Someone very wise (I’m thinking Churchill) said “the third time’s the charm.” With that in mind, I have arrived and that storied “charm” is me! They got lucky and had a girl this time. My name is Téa Sloane Smith.
At first the news of a female seemed to confuse Dad. He came from a family of three boys so I guess he thought he knew what to expect next. I visualize a large question mark in a thought bubble above his head (complete with appropriate cartoon noises). Mom was a little stunned too. She had finally mastered all things “boy” (e.g., the vocabulary of airplanes, rockets and space stations; the characters and significant plot elements of the Star Wars saga). She thought of pink only as a color worn by other mothers’ children. Fast forward nine months and all I wear is pink.
My large, loud and fast moving brothers, Cooper and Devon, welcomed me with open arms. Apparently, the most noticeable change in them is the increase in gross tonnage of love they express. Such expression is mostly directed at me for better or worse (add “strong” to “large” and “loud” above), but it also overflows to other things. For example, their interest in the Thunderbirds and Power Rangers periodically red-lines near obsession; when one of those entities is removed from their presence, they often lose it in piercing harmony (if I had teeth, I’d grate them).
Among other noteworthy changes since my arrival: dinner conversation is chaos. Topics move rapidly; sentences are rarely finished. It’s like watching a tennis game; one where the balls are flying in all directions yet no one is returning them. I cannot be blamed for this. The main causal culprit is the diverse topics that need to be discussed at dinner. Mom would like to cover a Cliffs Notes® version of the day (focused on the day’s high- and low-lights), our life goals and desires, and ways we can better connect and share our innermost feelings. Dad would like to discuss when and where we can construct either a robot or an Ultralight aircraft (which according to the big book of airplanes takes 1,200 hours to build) and ways we can better connect and share our innermost feelings (kidding!). Coop and Dev find the logistics behind aircraft construction fascinating, yet also want to better understand nuanced plot details of Star Wars: why did Anakin go over to the dark side? How might one avoid such migration? How do you turn a light saber on? Punctuating the multi-threaded conversational roar are the periodic parental barks of: “Don’t talk with your mouth full!” “Your food doesn’t need to be separated by color!” and “Feet don’t belong on the table!” Tranquility rarely descends on dinners at our house.
My impact is not all passive; I’ve inspired some behavioral changes in the family through my actions as well. For example, one of my more enjoyable pastimes is to surprise folks when they change me. Perhaps it’s the sudden to exposure the air or a little eight-weeker humor, but I’m inspired to pee. I wish I could hold a camera because the suddenness and the verticality of it never fails to surprise! The result ends up on the bedspread; sometimes on people. Cooper caught one of my early performances and, not to be outdone, he quickly dropped trou and peed on the bedspread too. To make it clear he knew what he was doing, he did a repeat performance twice more that week. When asked why he peed on the bed, Cooper responds, “Because I wanted to” or “Because I peed on the bed.” With such complete self-knowledge, psychotherapy would clearly be money wasted on him.
My brothers continue to dig the Bing School. On the playground Dev is conversationally animated – integrating a lot of direct eye contact, a wide range of complex facial expressions and hand gestures tantamount to semaphore. It’s a good thing that he is so engaging because his abridged version of the spoken English language is distinctly light on subject and verb agreement but rich on nouns for things that create fire, fly or otherwise go. Consistent with his high-energy form of social expression, Devon excels at mimicking a dinosaur by “roaring”. He meets someone he likes, looks in their eyes, grins and belts out a giant, “ROAR!!” (complete with claw-like swipes of his hands in the air). Needless to say, infants and other parents find him soothing.
Coop has an extended vocabulary, but chooses odd times to demonstrate it. A typical sentence – apropos of nothing: “Excuse me master Yoda, Obi-Wan has made contact,” or “R2, stay with the ship.” As a vocalist, he is most in touch with his inner homeboy. Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. are in his iPod now and he knows all the non-explicit lyrics to California Love (“Cal-i-forn-ia…knows how to party. Cal-i-forn-ia… knows how to party. In the city. City of Compton”). He’s also made progress with his diet. He recently broke his strict sugar & carb-only regimen of pancakes and whipped cream for a periodic bacon strip or chicken nugget. Adult behavior-molding around his interest in becoming “big and strong,” (like Anakin Skywalker) has helped here, especially now that I have arrived to take over from him as the “tiny” member of the family. As noted in earlier editions of this letter, Coop looks to others to find things that he wants to play with. He uses all available means to persuade others to share, up to and including repeated strong emphasis of his interest in the item in question. As a beneficial side-effect Cooper excels at apologizing. I swear, he is constantly dong something then apologizing. His next challenge: actual remorse.
Dad continues a fierce pace at work. He frequently travels to exotic, far away places like San Diego and Sydney, bringing us back native trinkets. Mom’s officially on leave from Stanford, but this hasn’t stopped her from pounding on the keyboard and grousing about broadband speeds at every opportunity. Naturally, her priority is feeding me. Food, food, food. I love it! Mom enjoys it too; it gives us a chance to discuss life goals and desires, as well as our innermost feelings. At this point I hold up my end of the conversation through eye-contact and sometimes a smile.
With all that is happening in the world we know we are unbelievably lucky and have no end of things to be thankful for. We have parents who adore us, grandparents, aunts & uncles who shower us with love, a soccer team of cousins (Elliott, Maile, Sami, Kailyn), and our nanny Tata who with her family nourishes us in every imaginable sense of the word.