Yessir, That's My Baby! in Packrat

Technically not MY baby but my brother's - well, since she's just a week old, I won't take her away from him yet, but you know it's just a matter of time!

I'm not really a "baby person", stemming from my childhood when my cousins wanted to coo over a new addition to the family rather than go out and play. Yeah, I liked seeing them, teaching them things, making them laugh, but NOT ALL DAY. Yep, baby, cute, ok, let's go play now. We've seen it.

When we were kids pretending, we were career girls with our own apartment full of babies - hers (whichever cousin it was) were baby dolls and mine were stuffed animals.

I liked Barbie, but my Barbie Friendship (a plane) was always filled with stuffed animals.

All my babies now are furry and four-legged.

I had only one baby doll. I loved her but I also chewed off her fingers and pulled out her hair.

Still, when I was a 'tween, I thought I'd have four kids - until my Home Ec class showed a film of a live birth when I was 14 and killed any latent maternal instinct I possessed. Even now, when sitcoms or shows feature a birth, I know what all is going on there. I always said if I had a maternal clock, it was broken.

I actually felt relieved when I hit the big 5-0 because I knew that I could stop worrying about anything being under any cabbage leaves or delivered by storks.

All that said, I'm a giant humbug.

One tiny baby arrives and she's already taken over my world. I'm already getting things ready for her naming ceremony. I already called my brother to tell him what vendor has what material and what color her new little Indian dress should be. I already suggested an Indian name.

I'm wondering now why our workplace doesn't have a day care center (my niece's parents and I all work for our tribe), which would allow for her feeding schedule and, of course, for auntie to come by at least hourly...okay, each half hour....well, every quarter hour...aw, heck, just set the crib up in my office!!!

I have to get used to her. I want to call her my granddaughter, since, in the Indian way, I have so many, and all my nieces and nephews are at the age where they're having kids themselves. I just saw my newest grandbaby a couple of weeks ago, and she has already met the new arrival. We're already calling them "running buddies". My cousin M and I are still close at 50; we are five months apart. My niece and grandbaby are seven months apart.

I wish I could say we had eagerly anticipated her birth, but most of the family were actually praying that the baby wasn't my brother's, although he had a connection with her before she was born. Frankly, the mother is a drunken skank who had been with another man less than two weeks after breaking up with my brother, running around with him all through July and August. In all the years she has been off and on with my brother, she never got pregnant; two months with the other guy and the DOT (Dirty Old Thing) winds up pregnant. I didn't want to acknowledge this baby until after the DNA test.

But now that she's here, I don't care how she got here!

She's her own DNA test. She's obviously ours. She has our grandfather's cheeks, our grandmother's nose, and our dad's mouth. Actually, she looks like me! I thought it was just the angle of the picture, but now that we've seen her in person, my mom noted more similarities and calls her "Eriu Jr." Bet my brother loves that! haha

During the weekend I saw him make an expression and his mouth looked exactly as hers did earlier.

My mom and I both inherited my grandmother's nose (that my brother used to make fun of when we were kids - haha on him), and the most distinctive family characteristic that stands out at the moment is that nose. Everybody says they know she's my brother's because "she has your mama's nose". My mom never liked her nose and said she was sorry to pass that along, "but maybe she'll outgrow it." "I've been waiting 50 years to outgrow it!" I said. Actually I never had any bad feelings about it - I was too busy wishing I had a neck.

When I used to come up with names for my future children (before I was old enough to realize I don't HAVE to have any), I included the name of a first cousin on my dad's side. She was six years older, but she always had time for me and took an interest in me. She died at 23 when I was 18 and my brother 16. The mother picked the first name but my brother picked the middle name, and it's the name of our cousin! That shocked me because he never spent much time with her, but I felt the tears well up that he gave her that name, and I love him for doing it.

She's already a daddy's girl. Her takeover is complete.