My good friends Nic and Marcia are in town for a wedding. I met both Nic and Marcia when I was living at St. John’s College. Until I busted out of my shyness cocoon and became the social butterfly that was Wu-Tang, they were my main friends at SJC.
Nic and Marcia live in Ottawa now. Since I last saw them, they managed to have their first kid, Nyah, a lovely daughter. They were nice enough to come downtown to have lunch with me. Lucky for me, they also brought Nyah along in an all-terrain stroller.
After many hugs in the lobby, we decided to head to Steamworks for lunch. We sat in the cafe part of the restaurant. I really liked it. It’s way better than the stupid basement part of the restaurant. It wasn’t long before Marcia asked me if I wanted to hold Nyah. I was apprehensive for like a microsecond before I remembered how much I love babies.
Marcia handed Nyah over to me. I held her underneath her arms. As she stood on my lap, she looked at me and I looked at her, in some sorta weird baby Mexican standoff, without the guns. Nyah began waving her baby arms about. Then the grabbing started. For some reason, she focused in on my mouth. With that odd and disconcerting baby strength that seems to come out of nowhere, she grasped onto my lower lip and began squeezing with some incredible force. Marcia had to intervene and removed my lip from Nyah’s hand. As I played with her for several more minutes, Nyah grabbed onto my face at least half a dozen times.
Finally, Nyah got bored of me and our food came. Back into the stroller she went. After we ate, Nyah got fussy and Marcia decided to feed her right in the restaurant. Marcia was very polite with her breastfeeding as I held onto one of Nyah’s feet, just because it was there to hold.
After Nyah was done, she was content again, so she got handed back to me. I didn’t realize it until after we left the restaurant, but Nyah had spit up some breast milk onto my shirt. It wasn’t a large amount but there it was, a streak of Marcia boob milk on my shirt. If you had told me in 2002 that would happen, I wouldn’t have believed you.
Luckily, breast milk dries pretty clear and by 3pm, you wouldn’t even had known what had happened.