The Best Baby in the World
Recently Chris and I used a gift certificate we had received from friends (Thanks, Bob and Beth!) and went to Sato, a restaurant in Waltham, where we discovered the Best Baby in the World.
Since our friends started having babies about a year ago, I’ve become more intent upon identifying the Best Baby in the World. Somehow I feel as though my indecision about having a baby will be resolved if I can only identify the Best Baby in the World and the traits involved in that position, and then figure out how to somehow make my baby a Best Baby. I’ve found several contenders for the Best Baby in the World in the past, but this baby blew them all out of the competition.
For starters, she sat quietly in her chair. She was probably under two years old and unable to talk, but while her parents studied the menu, she amused herself by examining the chopsticks, the plate, and the napkin placed near her. She even - horrors! - picked up the glass cup by her plate, but instead of crashing it down into the plate like a normal baby, she put it back gently onto the table. She even picked up her chopsticks, one in each tiny hand, and carefully inspected them before inserting one into her mouth.
“Isn’t that dangerous?” I whispered to Chris. I was pretending to eat a scallion pancake, but really I was fascinated by the baby next to us.
Both of the baby’s parents were still looking at their menus, and neither seemed particularly disturbed that their baby had a sharp stick pointed toward her brain.
“They probably know what she can handle,” Chris replied.
Evidently they did, because the baby extracted the chopstick from her mouth cavity with no signs of having dug herself a third nostril. When the waitress filled their cups with water, the baby reached out and helped herself to the water, drinking from the edge of the cup.
“Not even a sippy cup,” I marveled.
When I next looked over to their table, the baby was perched on her father’s lap. He spooned miso soup into her mouth and she happily drank it down and signalled for more.
“She’s eating miso soup!” I said to Chris.
Even Chris was starting to sneak glances at their table.
Solemnly, I told him, “I think this is the best baby in the world.”
“I think you may be right,” he agreed.
The baby had still not made any noises at all. If only the same could be said for the noisy pre-teens a few tables over, or the girl behind me who spoke in a high voice like a 13 year old (”I couldn’t believe she said that, y’know? I mean, like GOD,”) but was apparently 25 or so.
The parents of the Best Baby were efficiently making their way through their meals. Other families who had been eating before the baby’s family even sat down were still working on appetizers. The baby’s family, meanwhile, had received their entrees and put the baby back in her seat. In the only remotely complaining motion or noise I had seen her do, she reached out a hand toward her father’s meal.
“Just a minute,” he said to her, and spooned out some rice onto her plate. He added some broccoli and salmon from his own plate to hers.
In a move that I can hardly even believe now, the baby picked up both her chopsticks. I was almost expecting her to casually pick them up and handle them expertly to eat the rice, but she was, after all, under two years of age. She did use each one individually to poke at the rice and manuever it into her mouth, though.
“There are adults who won’t even try to use chopsticks,” I hissed at Chris. By now I was agitated. This was unquestioningly the best baby in the world, but how was I going to get that baby separated from her family so I could steal her for myself?
A waitress came by and dropped a spoon and fork on the table, which the baby’s mother put beside the baby. The baby put down her chopsticks, looked at the spoon and fork, and then, in a gesture that warmed me all the way to the bottom of my Asian heart, shunned the spoon and fork and started using her bare hands instead to shovel the rice in her mouth. I wanted to clap, but feared Chris would be too embarrassed to continue eating with me.
I was considering going up to the parents and congratulating them on the job they’d done raising their baby, when I was beaten to the punch. The father of the noisy kids at the other table leaned over and said, “Wow, I can’t believe you don’t even need to put a bib on her!”
“Yes, we don’t usually bother,” the baby’s mother said. She politely refrained from commenting on the other man’s children, who appeared to have devastated a third world country on their tabletop.
As they chatted, the manager of the restaurant came to the baby’s table.
“Your baby likes the miso soup!” she said to the father.
“Oh yes, she loves it,” he said.
“I’ll get her more!” she said. She left the table and returned shortly with another bowl of miso soup.
“Chris,” I said, “if we had that baby, we would be getting free food, too!”
“I know, dear, I know,” he said.
The baby was now examining the broccoli on her plate. She picked up a piece, inserted it into her mouth, and then pulled it out again and looked carefully at it. Then she grabbed another stalk of broccoli with her other hand and started eating the broccoli by alternating each broccoli hand into her mouth.
I was staring blatantly, and no longer cared who saw me.
“Chris,” I said, “you have friends from Billerica who won’t even eat broccoli.”
“I know,” he said, “and that baby’s two-fisting it.”
We paid for our meal. Thanks to the gift certificate, our part of the meal had come to a mere ten dollars. And the entertainment value? Priceless.
Posted by: ssjane | January 18, 2006 | 10:35 pm
Posted in: This Life