It's A Boy?

So yesterday I spent the day with my family. One of my sister's has a three year old son and a 9 month old daughter, and the two of them were baptized yesterday morning. My mom came in town, as did my younger sister, and all the extended family (you know, all those people who were 'aunts and uncles' when you were growing up) were there as well. It was a beautiful service, albeit a bit long. I am glad to have just survived. I had a sneaky suspicion that the church was going to go up in flames and consume my entire family as soon as I set foot in it. But I get ahead of myself.

I rode with my mother from my sister's house to the church. She was very much in 'grandma' mode, and just babble incessantly about how the two little ones had grown since she last saw them a month and a half ago. And then she said the eight words that brought the conversation to a screeching halt..."It's time for you to have a child". I couldn't even respond. I just sat staring straight ahead, surely with a look on my face that could only be read as 'what the hell????'. I thought she was making a funny, surely she couldn't have been serious. But she was. And proceeded to tell me about how she and my sisters had discussed it the night before and all were in agreement that I am going to make a great father. Nevermind the fact that I don't feel emotionally, mentally, or financially responsible to play daddy (no comments from the peanut gallery, please). She just kept gushing about how good I am with my niece and nephew and how I have always been good with kids, etc. Her response when I told her that I was not ready to have a child was that no one is 'ready'. Which I suppose is true to some extent. But I am too selfish right now to have that kind of responsibility. I enjoy being able to come and go as I please. That's why I got a kitty, hehe. I have a hard enough time trying to remember to clean out his litter box every day. And to see me do it, you'd think I was handling toxic waste. So you can imagine how I am around poopy diapers. I don't know if they ever have caught on, but in all the times I have babysat in the past three years, I have only had to change one messy diaper. Of course, I think that is really more due to sheer luck than anything. Or perhaps the little ones just want their parents to be able to share in their movements. Whatever the case, parenthood is not in the near future for me. I'll just stick to being Uncle Tim. I can spoil them rotten and let them do anything they want, and at the end of the day I can give them back to mom and dad.

And, if I am so ready to be a parent, why was I not asked to be a God-parent? Hmm...