London Wesley Stewart Lamb Barker

• 1 Cadillac 'rita - Mission

London took us by surprise when he was born a boy. I was convinced that London was going to be a girl; I'm not sure why...maybe I convinced myself that was just the way it was going to be. I had put a lot of thought into how I would raise a girl. I even had the perfect name - London Yvonne Helvetica Lamb Barker. I wanted to raise her in a non-typical girl way (whatever that means.) I was hesitant to have a boy because, well, when I think of boys, I think mostly of sports. And I'm not really a sports person, nor what I would even consider a very masculine role model. I was afraid that my boy wouldn't have a solid sports/male role model to look up to. Isn't that what fathers and sons do? They play catch, watch football, grunt at each other, wrestle til they're sore and plan their next few months according to the weekend sports schedule?

I'm just not this type of guy. I do enjoy individual sports: rollerblading, biking, running and the occasional game of tetherball (but only if I'm taller and more experienced than the other tetherballer.), but organized team sports I never really got in to. Sure I'll watch games now and then and sometimes I can watch a sport, say football, and think it's the best game ever invented. And basketball, how exciting to watch the slam dunks and the steals. Soccer? Great stuff. But when it comes down to it, there are so many other things that I'd rather do with my 2-4 hours that it would take to watch a game. I never understood how (mostly) men can get so into sports; like, turn-red-in-the-face-with-anger or I'm-on-a-World-Series-high-because-my-team-just-won into it. There's a passion in them that I just don't have.

And that's why I was afraid to have a boy.

Susan reminded me a little while after London was born, that I have so much more to offer him, however. "Your mom raised you to do things that boys don't typically learn, and you can do the same for London." So what can I pass on to London? I can teach him the difference between a tablespoon (T) and a teaspoon (t); or why baking powder and baking soda are different, but both important; or how to do his own laundry; or plant dahlias; or sew a button; or to put the forks on the left; or to read aloud to his own children; or that wine makes girls googly. These are somewhat inconsequential things, as are sports, but I believe now that God gave me a boy for a reason, and I think that Yvonne Patricia Stewart would be proud of the things that I'll be able to pass on to London.