Babies are a little creepy. Sure, they're tiny miracles, all adorable and snugly, and ad campaigns are launched on their wee chubby toes and cheeks, but sometimes they give me the sort of shivers I get upon hearing that someone's pinky got cut off in wood shop or seeing someone's elbows bend in a direction the human elbow should never go.
Axel was wailing the other night with such force that I thought he had to be in pain - it couldn't just be from the lotion I was rubbing on his arms after his bath. I looked down at his wrist and shrieked because it had been broken or dislocated and I was a horrible mother and hadn't noticed for who knows how long. Actually, his wrist is fine and, yes, I was overreacting just a tad and, you're right, it's possible Axel gets some of his dramatic tendencies from me. His wrists do look misaligned, though. Baby wrists sit at a funny angle, the oddness of which is exacerbated by the mushy layer of undeveloped muscle that is the baby forearm.
The next night, Axel sat in his highchair, happily rubbing pureed yams all over his face, and the evening sun lit up the whispy hairs on top of his head. Then I noticed that that those hairs were moving up and down, because the little soft spot on his head was pulsing along with his heartbeat. Then his head spun around and pineapple Jell-O came out of his forehead. OK, there wasn't any Jell-O, but still, it just looked wrong. I avoided touching his soft spot for months - feeling it beneath my fingers gave me the shivers - and had forgotten about it until I saw it moving again.
Other weird things: babies don't really have kneecaps, just some sort of mush (yes, that is an official medical term) between their upper and lower leg. Axel's foot got caught in the laundry basket and got a small cut - enough that it drew blood and has now scabbed over (note to Axel it twenty years: it was your dad's fault. I wasn't even in the same room.). The child didn't react a bit. Try to wipe rice cereal off of his face, though, and he acts as though you're pulling out his spleen through his ear with a pair of tweezers. Think about that: actual injury, no reaction. Face wiping, big reaction. Do babies have some amazing ability to withstand pain, or misaligned neurons? And then there's babies' ability to tolerate crap all over their faces, including snot dripping all over the place and crusting underneath their noses, which is, if not creepy, sort of gross. What's more, babies have the oversized head and big eyes of all the official alien photos from the black and white tabloids, the ones they run right next to the shots of the man pregnant with triplets and the two-headed bat that has read Romeo and Juliet.
Don't get me wrong - I think my son could beat a dozen puppies in a cute contest. I think he's shown unmistakeable signs of genius (you know, like banging a wooden spoon against a pot all by himself). I hug and kiss him when he's covered in all sorts of slime, plan to encourage him to roll around in the mud, and am not averse to getting dirty myself. But sometimes the miracles of his little developing body give me the creeps.
