Meet Theodore James McBride

Here is the first portrait photo of my new four-hour-old new grandson, Theodore James McBride.

Handsome little rascal, ain’t he? Except he's got my extra chin and except for the fact he’s sideways, maybe still not sure if out of his mama’s nice safe womb is where he wants to live after nine months at a different address. Granted it can be a rough place out here, but before long he’ll be glad he’s in the glorious light of the world.

Of course, that's Teddy’s beautiful mama Maggie adoring him. 

His dad is our son Todd, and trust me, Maggie’s much more photogenic. But there’s something I can't pass up about a great big man holding his own tiny newborn child. Lots of unspoken promises being transmitted from father to son.

Teddy doesn’t know it yet, but his granddaddy will soon be making a trip to the Menger, the grand old hotel next door to the Alamo. Robert E Lee stayed there for a night or two in 1861, and the Menger is where in 1898 another Theodore, last name Roosevelt, parked himself in the hotel bar and recruited a bunch of Texas cowboys into his army cavalry outfit, which he called the Rough Riders.

They are still serving cold brews in the dark wood paneled bar, and I may just buy one for everybody in the place to celebrate the arrival of little Teddy McBride, my newest grandson. Back in the mid-1800’s, Mr. Menger brewed his own beer to serve in his hotel bar, but that recipe is long gone. So, in honor of Teddy’s April birth—the same month Texas won its hard-fought independence from Mexico, I’ll bypass my favorite brew—Negro Modelo—and make it a round of Lone Star.

Teddy is the fifth grandchild for Nita and me. We are sort of surprised by the count, since neither of our sons indicated they might actually marry some pretty girl until they were into their 30’s. To our delight, once they sweet-talked those two lovely ladies to the altar, they didn’t hesitate in regards to making us grandparents. Now I’m glad I was always too embarrassed to have ‘that’ talk with either of them. They appear to have figured things out just fine. And we have Eva, Violet, Jackson, Rory, and now Teddy to pamper and spoil.

Mind you, we don’t want to be the parents of any of them. Two decades of those high-energy, chaotic days were ample. We remember too often hearing those magic words from a young voice as we were either putting the boys to bed or going out the door to school—“Oh, by the way…”  If you don’t connect with that, you are not yet a parent, or you have had a brain fart about your own years of parenting.

Teddy’s older brother Jackson is at our house today while Maggie and Todd smother their new one with love and happy tears. Jackson may be a stinker after dark around bedtime when he sorts out that his world also changed in a big way at 5:52 this morning. But that’s OK. We’ll get him through this first night of brotherhood.