(Photo credit: Katie Trinque of Trinque Photography)
Baby Morgan is adorable: Smiley, cooey, beautiful. Gutsy was absolutely smitten. He took every opportunity to talk to her sweetly, hold her plump little hand, stroke the fine hair on her round little head.
Spawnling gave her nary a second look. While we were all taking turns holding her and gushing over her, he played with his cars and slurped chocolate milk.
If you couldn't already tell, Spawn isn't a big fan of babies, and everybody knows it. He finds them annoying or perhaps invasive. He takes no interest in them at this point unless they're trying to grab toys he's playing with (and then he's even been known to push them over, much to my extreme embarrassment) It's funny, because he loves animals and other kids, but not babies. Are they not interactive enough? Do they make him jealous? Who knows?
Poor Morgan. She kept looking over at Spawnling like he was some sort of god, craning her neck and cooing at everything he did. "Look, Spawn!" said mama Angie sweetly. "Morgan is so interested in what you're doing."
Spawnling sighed and didn't even look up. "Yeah, I know."
"My brother doesn't like babies very much," explained Gutsy.
"No, I don't," Spawnling agreed.
"Spawnling..." I warned, and tried to hide behind my coffee cup.
Gutsy continued. "In fact, he would probably kick a baby if he could."
I stopped mid sip. "Gutsy!"
Spawnling nodded. "Yeah, I would kick it."
"Spawnling! Don't say that!" shushed I. Meanwhile, Angie and The Sister were trying to stifle their laughter.
My youngest shrugged. "Well, I would," and went back to playing cars.
Thank you, darling. It's not every day I get to feel that level of intense mortification.
It's also reason #32 why my husband's vasectomy is a good thing, reason #181 why I'm glad I don't run a daycare anymore, and reason #568 why it's a damn good thing that boy is so cute.
(Thankfully, he did come around and end up taking a bit of an interest in little Morgan. No babies were kicked in the telling of this tale, and I am breathing a sigh of relief that we have no infants in our future. Hopefully, by the time one of his older brothers blesses us with a grandchild, Spawnling will be well beyond the baby punting stage. We hope.)