Goo Goo, Ga Ga

My sister had a baby. December 15th, 2008, at 8:46 at night, my family got 7 pounds, 8 ounces bigger. My sister, relieved to be in the "fun" phase of pregnancy (meaning that it's OVER), took home my niece, a beautiful baby girl with dark blue eyes and what my mother swears will turn into strawberry blonde hair. Regardless of the color of her hair, she's perfect and tiny and beautiful and all sorts of delicate . . . until she pees/poops/burps/farts, when she seems less like a little girl and considerably more like a human smell machine. Don't get me wrong, I think my niece is perfect. Precious few things are more adorable than hearing a 10-day-old infant hiccuping. I swear to you, it's incredibly amusing. But it's a little less adorable when she shoots fecal matter at the individual unlucky enough to be changing her. Go figure, my sister doesn't really want me to change her diaper. Instead of protesting, I was genuinely happy that my job is to coo at her and play with her hands while she screams her bloody head off in the baby version of "I WAS HAPPY THE WAY I WAS! WHY ARE YOU TAKING ME OUT OF MY WARM AND SQUISHY ENVIRONMENT?!"

She sleeps a lot. I didn't get much eye-to-eye time with her, which is ok, because the next time I see her, she'll be able to hold her head up. And soon enough, she'll be grabbing at my face with a baby's super-strong grip. Let's just hope she doesn't go for the eyes. But having a niece or a nephew is transforming. All of a sudden there's someone who matters more to you than you do, even if it's just a little irrational. You get all the good without the changings and the feedings and the wailing. When she's older, maybe she'll talk to me about concerns she can't talk to Mom and Dad about. It makes me think that 2009 is going to be a great year - the year my niece is baptized, the year marking the day I officially became an adult and started working full-time and moved into a grown-up apartment, the year my niece turns one, and maybe, just maybe, the year she starts to learn to walk (although I'm not holding my breath on that one - I didn't walk until I was 18 months old).