McGinn: My wife and I are in need of a baby book app

McGinn

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By Andrew McGinn, Staff Writer 9:01 AM Friday, January 6, 2012

I recently came into possession of my baby book.

It’s really not worthy of the coffee table — that honor usually goes to lavish, hardbound stuff with titles like “A Pictorial Guide to the Field Triage Implements of the Philippine-American War” and “The Lost Nudie Pics of Ansel Adams.”

So, I’ll probably stuff it in a box, and my kid can figure out what to do with it at the estate sale.

But, in flipping through its pages, I couldn’t help but wonder if my parents were raising a baby or monitoring a river otter.

My mom — who so very obviously did not work at the time — filled out almost every page with the kind of detail typically afforded to scientific experiments.

I’m especially impressed with the detailed schematic of my young mouth, with accompanying notes on when each tooth came in.

I got cuspids at 14 months, four days.

The only things missing from the book seem to be the month and day I was fitted with a monitoring collar and the exact contents of my droppings on each of my birthdays.

But, peppered throughout the book like my mom’s field notes are observations that reveal I actually haven’t changed all that much since early childhood.

At 23 months: “Likes to play outside and chases every squirrel he sees. I have to buy a new comic book every trip to the grocery store.”

That’s all still true, except you can’t get comics at most grocery stores anymore.

I’m still a squirrel’s worst nightmare.

At 20 months: “Has gotten interested in the scissors.”

Oh, I know things were different in the ’70s — when stopping the car suddenly, your mom and grandma used their arms as your seat belt, and everybody smoked, including babies.

But indulging a 20-month-old’s fascination with sharp objects seems to be particularly reckless, doesn’t it?

I half-expected to see future entries in the book like, “At 2½: Likes the cold steel of razor blades,” and “At 3: Not afraid to grab small animals by the scruff.”

In reality, though, I wasn’t a scary child — I was scary cute. I mean, just read these anecdotes:

• “Wanted to go and have a Saturday at the Dairy Queen instead of a sundae.”

• “About Jesus on the cross: ‘That was certainly rude.’ ”

• “We told Andrew I was going to have a baby. He said, ‘OK. You have a baby and I’ll get a turtle.’ ”

These things either happened for real or else my mom just copied down the dialogue from “Family Circus.”

But reading my baby book has mostly left me with a sense of shame.

Man, are my wife and I deadbeat parents or what?

I mean, my mom might’ve let me monkey around with scissors before my second birthday, but she at least cared enough to record the milestones in her child’s life.

My own kid is now 3.

We’ve so far supplied his name to his baby book — a book I honestly haven’t seen around the house for at least 2½ years.

I’m now beginning to think I need to find it and fill it out retroactively.

I realize I’ll lose some of the spontaneity, but I have a pretty good memory.

This is what I’ll note for my son:

• I was born: In a big, empty building in Springfield, Ohio; no, the other one.

• My first words: “Avengers assemble”

• My first solid food: T-bone steak

• My first arch-enemy: Tie between Gorilla Grodd and the cat

• My first book: “The Communist Manifesto” (the board book version illustrated by Eric Carle)

• At 12 months, got molars; at 23 months, got fangs.

On second thought, maybe I should just let my wife worry about the baby book.