My Dream Last Night, or, "My Biological Clock is Ticking"

Stuart's birth came out of nowhere. I pretended he looked cute, but to tell the truth, his head was prodigious, and he looked disconcertingly like some sort of man-baby freak. Immediately after the delivery, I went away on an extremely important business trip for a week. I suppose that Joel must have stayed home with the man-baby, but I can't really be sure. It’s all a blur.

Upon my return, I was discouraged to find that I couldn't remember "little" Stuart's middle name. I somewhat sheepishly asked a friend – Christine - what it was, but she must have thought I was joking because she just laughed and started talking about something else. Some friend… It turns out that Stuart's middle name was Luke, but I sure didn’t remember naming him that.

Stuart turned out to be a pretty good sport. Since the birth took me totally by surprise, I had no baby clothes on hand; it turns out that old towels keep babies just as warm as effeminate, pastel onesies. I started keeping Stuart in the kitchen sink as I would do the house-cleaning, and he didn’t complain much about that either.

After Stuart's birth, our dinner party conversations invariably turned to Stuart's big, fat head. People don't usually tell new parents this, but big-headed babies are great conversation fodder. Our friends made fun of Stuart with a tenacity that was both humorous and charming; our soirees have never been more intimate. And if that weren’t enough fun, Nick started hiding Stuart in different out-of-the-way places as a joke. After about an hour of Balderdash, Nick would say, “Hey, where’s that balloon-headed baby anyway?! I can see the sun again, because his fat head isn’t obscuring the light, that’s how big his fat head is,” and we would all chuckle. Then we would start looking around for Stuart, and sure enough, he would be nowhere in sight. A rousing game of “Find Stuart” always ensued. Oh, the times we had.