My obsession with Mr T

Mairead Wilmot
“WHAT’S he doing now?” I ask. “He’s sleeping,” says my sister, as we discuss my favourite topic.

“Oh,” I say. “What was he doing earlier?”

“He was sleeping, then he had a bottle, then he did a poop and then he went back to sleep.”

“Oh … what’s he wearing?” “Well, earlier he was wearing a little tracksuit.”

“Ah,” I say. “Yeah ... but then he puked.” “Ah,” I say again. “He’s amazing.”

“Yeah, he’s amazing,” she says.

Mr T, or Tiger – you may refer to him as either or – IS actually amazing.

Granted, my dear nephew is practically ancient now because he is five weeks’ old, but I must say he is astonishingly well advanced. I doubt there is a five-week-old out there as advanced as he. Already, he has his own little personality. For example, he is a trickster. He enjoys nothing more than keeping us all on our toes with a “surprise pee”.

Yes, yes, it is hilarious. In fact, it is his favourite game. Unfortunately, the person changing his nappy really does not get as much enjoyment out of it, but we appreciate his stubborn streak because he really does insist on doing it every time.

There you are, having done your job to perfection: he is clean, the fresh nappy is in place and, all of a sudden, “SURPRISE PEE!”

You look down with horror etched across your face, completely helpless to stop the unfolding disaster, and his little eyes have lit up as if to say: “Mmwahahahah, you ridiculous giant human, when will you ever learn? I get you every time. Now, change my nappy again, immediately, or I will scream so as to alert my mother to your bad babysitting and she will kill you.”

My sister and I have now also developed a new favourite game with Mr T – if you can call discussing his various clothing ensembles a game. Thus far, he has favoured his wide array of tracksuits, obviously this is because he is from Limerick and he wants to fit in.

Personally, I favour when he channels the hipster within, so I enjoy it thoroughly when he wears jeans, a cardigan, his beanie hat and his Converse socks, which are cleverly disguised as trainers.

Because mother, sister and I all think Mr T is the most advanced and gifted five-week-old ever to be born on planet Earth, we tend to coo and cluck around him like he is some sort of demi-god. Every movement he makes is heralded as the work of a genius.

“Look,” I shrieked, when he was about five days’ old. “He is smiling at me! He is smiling! He’s a boy wonder!”

At that moment, Papa appeared over my shoulder to say: “He’s not smiling, he’s pooing.”

Papa was lying, of course: Mr T was smiling at me because he knows I am the person who gives him his bottles when his mother is not around.

Although I do have competition from his grandmother, aka my mother … she tries to steal Mr T from me sometimes.

And she, in turn, has to battle with her own sister, who tries to steal Mr T from her.

Yes, our aunt has become obsessed with the baby, so much so that she snuck up to Limerick to visit him and repeatedly sent mother pictures of herself with Mr T, along with an array of text messages which read: “See, he loves me.”

It drove mother wild with jealousy. So wild that she insisted on Papa driving her to Limerick to see her grandchild.

In short, the Wilmot clan have become so obsessed with Mr T that we can barely concentrate on living our own lives. I can only hope the obsession lessens as the years go on: he’s very time-consuming.