My baby gets a lot of applause from his Mama and me.
He holds his head up high during tummy time? Wild cheering. He rolls over? Happy dances. He burps? Woop-woop. He farts? Yeah boyyyy!
When my mother-in-law visits she gets a great kick out of watching me lose my shit anytime my baby loses his.
I think it started very early on: any sign of life — be it a tiny baby cry, finger squeeze or sticky black newborn poop — was affirmation that he was real and alive and not some cruel French ultrasound technician’s idea of a Juste Pour Rire gag.
Our little guy gets huge love not only for the big milestones but also for little things that nobody but his parents would find all that impressive.
It reminds me of how TSN makes a huge deal out of some hockey events, celebrating their every nuance like it was Neil Armstrong curing AIDS.
TSN started with the World Junior Hockey Championships, growing it from a nice little tournament played by the world’s best teenagers into a month-long orgy of analysis, speculation, selection shows, door knocking, hydration science, hype, flag-waving, dream shattering and cowboy hats. And that’s before the tournament even starts.
The latest event to get TSN’d was Friday’s all-star team draft, an idea that was dreamed up by Brendan Shannahan and Rob Blake, a couple of former players who now work for the league. The NHL, however, let TSN run the draft from overblown start (a pregame analysis show that revealed only that the TSN analysts cared way more about the drafting strategy than the players did) to awkward finish (Phil Kessel winning a pity car). In-between the proceedings were actually kind of fun — in an awkward way, like watching a cute kid try to tell jokes — but it was a little surprising that TSN was given free reign over the entire proceedings without anyone from the NHL or any American TV network involved.
Can you imagine an NBA event like this running without an appearance from the Godfather, David Stern? Then again, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman frightens children, so it was probably good that he wasn’t front and centre.
To TSN’s credit, their gushing over these events works. The World Junior Championships are now one of the biggest events on the sports calendar for most Canadians while in the rest of the world the tournament ranks in importance somewhere between cup stacking and the Illinois State Fair Hog Calling Contest.
And the fantasy draft format made this year’s all-star game a big hit as well, bringing relevance to a competition that no one has cared about since Eddie Shore almost killed Ace Bailey.
I’m hoping that our parental gushing has the same positive effect on our baby. I know it helped me.
My parents were always telling me how great I was, even after the piano festival where the adjudicator’s only compliment to me was that she was impressed that I was able to play at all with my hands shaking as much as they were.
My parents’ positive power gave me a lot of confidence. A lot. Like, Helen Hunt high on PCP confidence.
And look at me now. I have almost a dozen HD TV channels and I drive a Nissan Versa.
Actually, the greatest thing my self-confidence did for me was help me land a dazzling woman who is way better looking than me and trick her into falling in love with me. My wife says that one of the greatest gifts I could give my boy would be to pass on the confidence that I have to him.
Well, son, you’re the best baby burper I’ve ever met. You’re welcome.
Photo Dave Sandford/Getty Images
Follow me on Twitter @Sportsbaby
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