It's me, Lev, again.
The big people took me see some fancy Jewish doctor and he said I need to gain more weight. Whatever, fancy Jewish doctor. You're not the one who's got to fit into a diaper bikini this summer. Do you have any idea how long it takes to lose this baby weight?
So now the big people have begun supplementing my good old-fashioned breast milk with some white powder they mix with water and try to pretend is milk.
At first, I just spit it out all over their shirts, but now I have begun drinking it, with the quiet inner satisfaction of knowing that with each sip of formula my life goals slip away. I had been planning a career in astrophysics; now working for UPS seems like aiming high. So go ahead, big people. Bring on the formula. I'll remind you about this in a few years when you pass me on the sidewalk begging for change in front of Grey's Papaya. My sign will say: "can you please spare some change for alcohol because my mother couldn't spare breast milk."
Anyway, I can't blame them. The two nervous nellies run around worrying about me all day. For what? I'm fine. Leave me alone and let me get some thinking done. Allow my muse to percolate. They don't realize that for me, just staring into space is like a full-time job. Being taken for a walk outside to the grocery store is like a once in a lifetime expedition for me.
And speaking of going outside, we all have that friend who gloats because he or she lives in Los Angeles, and every February, when it's 19 degrees in New York, we get the snide email with the photo of the beach in Malibu where they just ran this morning and then had a kale smoothie on the roof deck and just thought maybe we missed the photo on Instagram.
But as a glass half-full type, I prefer to focus on the upside. Yes, it's a cold slushy mess out there. But having been recently born in the middle of a New York winter, means I've essentially been on lockdown for the first few months, and recently I realized what a wonderful gift that is.
Not just because the two big people and I have had a chance to bond. More because since we've barely left the apartment, they haven't had to deal with the shock of how ugly other babies are compared to me.
I am not the kind to gloat, and for the record, clearly I get my looks from mother. (Forget the fat one whose boobies are dry. His nose weighs more than my entire body.) And I am certainly not suggesting that outer beauty is more important than inner qualities. Just saying sometimes it's a blessing to forget how extremely cute I am. I recently caught my reflection in big nose's iphone and wow. I look like Matthew Mconawhatever without the shaggy beard.
This way of protecting my parents from the guilt of realizing they have a shining superstar baby was working out OK, until last week, when they took me to the Jewish doctor on 72nd Street for the first time.
It was only a short walk outside and a brief wait in the waiting room, but that was enough for to confirm my suspicion: not all babies are cute. Most are kind of weird and some are downright scary. We sat there, surrounded by tired-looking parents grappling with fat spotty blobs, and meanwhile my parents have me looking totally casual, like I just rolled out of the womb as a luminous Abercrombie model baby--let's just say it was awkward.
Unfortunately, with the spring thaw will come the guilt. They'll take me to music classes and how can they not notice that while I look like an Aryan wet dream crossed with a Gerber model, everyone else has a baby that looks like it has extra chromosomes?
That is, if this formula doesn't have me looking fatter than Mary Kate Olsen by then.