A “Fatty Bom Bom” Story
It was February 2017 — we had just moved into our house after months of looking and were frenetically putting together all the pieces that make it a home before Noah arrived. There were multiple trips to Ikea & Bunnings. I had told myself that when I finally owned a house I would be rid of assembling flat-packed furniture, but there I was, a 32 year old man with my trusty allen key from my university days, wrestling with plywood planes that were meant to be cabinets and shelves. The reality of debt & interest rates scared the crap out of me so it wasn’t quite the time for forever furniture. I also remember jokingly telling Krystin that I was thankful our first child was going to be a boy - that way there was less cute clothing to get into more debt on.
February came & went, we waited on the edge of our seats, but Noah never arrived. I had taken the month off to welcome him so besides being a furniture assembly man, I was cooking non-stop to curb Krystin’s pregnancy hunger pangs. We guessed that Noah would be a big baby based on Krystin’s ferocious appetite & the size of her bump, so we called him “fatty bom bom” while he was still inside. To give you an idea of how big Krystin’s bump was — strangers would come up to us in the street and ask if we were having twins (or incredulously tell us we probably were when we laughed and said no).
Krystin’s dad used to call her “fatty bom bom” in an endearing way when she was little because she was a chubby baby, and the nickname stuck til her teens (though she was actually a stick).
So this is a mini project of mine, called “Fatty Bom Bom”. A series of photographs of our meals while we waited & waited. A reminder of the time that we bought a house with money we didn’t have, a time where I cooked non stop to feed 3 stomachs; the original fatty bom bom and the one we had created, a time when we were just called Krystin & Jonathan and not yet Mummy & Daddy.
When he did finally grace us with his presence, 10 days after his due date, Noah didn’t disappoint: he came out a whopping 3.97kg, above the 90th percentile. I guess that’s where all the food went.
PS: Krystin wants me to say that her face is not that fat in real (non-pregnant) life.
