Babys First Year Blog
Birth Announcement Regrets
You want to be warm, or you want to be Jewish?
Do you know, I still haven’t done Abby’s birth announcement? The holiday-card season (let’s face it, at this point we’re talking New Year cards) is my last chance to un-disgrace myself, and I’m having trouble.
I found a three-image template, but it’s so hard to pick three photos that tell the story of the last six months. Newborn photos are necessary at the time, but she’s so big and beautiful now, it seems a shame to waste precious space on that poor bruised, sleeping, shocked face – the very definition of a face that only a mother can love!
Part of the problem was that for Penny, I wrote a little rhyme to tell the story of her early arrival and eventual trip home. I had plenty of time to think about it, because I didn’t send it out till her due date. I had this vision of Abby pointing to her birth announcement and saying, “You wrote HER a poem! I didn’t even get a limerick!”
So I wrote several versions, but none of them seemed right. The one that made fun of us for having a happy accident was nixed by Randy, who insists that just because we weren’t planning her yet doesn’t mean we weren’t planning her, and he didn’t want her to feel accidental, even if we call it a “surprise.” I get that. But it was another quatrain down the drain.
I was inspired, by the way, by Carrie Fisher. In her one-woman show “Wishful Drinking,” she recites the poem in her birth announcement for her daughter Billie: “Someone’s summered in my stomach, someone’s fallen through my legs. To make an infant omelet, simply scramble sperm and eggs.”
So adorable and disturbing; I had to have the same, so I wrote this:
“She couldn’t wait till New Year’s Eve to shake the shackles of gestation. Her quick arrival has undone our habits of procrastination.” Okay, it could be simple, but I loved rhyming “gestation” with “procrastination,” so if the rest doesn’t parse, I can live with that.
But for poor, dear Abby, I couldn’t put together a rhyme. So I’m going for humor (I know, that’s a shock), heightening the bit and raising the stakes and yes-and-ing. I’d post it, but that’d spoil the surprise, so instead here’s a picture of what is NOT a Jewish kid in a Santa suit! It’s NOT! It was supposed to be raspberry! Shaking my fist at you, Kate Quinn Organics!!
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2 Comments
Naomi commented on Dec 23 10 at 2:27 amI am cracking up at the Jewish kid Santa Suit!!!
I will add that last year I finished my holiday cards in March. I sent out a bunch in February and added little heart stickers on the back for Valentine’s Day, but I couldn’t bring myself to buy clovers for St. Patrick’s Day, especially since there are zero parts of me that are Irish. Yeah it was a tough year. I still haven’t sent out this year’s but at least they have arrived. The limerick is too much pressure!!!
Naomi commented on Dec 23 10 at 2:33 amOH oh oh, and NEITHER kid got a birth announcement, other than a mention in the holiday card. I get an ‘F’ from Miss Manners, I’m sure.
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