Page 125 of My Infatuation with Isabella

Neymar reaches out to touch her. “Careful,” I say. “Be very gentle.”

His chubby fingers lightly touch her cheek then he leans closer to smell her. “She doesn’t smell like poo,” he whispers.

I chuckle. “Why did you think she’d smell like poo?”

“Granma Lorraine said...she said I can’t play with her yet coz all babies do is sleep and poo.”

“She’s right.” I stand up and look over at Bella. “I think it’s time to go home.”

We sign all the outstanding paperwork and I ask the nurse one more time if we can meet Tiana’s biological mom. She informs us that she’d been discharged earlier and had already left. I just wanted to meet her and say thank you, but this is a sensitive process. We have to respect the decision of her mom and not make this harder than it needs to be for her.

We leave the hospital, and Ney is so curious, asking questions the whole way home. He wants to know why all of us have different color skin and why her hair is different to his. He wants to know what she’s going to turn into when she grows up because he would like her to become a ninja...and then he makes himself upset and starts crying because he wants to be a ninja too. Bella explains to him that he’s still growing so there’s plenty of time for him to become a ninja.

Everything seems a little different when we walk through the front door. We’ve never had a newborn in the house before. Even though we’re already parents, there’s a lot we still need to learn. Our usual evening routine is disrupted by the addition of our new family member, but we try to keep it as normal as possible. Bella bathes Ney while I cook dinner. We eat together as a family with Tiana sleeping quietly in a bassinet in the corner of the dining room. At bedtime, I get excluded from the sing-a-long because I can’t do it like Mom, but their playful duet of rap and made-up lyrics to thewheels of the busget interrupted when Tiana starts crying.

Bella bolts out of the room to check on her. I kick off my sneakers and lie down beside Ney, propping myself on my elbow to look down at him.

“How about a story?” I ask.

“Yes!”

“Okay. Once upon a time, there was a little boy named...” We make up the stories as we go along, so I pause for him to fill in the detail.

“Ollie.”

“Ollie. And Ollie lived in a house made of...”

“Toffee.”

“Toffee? That doesn’t sound like a solid material to build a house out of.”

He lifts his feet and holds onto his toes. “But it will smell like mom.”

“Of course.” I nod as if that makes perfect sense. “Who cares about structural soundness when it smells like mom, right? Okay, so one day Ollie, who lives in a house made of toffee, was walking down the street and he came across...”

“A ocknopus.”

“How’s an octopus gonna live out of water, Ney?”

“He...” He looks up at me with big hazel-green eyes as he thinks about it. “He’s, uh, he’s, uh, a robot ocknopus.”

“I guess that makes sense. So, Ollie came across a robot octopus who was...”

“Wunning...he was wunning fwom a big...coyote. The-the coyote was trying to blast him with magic and...and take his legs.”

“I feel like we’re crossing genres here. I mean, is this paranormal or sci-fi? I’m not even sure anymore.”

“It’s not paramomal. It’s a coyote, dad! Pay attention.”

I have to pull my lips in to not laugh at the cuteness of his exasperation. I listen to his very elaborate story, which includes aliens and a fish named Bob. When Karla, Ollie’s sister, changes into a snow bear, I stop pointing out the implausibilities because doing so is just making us both mad. Apparently, she was a fairy from the beginning, and it’smyfault that I didn’t pick it up.

As much as I love entertaining these stories, eventually, it’s time to go to bed. “Alright, champ, let’s tuck you in.”

“I want to say goodnight to mom first.”

“Sure. C’mon.”

We walk across the hall to Tiana’s nursery where we find Bella in a rocking chair, a tiny bundle clasped to her chest.

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