys of parenthood! I can hardly wait for Kevin to have the same sort of experience.
But more than that, I can hardly wait to hold my little baby granddaughter, Mackenzie, for the very first time.