It begins...

It's been a few months since my wife's sister announced her pregnancy. The family went into the regular frenzy about it and it seemed that you couldn't get into a discussion of coffee, horse racing or NASCAR (for that matter) without someone saying,
"Well, coffee is no good for babies!", or
"Remember those pony rides on the beach when you were kids?", or
"NASCAR! Now that's something the babies will like!"



I don't hate kids. On the contrary, I am the kid-master. I love kids and love playing with them. In turn, I seem to attract children in a weird way. As a big man, I'm six foot and about 230lbs, kids usually spend the first 90-120 seconds sizing me up and making shy, fearful or 'cry' faces at me from behind their parents legs. I like to call this phase "First Contact". Then they all, and I mean ALL, decide that I am an admirable punching bag and begin to jab, poke, kick, bite and whack me with increasing ferocity and frequency. I call this part "First Impact".

I'm telling you. It's all kids. I see you out there shaking your head. "Not my little Lindsay." You're muttering to yourself. YES! Even Lindsay would be opening numerous little half cans of whoopass on me inside two minutes.

I digress. Aside from the regular panic and paraphernalia, this particular pregnancy had one other side effect. Now, my wife will deny that the two are connected but her sister got pregnant and within a couple of months she swept into the bedroom and confidently informed me that we would be having children. She said this with a slight Mona Lisa smile that warned me to warm up my loins.

Now maybe my usually stoic face took on a panicky expression or my knees began to wobble or perhaps my lower lip began to tremble, (Hey, I'm a nineties man. I can weep faster than Elton John) but she read my reaction as reluctance and began a 12 and a half minute lecture on how she'd waited since we were married and how it would be too late soon.

A quick word about interrupting a Puerto Rican woman when she begins to point out your shortcomings to you in English and Spanish... DON'T!

Needless to say, we agreed to start trying immediately. But I am stating for the record, up-front, so that none of her family or family can whip me with it later that I WANTED TO HAVE KIDS FROM THE START!

Anyway, from here on out I'm gonna keep you filled in on the crazy stuff we go through to bring a little bundle of whoopass-dispensing-joy into the world.