perfidy

Last Friday, the Buckethead clan welcomed its newest member, Jocelyn. After a mercifully short labor, Jocelyn Anne regarded the world with suspicion, and immediately commenced to crying. Resigning herself to her fate, she abandoned that approach and began eating. In stark contrast to my son John who slept through the entirety of his first five days on Earth, Jocelyn has been occasionally awake, and feeding most of that time - so much so that she has already gained several ounces of weight. This may not seem like much, and in fact it isn't. I could do the same in a matter of minutes with the aid of moderately large pizza. But when you gain a twelfth of your body weight in a week, that's a rather impressive enbiggenment. The equivalent for me would be on the order of twenty pounds.

On the way to the birthing center, my mom made a critical error. She told my son that that day was Jocelyn's birthday. In an amazing and utterly typical display of cunning, self interest and the appearance of empathy, John made insisted that we should have a birthday party for his baby sister. I don't believe that he knew for certain that Jocelyn wouldn't be able to eat a birthday cake. But I'm sure he was confident in his abilities to horn in on any cake that might happen to arrive at the house. The other thing that his febrile three year old mind associates with birthday parties is presents. He knows that when, in the past, he has had a birthday party, people give him things. He assumes that when other people have birthday parties, they will give him things.

For a number of reasons, I assented to his cunning birthday party scheme. One, my wife likes chocolate. A lot. Two, giving John a matchbox car would distract him at least momentarily from his sister. And three, I could do this:

Happy 0th birthday, Jocelyn! And God bless the CVS for having that candle.

Over the next week, John has actually been really good with his baby sister. He says he loves her, he gives her kisses, and it's all very sweet. We only have to be careful that he doesn't try to feed her things, or crash toy airplanes into her head the way he does with me. Mrs. Buckethead and I are rather tired, as you could expect. She's tired because of Jocelyn, and I'm tired because all of a sudden John is waking up at O dark thirty every morning and wanting a Banana so he can watch Dora the Explorer. Hopefully, this will end soon.

And before I forget, here is a picture of the little girl:

You can click on both pictures for a bigger version.

I eagerly await the mittens that Johno informed me he was going to send us. When I get them, I will post more pictures. Until then, you'll just have to wonder.