One THE BABY IS ALL EVERYONE TALKS ABOUT THESE DAYS I like Paris I like pain au chocolat I even usually like Mirabel Plouffe my FBFANDN French best friend and next door neighbor I like all kinds of things That’s why it is very unfair of Grandma Balthazar to say Oh Winicker you don’t like anything I do like things I like millions of things It’s not my fault I don’t like babies but Grandma Balthazar is frustrated at me anyway It is a rainy Friday afternoon and Grandma Balthazar is sitting across from me at the kitchen table She looks very glamorous with her silver hair in a fancy pile on top of her head and gold buttons on her shirt Glamorous and frustrated
I look very unglamorous in my favorite orange nightgown with a giant cowboy boot on the front My hair is silver too from a certain incident where I may have used Grandma Balthazar’s hair dye It is not in a fancy pile on the top of my head It is in a single sad bun When I lived in Three Rivers Massachusetts I always wore my hair in two buns on top of my head When my family moved to Paris a few months ago I protested with a single sad bun But when I decided to give Paris a chance I started wearing my two buns again Now everything is different Everything is awful I am wearing a single sad bun again because in three weeks I am getting a new baby brother And I am protesting I can’t think of anything worse than a baby brother Maybe crocodiles that crawl up through the sewer and sneak into my room and bite my feet off would be worse than a baby brother But
I don’t think so A baby brother won’t bite my feet off probably But he will be loud And he will be smelly Maizy Durand told me all about baby brothers because she has one I wouldn’t normally trust Maizy Durand because she’s mean and awful but that probably makes her an expert in awful things Like baby brothers I bet she knows a lot about sewer crocodiles too She told me he’ll cry all night long And that he’ll spit up all over the place He’ll make our whole apartment smell like poop She said Mom and Dad won’t do anything fun with me I believe her because the baby isn’t born yet and Mom and Dad already don’t do anything fun with me Mom just walks around with her hand on her back groaning about being sore and tired Dad gives her back rubs and builds dumb baby furniture all day long
When Dad is building dumb baby furniture he says words I’m not allowed to say When I tell him Hey We’re not supposed to say that word he gets mad at me which doesn’t make any sense When I say a bad word I get in trouble And when Dad says a bad word I get in trouble Right this very second Mom is napping on the couch in the living room She’s napping on a perfectly good Friday afternoon when she could be taking me to the Eiffel Tower where I have never been not even once Or the Parc Zoologique de Paris I’ve been there but I want to go again They have penguins The only good thing about the baby is that Mom is always hungry so there are always des pains au chocolat in our kitchen bought fresh every day because Mom says old bread makes her want to vomit Everything makes her want to vomit but I get in trouble when I say that too
