Where the hell did my baby go!?

Last night, Nic brought over my absolutely gorgeous new nephew, Jordan Matthew-Lee VanDuisen.

We all passed him around. Nic went outside to have a cigarette and Ashley was holding him and he started to cry. So, I grabbed him, tried burping him: No success on Operation: Stop Baby Cry. But then I saw that he was sucking on his hand. “Oh! You’re hungry!” So, I grabbed his bottle full of pumped breast milk and fed him. He ate a few ounces and fell asleep on me and I just held him as he slept.

And that’s when I looked across the room and saw MY baby running around with her pink pumpkin full of Halloween candy, asking everyone, “This good candy? You want candy? Charlie’s Barbie Punkin!” (Charlie assumes anything that’s pink is automatically dubbed as “Barbie”.)

I look at her running and talking. Speaking FULL sentences. I watch her make her nightly rounds of “Night-Night-Kisses” because she insists upon kissing EVERYONE before she goes to sleep and walks up to Nic & says, “Nic cheek kisses?” because Nic doesn’t believe that he should be kissing any girl under the age of 18 on the lips (we obviously have no worries about him being a Pedo, FYI) and Charlie knows this. She knows that Nic is the one who you kiss on the cheek. She knows how to count to 3. (Which is when it starts going somewhere along the lines of “ONE… TWO… THREE… NINE… FORTY TWO… O.. P… A… B… C… FIVE…”) She knows all of her colors. She knows sign language, for Christsakes!

And I look at Jordan. Just a few days old. Not even close to being able to hold his head up. His entire body seems like it needs constant support. He is absolutely incapable of doing anything. You have to do everything for him. EVERYTHING.

That’s when it hit me: I don’t have a baby anymore.