An Open Letter to Baby Joey

Dear Baby Joey,

I know what you're trying to do; it's called playing hard to get. What you don't know is that I thrive on rejection. See, I've been training for twenty-one years to meet a man like you. You're the ultimate challenge.

Firstly, they say the way to a man's heart is food, and yet despite your enormous girth, you won't eat. Salty num nums make you gag, cheese balls disgust you, even cake baked with not only love but also four solid pounds of confectionist sugar cannot sway you. I am at a loss. Today I shoved a puff in your mouth, four minutes later you vomited up everything in your stomach. If you think you're the first man to blow chunks upon contact with me, you are way out of your league brother. But maybe you're right, maybe I shouldn't force you. Alas, I try another route.

This is a cake that took 36 hours of my life to make, he didn't eat it, and I can't ever get that time back.

These aforementioned experts also say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Thus, when you deliberately "E I E I" and ditch the "O," I try to be trendy and original as well. I "E I E I" until the cows come home, literally. I'm on that farm Joey, it's me, not Old McDonald and I don't know why you can't see that. I'm the "ut" to your "oh." I'm 7 letters away from that Duck you keep babbling about. I try to be just like you, and mimic you even when you aren't around, and yet still, you reject me.

Recently, you've begun to exert your dominance. You march around the house like a drunken Nazi, Heiling anyone who will look at you. But will you let me join your superior ranks? No. You won't. For God's sake you even Heiled The Appraiser who was here for twenty minutes-- I've lived here for a week!

You give me this look that's rooted in anger. It happens after your naps and when you are in your high chair. You gawk at me like an intruder, like I've stumbled into some private party in the middle of a congratulatory speech. I try everything, silly noises, funny faces, injuring myself, even defeat. I look up slowly, hoping to see a trace of hope on your chubby cheeks, but it's always the same, it's always that icy glare staring back at me.

But what's worse Baby Joey, is that you're fucking with me. Sometimes you have this massive smile on, it's so big your eyebrows bend in and your teeth gleam wildly. You come charging toward me, like I am the only woman for you, and then just as I put my arms out, you bang a hard turn and go straight for whatever lifeless inanimate object is lying on the floor. AS IF IT'S MORE FUN THAN ME. You play with this thing for hours, you treat it like I treat you, softly cooing it's every utterance, one after the other, in perfect harmony. I'm left to watch, like an ex-husband through a frost bitten window.

I thought things would change once we moved in together. We had met once before but it was brief, my knowledge of you was entirely crafted out of hearsay and tear-stained photographs I'd saved. I would keep you in my phone, quietly dreaming up our lives together. I thought we could stay up late, watching Dora, while your parents went out on the town. I would let you have an extra cookie and play Mother May I, and you'd love me, like the kids back home did. Boy was I wrong.

(These are not the only photos I have of my new nemesis, but they all look like this, for obvious reasons.)

I try to communicate with you, I ask "what can I do to make you love me?" You just scowl back, muttering something, speaking in tongues. Well Fuehrer Joey, challenge accepted. High Chair, tomorrow, same time. I'll bring the rattle.

All the love in the world,
Cousin and Roomie Danielle