Thanksgiving Baby Breakthrough

Me and Mocha pulled up to my parents’ house first- two responsible adults pretending we showed up early to “help,” when really we just wanted front-row seats for the parade and dibs on the good couch cushions. It was peaceful for maybe twelve minutes. Then the doors started swinging and the kid-swarm arrived.

We had the usual chaos lineup: my parents, my Pops, my sister and her husband with Sis and Bubs, my brother and his wife with their three kids (the 4-year-old, the 3-year-old, and the 9-ish-month-old), and then me and Mocha already posted up with iced coffee energy. Full house. Zero silence. Perfect.

Now, I’m a certified kid magnet. I don’t do anything mystical- I just treat them like full humans who happen to be tiny and unhinged. But the baby? She’s normally terrified of anyone outside her immediate bloodline. Stranger Danger is her whole personality… Not today, bitch.

I played it slow. Quiet hello. No touching. Just gentle nonsense until she loosened up enough to crawl around and start pulling up on furniture with the determination of someone checking her territory. When she finally left her mom’s lap, I got on the floor and gave her my full attention. Foot tap. Smile. The universal “I’m safe, I promise” energy. Then her brother hijacked Alexa and blasted Baby Shark, and suddenly I’m performing a full Broadway number for a nine-month-old while everyone else is watching him hit replay like he’s torturing a war criminal. She cracked. Big grin. Zero teeth. Face fully consumed by joy. I won.

After lunch she let me pick her up! I danced with her, carried her from room to room, announcing our partnership to anyone who happened to look our way. And the real kicker? I’m on the floor playing with Bubs later, and she crawls up onto me with the confidence of someone returning to home base. Pure serotonin. I almost ascended. She touched my face, played with my hair, shoved her wet fingers in my mouth- a baby’s way of saying “I trust you”. So I airplane-lifted her until she squealed. She would kick her little legs off my body as a way to tell me “more”…

Too. Fucking. Cute.

By the end of the day, we were locked in… or at least I was. Now I’m just over here hoping she remembers me next week.