As you can see, I'm not really old enough to be typing this in myself.
Instead, I dictate it to my dad. These are the other members of my family:
- Blue
- I started out very blue, and rather ambivalent about even
breathing. If the nurse hadn't pumped some oxygen into my little
lungs, I'd have slipped away before Mom and Dad's unbelieving eyes.
Later, the nurse took me out for my first bath, and it was so
upsetting that I was ready, again, to slip away into the deep blue
pool of death. A big green bottle of gas and two warm pink hands
snatched me back from the brink again. I'm probably here to stay now.
- Yellow
- I'm helping Science! My mom and dad signed me up for a
jaundice study before I was even born. That means that a woman comes
to the house every day and holds an instrument up to my head. Flash!
it goes. Flash! it goes again. And with each flash, a two-digit
number appears on the instrument display. She got to take a stool
sample the first day!
One day, several days into the study, my mom asked if my
numbers were normal. "No," said the woman, "he has jaundice." That
was a bit alarming, because nobody had thought to mention that to us
before then. Each day after that, the numbers were smaller, so I
guess my liver must be working now, and now the woman doesn't come
over any more.
- Red
- My mom's mom and dad are here now-- they came from Ireland
just to help my mom and to play with me. Isn't it great that they
came all this way without having met me? Blood thicker than water and
all that. They brought a big bag of food with them-- rashers,
sausage, white pudding, brown bread, and a Christmas pudding. I can't
eat any of it.
Fiona calls them Nana and Granda. My dad gave Nana a real
funny look the other day, right after Nana explained that Mom's
sister's husband Jer-- he's a Guarda in Ireland-- wouldn't let her
sister Carmel change any diapers after my cousin Kiera was born-- he
didn't want Kiera to get sick from germs on her mom's hands when she
nursed him. My dad, though, doesn't mind when mom changes me.
- Black
- Dad says that last Tuesday was a black day in history. He
spent a long time looking at the paper on Wednesday and Thursday, then
he held his head in his hands and kind of rocked back and forth for a
while (I like to do that, too!). Is black a good kind of day, or a
bad kind of day? He says that a newt is going to run our government
now. I thought a newt was a kind of really slimy lizard...
- Green
- I missed my chance to go to the last Farmer's Market of the
year because Mom didn't feel very well that day.
- Purple
- [To the tune, more or less, of Brown
is the Color of My True Love's Hair.]
Purple is the color of my diaper rash,
in the morning, when I rise,
and in the evening, when I retire.
(and at eleven, when I feed,
and at two, when I feed,
and at five, when I feed.)
That's the time,
that's the time,
I wail the loudest.
- The Other 24 Million
Colors
- Dad spent some green to get a new video
card to go with his new computer, and he says it does 24 million colors.
I didn't realize there were that many. That removes the worry that
I'll run out of color space for my finger file.
