Antarctica Meringue and Blitzen Manx are Proud to Announce . . .

Perhaps my new cousin looks somewhat like this baby.

My new cousin may, instead, look somewhat like this baby.

Along with my young cousins Blitzen Manx and Antarctica Meringue, I am proud to announce the addition of a new first cousin to my family. After delivering her first two babies via Caesarean section, the parents chose this time to allow the stork to deliver the baby to them. Aunt Cristelle and Uncle Mendel are not telling us where the stork found the little cherub, though they assure us that the process was legal. I could easily see Cristelle  slyly dislodging a suckling neonate from its mother's teat in some random marketplace in Zimbabwe, so I hope they're being truthful about the legality of the adoption. 

Most of the family will have to visit in order to see this female version of the Christ Child, which means she will remain a stranger to most of the family. Cristelle's  marginally-if-at-all-in-the-black, cheap, and lazy siblings, along with their spouses and spawn, would not spring for the cost of air fare even if they could, and my grandfather isn't about to subsidize anyone's travel for this purpose with his frequent flyer miles for the cause of his descendants visiting a baby of likely third-world origin, nor is my grandfather going to get off his lazy butt and use his frequent flyer miles to personally visit his new  grandchild. (Wait! Wasn't Jesus born technically under third-world conditions? Never mind. My grandfather  doesn't accept that as fact, either. He more likely thinks Jesus made his first appearance to this world in LDS Hospital in downtown Salt Lake City.)

His wife, the baby's grandmother, will travel to the Isle of Man to see the baby only because my parents are paying for her to make the trip with them. Any excitement on the part of the  baby's grandmother regarding the addition of this new baby to our family is modest to say the least, but my mom is convinced that at some point in the child's life, it might possibly make a difference in the mind of the child that her grandmother made the five-thousand mile trek just to see her when she was a brand-new baby. It's a bit of a fairy tale, but sometimes fairy tales are what children most want to hear. 

Fortunately for my brother and for me, Mendel and Cristelle understand just how inflexible our medical school schedules are, and they will charter a flight and travel to California so that we may meet the new baby in late June and spend time with her older siblings as well. Meanwhile, my parents, my Uncle Michael and Aunt Joanne, and my Uncle Steve and Aunt Heather will stagger their visits to the Isle of Man so that they might actually be a source of help rather than a burden to the young family. Cristelle is at least not recovering from surgery following this arrival, but there is always more work than would be expected in adding a newborn to a family regardless of how she arrived.  Any routine chores and paying of attention to older siblings frees up parents to bond with the new baby.

Considering that the siblings' names are Blitzen Manx and Antarctica Meringue, much speculation has taken place regarding the name for this baby. My grandfather couldn't care less and considers it a demon child. My grandmother would like for the baby girl to be named Eliza R. My mom would be happy as long as  the child were not named for Eva Peron or Grace Jones. my dad, even though he never calls Cristelle's children by their given names, seems to thrive on the bizarreness of them. My Uncle Steve just shakes his head. My uncle Michael's wife Aunt Joanne finds a different unusual baby name book to send to Cristelle each time a baby is forthcoming. The names in Aunt Joanne's books are idiosyncratic at the very least, but still, Cristelle and Mendel seem to out-weird even the most outlandish names in Aunt Joanne's books.

This baby's name, is -- if it isn't changed; Antarctica Meringue's's original name, which I no longer remember, didn't make it off the chopping block -- is to be Greenwich Marzipan Coriolis.  Coriolis isn't the baby's surname. She just gets an extra middle name.  

I can hardly wait to meet her.

I do not own this video. It is my hope that the owner of this video will graciously allow its inclusion in my welcome to my little cousin.