The Little Guy

Almost seven years ago, my boyfriend had a kid with another woman. They had already broken up and she had moved away by the time she found out she was pregnant, but she decided to keep the baby despite the bad timing. The two of them had been together for several years, and although he protested and said he did not want to have a child if he couldn't be there for him properly, she held strong in her decision. Since then, the Boy has kept up his end of the parental bargain by going to see his son once every month or so, helping out with the bills, and setting up a trust fund. It's about all a father can do when his child is living in another country. A few months after The Kid was born, she got pregnant with another man's child, and the two of them have raised the half-brothers together. Soon, just after The Kid's seventh birthday, she is going to have her third child - bringing the family total to five.

The funny part about having The Kid around is that he speaks Dutch - the language he speaks at home with his mom, brother, and "dad" - and neither The Boy nor I do. English comes closer to Dutch than any of the five languages that The Boy can speak, so I could occasionally decipher things ("You stole my money!" and "Where is my bag?" are amazingly easy to understand in Dutch) that escaped The Boy entirely. Not surprisingly, I was able to make out more and more things The Kid said as the week wore on, and he began turning to me as his makeshift translator.

At first, I had been hesitant about having him come to stay with us because of the language barrier. But really, who needs language when testing how quickly paper airplanes drop from a sixth-story window, how long The Kid can do a headstand against the wall, or how far a wind-up car will drive on its own before burning out? As he knows how to count in English, French, and Dutch, all we really needed besides that was gestures, which we're both pretty good at.

I've been amazed at the warmth and affection The Little Guy has given us, how patient he has been when we can't understand him, and how well he's managed to explain things to me so that we can communicate on some level. He's taught me how to count in Dutch, the basic colors, and important words like eat, drink, sleep, and trashcan.

Yet, I think, I've been even more amazed with myself. I've always known I wanted to be a mom, but now I'm even more sure of it. I never bored of his endless lego games, his nutty stunts on the bed, or his constant need for attention. I was also surprised at how laid-back I was with him, as I always thought I would be a sort of paranoid mom. Maybe it's because it's not my kid, but in a way I would think I would be more paranoid with someone else's little one than with my own. Still, I noticed that his dad is a far more authoritarian than I am - when The Kid wanted to put his lego skateboarder in his water cup, I nodded and said, "Sure" with a shrug, while his dad got a stern look on his face and forcefully said, "Don't put that there." Or, when he wanted to eat a tic-tac before dinner, I said, "Ok" while his dad said, "No, we're going to eat." I guess I just don't see the point of certain rules, whereas I clearly think that running across the busy streets of Paris without looking first is a bad, bad thing. Together, however, I think The Boy and I made a good team with The Little Guy: The Boy took over the physical stuff like picking him up, wrestling, and making him dangle by his feet, while I handled the more homely things like showering, brushing teeth, and pillow fights.

Overall, I'm just happy to know how much I liked making The Little Guy breakfast. How much fun it was to chase pigeons with him. How silly we could both get together and how much, I guess, the kid in me still lives on. That's gonna come in handy whenever I have kids of my own.

Last night at dinner, The Boy looked at me and said, "You never really get bored of him, do you?"

I looked at him while prepping the wind-up Lego car once again, and said, "No. Why would I?"

"Some people do," he said, and proceeded to do a magic trick with the car's tailight that had fallen off during our previous time trial. "I'm glad you don't."

Yeah, me too, I thought, as the two of them began their second farting contest of the night. I don't think I've ever laughed so hard in my life.