do they have a leather trim option?

Tonight I spent part of my evening at my sister-in-law's house, where all visitors must be free of communicable diseases and have undergone full-body sterilization by autoclave before entering. These stringent--and in some cases fake--measures are to ensure that my newest nephew maintains a low exposure rate to microbes of mass destruction. Apparently that's just one of the many worries one faces when dealing with a newborn, particularly with impatient newborns that decide to hit the "eject" button six weeks early, such as my nephew.

I was first able to hold the little sack of potatoes a little over a week after he was born. My major impressions of him from this evening are much the same as they were then:
1) Wow, he's really little! (Kind of like one of those new cell phones...)
and
2) He doesn't really have any cool features at all, does he? (...quite unlike those new cell phones.)

This second observation came as a great surprise to me. There are a good number of people in this country who seem to think that babies are pretty hot stuff. This is made obvious by the existence of shows like A Baby Story, which get good enough ratings that networks continue to produce them. Add to that the fact that people everywhere keep choosing to have babies, and the only logical conclusion is that babies must be even more awesomer than sun-shaped nipple decorations.

As it turns out, prematurely born babies are terrible at logic, and therefore do not understand just how awesome they're supposed to be. It's shocking, really, the number of cool things this kid DOESN'T do. The short list:

-Shooting lasers: That's right, nary a source of coherent light is to be found on the little grub. Other things that he doesn't shoot include, but are not limited to, magma, acid, and pancake batter. There is one thing that he shoots, but such subjects don't belong on a mature site such as this. (Hint: It begins with "P" and rhymes with "eepee")

-Sticking to walls: Sadly, the secrets to the success of Spiderman and rubber balloons have somehow evaded my nephew. I think we're all the worse for it.

-Decoding secret messages: It turns out that a baby who can't even decipher himself is a poor choice for a codebreaker. I was way off on that one.

-Low introductory APR: Apparently the premature ones come free, so you don't actually have to finance them.

-Deploying built-in dragchute: At least I'm pretty sure that's why my sister-in-law seemed so grumpy about the custom-made nephew launcher I suggested. Really, thought, the flying through the air part isn't a problem as long as the landing is taken care of. What? You know I'm right.

I could go on. I think some of these may be applicable to all babies, but I can't make that assertion with certainty at this point.

Though the lack of the above abilities is rather disappointing, my nephew does at least have one cool feature. Because of his premature status, he is attached to an apnea monitor while he sleeps. It's an unfortunate situation, but the upshot is that the instrument leads remain attached to him even when off the monitor, leaving long black and white wires dangling from him at all times. While he's not actually a battery-operated nephew, these wires give him the appearance of such. It's amusing to take the remote control for an RC car and imagine that you're using it to send commands to robo-baby. This isn't entertaining for long, as you pretty much have the option of pushing either the "cry" button or the "mess diaper" switch. It isn't a bad start though, and maybe more features will be added in future patches. For my part I think I'll wait to get one until the six-cylinder model comes out.