My name is Wallace

My name is Wallace... but I get called all sorts of names: Wally or Wallaby or Wall or Ace or Young’in or Pumpkin... I don’t mind.

I have grandparents on the other side of the world who behave like they’ve never seen a baby picture before. I’m afraid they will squeeze me too hard when they finally meet me in person. One of them calls me ‘Waluszek’. It is Polish, and it means nothing... but dad tells me that it’s a combination of the words ‘suitcase’ and ‘little finger’. I don’t mind... I guess grandparents are just strange.

This is my mom. She is beautiful, and warm, and she smells delicious.

And this is my father.

He has just one eye in the middle of his silver face. He seems to love me lots but I can’t explain how mom couldn’t find a better looking dad for me.

I live in a little plastic room which is hot, and it sits in a bigger room which is cold. But that room sits in a country which is hot again. The nurses say I live in an ‘incubator’... but I think they live in the incubator.

All of my little wires are attached to lights and bells and whistles. If I hold my breath for a second – the whole room starts flashing and bells start ringing like a casino. Dad is afraid that I might start to like it.

Dad tells me that he posts up electronic pictures of me for everyone in the whole world to see. He’s very lucky that I’m too young to understand what the word ‘privacy’ means. And why would the whole world want to see me anyway? What’s the big deal? Didn’t everyone look just like me once? Dad says that I have many uncles and aunts all over the world who love me and want to see pictures of me very much. I think he's nuts.

But, yesterday I decided to show him something cool anyway... here’s how it went down: first I pretended that I could hear music in my imaginary head phones to get dad’s attention.

And then I started to dance and dance and dance until I could not dance any more.

Of course, dad couldn’t stop taking pictures... the whole world will probably see them now.

Thankfully, mom was there to rub my head at the end of the show.

She said that she loved the dance, but that I should save my energy for growing. (She tells me smart things like that all the time.) And then she gave me a big hat and an even bigger hug.... she smells delicious.

They say I’m pretty small but I’m glad that I’m not too small to have funny thoughts. Here’s a funny thought: All the important-sounding textbooks say that I don’t know how to smile yet. Silly text books... they make me giggle :)