The DragonMonkey was an average-sized newborn.
He grew into a small baby.
Now that he is walking, he is the world’s tiniest toddler.
It’s absolutely adorable.
The Bean, my husband, is not exactly a tall man, so I guess it makes sense. His totem animal would be a meerkat, except that meerkats coexist in a big group. Maybe the Bean’s totem animal is more like an angry badger.
We constantly joke that the Bean missed the Play-Well-With-Others-and-Share day of kindergarten.
I, on the other hand, always considered my totem animal to be an Appendix Horse. For those not in the horse world, an Appendix is what you get when you cross the stocky, versatile Quarter horse:
with the graceful, athletic Thoroughbred:
It’s kind of like the Cock-a-poo of the horse world. Ideally, the resulting foal will have the height and fluid movement of the Thoroughbred combined with the quiet mind and sturdy muscling of the Quarter Horse.
Or, if you’re not careful how you breed, you end up with a long-legged, big-rumped animal that is athletic and terrified of loud noises.
In other words, you have a Becky!
The main point I’m trying to make here, is that I’m not a petite woman. I’m 5’9 and 165 pounds (for those who are curious, my goal weight is 145 pounds— that’s 10 pounds lighter than the above photo, and 20 pounds lighter than right now. SIGH.)
Even when I’m perfectly fit, I’m not tiny. The only time I wore a size three was at the veeeery beginning of 6th grade when I was 11 years old. By the time Christmas rolled around, it was too small on me, and that was back in the day when kids were still making fun of me for being too skinny. When you breed good, sturdy, Scottish stock with the curvy latina blood, you end up with a long-legged, big-rumped Becky— sound mind, athletic, sturdy, and terrified of the sound the biscuit can makes when it opens up. See? An Appendix horse.
Anyways, that’s all well and good. I like my size, even if I’m not content with my weight at the moment. I like my husband’s size. I like my baby’s size. What I do NOT like, though, is how I look when I’m holding the DragonMonkey.
When you combine me (in the 99th percentile of height) with the DragonMonkey (who is somewhere around 15%), I don’t look loving and maternal when I’m holding him. I look like King Kong and that little blonde chick.
I look like, if I get hungry enough, I just may eat him.
I mean, I always kind of knew this in my mind, but yesterday it was driven home to me while the DragonMonkey and I were toddling around Target. Well, to be honest, the DragonMonkey was toddling around Target, grinning at strangers and making even the grumpiest of employees melt and say, “Awwwww…” I, on the other hand, was hunched over, holding his tiny little hand and grimacing, trying not to complain too loudly as I developed a huge crick in my lower back.
That’s when I heard it.
“Mira la grandota, con el chiquitito!” Roughly translated, it means, “Look at that great big woman with that tiny little baby!”
It was said in a gossipy, “Oh, wow, looooook at thaaaaaat” tone, and I knew immediately they were talking about me. The problem with being what my family affectionately calls “an undercover Mexican” is that nobody realizes that I can speak Spanish and I oftentimes overhear stuff that I just don’t need/want to hear. This was one of those times. Instantly hurt, insulted, and angry, I craned my head around to find the offenders. There they were!
Okay, maybe the three fifteen year olds I spotted were wearing jeans and carrying purses instead of beach balls and bikinis, but that’s pretty much what they looked like. Tiny, curvy, petite, and all of them no more than 5’4″ and maybe 115 pounds, they were the Arabians of the human world.
It would have been a perfect moment to holler out something pithy and biting, and teach them the lesson they so richly deserved. Like:
“Ustedes no son los unicos que hablan espanol.” <— "You're not the only ones who speak spanish. Or "Que poca verguenza tienes!" <—-"Wow, you guys have no shame!" (This sounds better in Spanish.) Or maybe something even a little worse, like: "Y tu mama calata…." <— "And you, with the naked mother." (Again, it sounds better in Spanish.) Instead, I did nothing. I immediately forgot every Spanish word I've ever heard. I glared at their perfectly tight, rounded little backsides as they giggled and trotted briskly away, shiny manes tossing in the wind. I sputtered. I fumed. If this was the horse world, I would have taken my superior size and strength and trotted right after them, kicked them to smithereens, then gathered up my foal and wandered off to the greenest grass available and celebrated by not letting any of them near it. Instead, as a human, I did what every self-respecting woman does when faced with adversity in today's day and age. I called my husband up on the phone and wailed away about it.
“These girls just called me bi-i-i-i-g…..”
