Oh, sure, he’s seen babies before. Just last week he was hanging with his friend Red Buttons’ baby Emma at Burying Hill Beach. And Baby Ethan has visited us here in Westport the last couple of Passover Seders — though with so much tempting food around, Ricky is always banished for that occasion.
But Baby Teddy, my oldest niece Kat’s baby — the very first baby of the Herman and Stoller children — was coming on Saturday, and I was really looking forward to seeing how the two little creatures (Teddy and Ricky, that is) would hit it off. Kat, appropriately enough, had been the very first baby of the Herman-and-Stoller clan one generation earlier — 31 years ago. And I was her very first baby-sitter,
allowing my sister and my brother-in-law to go out to theatre. I sang “Mr. Tap-Toe” while holding her and standing and rocking — for four hours — while she shrieked at the top of her lungs, barely coming up for air. Ah, what a good, good baby she was!
Since Mama Kat and Baby Teddy are city mice, the first thing we did was take a long, suburban stroll. Kat and Carol walked and talked, I pulled Ricky, and Papa David pushed Teddy. Not much interaction between the two little ones there, but I wasn’t really expecting anything: Walking is not Ricky’s strong suit, anyway.
Finally, after the walk, came the moment I’d been waiting for: Teddy,
at 12 pounds, was out of his stroller, and was loose on a blanket on the carpet in the den, gurgling and burping and making assorted other cute baby noises. Ricky, at 28 pounds, was unleashed, and on the floor as well. A rare occurence: someone Ricky towered over. Since my beagle always has a sweet disposition, I knew he’d be careful and gentle with Teddy. I expected a lot of nuzzling, maybe some licking. But Ricky walked right over Baby Teddy as if he wasn’t even there! Not so much as a sniff! It’s as if he knew intuitively this was not something he could eat and, therefore, he had no interest. He moved right past Teddy to the coffee table, where he slurped away at some almost-invisible left-over nacho remnants. And Teddy continued to goo and drool and pass gas, paying as little attention to Ricky as Ricky paid to him.
So much for the meeting of the century.
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