marydell | Fun with stereotypes (Reply)

So as I take care of Charlie (as I parent him, I mean...still can't quite get my head around the notion that he's MINE), I get to discover which stereotypes have worked their way into my hindbrain and which haven't. So far I do not perceive him as either inscrutable or exotic, thank goodness. If I'm going to have prejudices, at least they won't all be tired and unoriginal ones. I did catch myself thinking he's like a little zen master at one point, because he's a very good sleeper. His eyes don't seem almond-shaped to me, but since he rarely opens them yet, and since I am addicted to cute overload, I've taken to calling his eyelids his "eye capsules." I suppose that's bad, since he's otherwise not particularly turtle-, bear-, or wombat-like.

When we first started tossing around middle-name ideas for a one-handed baby, the first one that came up (my contribution) was Captain Hook and the second (Mike's) was Shockwave (one of the Transformers). Disability is nothing new or unusual in our family and we're big fans of openness and humor in dealing with adversity of any kind. Still, I am firmly restraining myself from saying "because you don't eat a baby like that all at once" to people who ask about his arm. Even though we've been saying it about our three-legged cat for years.