The complaint.

I have something of a confession to make (except if I'm making it to no one, does it really count?).

ANM's family has more family pride than any other group of people I've ever met, including rabid team-supporting sports fans. They're fiercely loyal and solidly confident in their Nonniness. A good group of people to belong to, right? They are. Whenever his parents call, they say, "How is our son treating you?" They're funny and smart and I generally like them a whole dang lot.

The problem, though (and this is the part where I complain), is that their Nonny pride is exclusive. I know they don't mean it to be, but for just a second here, I choose not to be an adult and to vent on my anonymous blog. May I never be found out.

If truth be told, I am not a Nonny. This should be surprising to no one, since here in the good old U.S. of A. we don't usually marry our relatives. I can handle the exclusion as it relates to me. Ha ha, yes, the Nonnies are all great people in spite of the familial craziness. Oh, ha, yes, I, too, enjoy the legacy of Grandma Nonny's accent. Et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum.

I don't do so well with the exclusivity as it relates to my baby, however. Mentally, I get it. Baby Nonny does, after all, bear the Nonny name and he is the first grandchild to ANM's parents as well as mine. Examples:

• BN has a dimple. This may be the cutest and most unexpected thing about him, as neither I nor ANM nor anyone in our extended families has a dimple. Nonetheless, ANM's sister one night declared quite positively that the baby got the dimple from her. She smiled to prove it. Except she doesn't have a dimple.
• When ANM's mom came out to "help" after the baby was born, she assured me that BN has Norwegian lips. NORWEGIAN LIPS, I tell you. This is important because she is half Norwegian, ANM is a quarter Norwegian, and BN is an eighth Norwegian. If you can tell me what Norwegian lips are, I will be grateful.
• ANM's father insists that BN is bald. If he were bald, I would accept it graciously and move on. BN, for example, has a lopsided head. I am the first (second, actually, since ANM was the one to point it out) to admit this. But my baby is not bald. It bothers my FIL that I think this. It bothers me that he can look at the half-inch long blond hair covering his grandchild's head and declare baldness. This actually has nothing to do with being a Nonny, but it bothers me.
• BN's long fingers come from ANM (whose man hands are, hmmm, the same size as mine) and his toes (which are freakishly long and all the same size) are also Nonny toes, even though every Nonny I have ever met has normal looking toes.

You can see how this can go on and on.

So I understand that people like to pick babies apart and assign their characteristics to various relatives. But for some reason these comments just get under my skin--they're like boils. They just keep growing and growing and getting more and more tender and eventually they look like a minor mountain sprouting up from your arm and--I'm going to stop this metaphor now.

I guess it's that I have devoted my life for the past four months to this baby; I grew him in my body and still keep him nourished with myself. And yet every time the in-laws see him, all they see is their own puny (and oftentimes imagined) contribution.

It's plagiarism.