Ch-Ch-Changes

by CajunKate

So last weekend Alex and I drove over to Slidell to attend the very first dance recital of our niece (and godchild!) Hannah. It's hard to believe that she is already four years old. Seems like only yesterday she looked like this:



And now she looks like this:

Hannah is not the only thing that has changed over in Slidell. After Hurricane Katrina, Alex's parents' house looked like this:


And now (nearly three years later) it looks like this:


And while we were there, I got to see how much my Zandy has changed. Alex's mom busted out the home movies from Alex's childhood. That one DVD of home movies is pretty much all that remains as far as a record of Alex's childhood. They basically lost all the other family videos and pictures in a house fire a few years ago. I had never seen the video before, and I was overwhelmed with what a cute baby and kid my husband was. I coined the term Baby Zandy while watching it, as in "Baby Zandy is sooooo CUTE!" and "Oh my God, I just wanna eat up Baby Zandy, he's so CUTE!"

Then last night, Alex walked into the living room with a copy of the DVD that we, apparently, have had all along, I just never knew about it. When we watched the DVD at his parents', I was distracted by playing with Hannah, so I didn't notice that there were segments that Alex's mom had the Mottram boys narrate as she was transferring them from 8mm to VHS tape, and OH MY WORD! the hilarity of the parts narrated by Zandy when he was seven or eight years old. I was laughing so hard that I literally cried. During a birthday segment for Pete he calls him "stupid Peter," he sings out the action taking place like he's in a Broadway show, and he does lots of sound effects. As we were watching and listening (and I was dissolved in tears), Alex said, "S**t! I was annoying!" Which made me laugh even harder because he does totally sound like a poster child for ADD on that video. And it's the CUTEST thing I've ever heard.

Naturally, I immediately began planning to upload the video, which includes footage of him wearing the horrible stripes and plaids of classic 1970s couture and a bright orange pool floatie, to the blog. Knowing me far too well, a short while later, as I was still rhapsodizing about Baby Zandy, he looked at me and said, "DO NOT put that video on your blog. Absolutely, positively NO to putting any of that on the blog!" Awwww, man...party pooper!

But he only specifically said the video, so I present to you the one and only photograph I have of Baby Zandy. Actually he's not a baby, but since I have no actual baby pics of him due to the house fire, I have to consider this photo of him at six-years-old my Baby Zandy photo. That boy was hella cute! Take time to notice the thumbs up, which Alex said he did on purpose, mere milliseconds before the photo was snapped, as an homage to his obsession with the Fonz from Happy Days.


After the Baby Zandy bonanza, I climbed into bed later that night and told Alex, "Baby Zandy is so cute! In fact, I love Baby Zandy so much, it makes me want to check out fertility treatments. I want a Baby Zandy!" To which he replied, "That's it. I'm cutting you off. You have officially OD'd on Baby Zandy. That DVD's going into cold storage tomorrow."

So it looks like I'll have to be satisfied with this Zandy:
And that's okay... because, after all, he still is pretty cute.