Some of you may already know that last year as a grad student I made a short documentary about stay-at-home dads in San Francisco called Why Not Dad? Well, in addition to having a baby and trying to be the best mom to her as I can I’ve also been submitting the film to film festivals all over the world. One of those is an online film festival where YOU the audience get to watch the films and vote on your favorite film to win. The last few days of voting are upon us and I’m counting on all of you to help my film win!

Please take a minute (or 13 to be exact) to watch the movie and then come back to this page to vote! The link for voting is at the end of this post. Since this competition will be won only by a HUGE show of support from online viewers like you, please take a moment to let all your family and friends know about the movie and the voting too!

Thanks for all your support and I hope you enjoy the film! These stay-at-home dads ROCK!

VOTE FOR WHY NOT DAD? NOW!

I feel like I should be using this blog to detail the innumerable little accomplishments Gianna seems to complete daily but when I begin to write about those milestones it all just seems so dull in comparison to watching them evolve in person. So, I’ve left this post blank for many weeks now all with the hope that I would someday find the words to make these tiny miracles of a growing life seem somehow less ordinary when in fact that is exactly what they are, ordinary. Children the whole world over, poor or rich, watching Baby Einstein or playing with sticks in mud for lack of other toys, if given the proper nourishment of body will all tackle and surmount the daunting tasks of rolling over, sitting up, crawling and then walking. There is not much a parent can do in any part of the world to hold a child back from doing these things eventually. And even though we know these milestones are inevitable, a progression of time we cannot slow down or speed up, when we watch them occurring gently, easily, one fraction of carpeted ground first scratched at then trampled upon first by exploring fists then by exploring feet, it all seems too awesome to put into words. The ordinary becomes the profane, the greatest expression of life’s quenchless thirst to keep moving, to keep growing, keep tackling new heights. It never really ends, the achievement of these milestones. They just stop getting recorded, become so nuanced you cannot tell where the progression of one ends and the next stage begins. So that even in adulthood as we become proficient at new things, parenthood being one of them, we forget to mark it down on our own growth chart, so natural has the growth process become to us.

So, in a little effort to keep up with the growing litany of Gianna’s “firsts” here is a running list of all she now knows how to do and the tasks she is beginning to master:

1. She sits up by herself, unaided.

2. She eats solid food (a feat of tongue olympics requiring a reversal of her birth reflexes which allow for nursing).

3. She has learned how to get out of a sitting position and onto the floor on her stomach.

4. She knows how to get up on all fours, rock back and forth, and make crawling motions with her legs (the arms I’m sure will come any day now and I’ll never have peace again!).

5. She can pivot in a circle using an army crawl/leg kick combination.

6. She uses her voice to whine and whimper when she is not getting what she wants.

7. She can anticipate hidden objects. If I hide behind her back with her facing a mirror, she knows to look behind her to find me.

8. Her manual dexterity is amazing now. She can crudely use a pincer grasp (the thumb and forefinger) to locate the collar on her shirt, grab paper and reach for Miko’s ears.

9. She can twirl her wrist to the tune of Les Petites Marionettes and is practicing the opening and closing of her palm to wave hello and goodbye.

10. And here is the one that makes me most proud, she shows sympathy towards other children in distress. She whimpers and pleadingly looks from the child who has caught her attention with her cries of hunger or discomfort to her mommy and flaps her hands at her side while her eyes well up with tears and her bottom lip pouts outward, all to vanish when I quickly assure her she is not experiencing that other child’s discomfort as her own. I love her humanitarian spirit though it pains me a little to see her get so physically upset by another child’s distress, convinced as she is that she is also feeling those things.

Gianna never was a cuddly newborn. She would grimace and squirm whenever an adult pressed the issue and went in for a little kiss on the cheek. She insisted on being held facing out to the world rather than the usual cradle hold those kindly nurses teach you to use at the hospital. For great stretches of her waking hours I was convinced she had no idea what her own mother looked like because when I handed her off to Benoit and she finally faced me I swore I saw a look of surprise each night, like “Hey, that’s who was holding me all day long!” You can just imagine in my post-partum depressed state of mind the kind of thoughts that were traipsing through my muddled brain because of her lack of cuddle needs. I figured I had just brought to life a toddler, already screaming, “No!” and other self-asserting, individualistic phrases at me in her pre-vocal, infantile ways.

But, there was nothing to be done about it. Gianna would not have it any other way. So, I thanked the universe for bestowing upon my body two heavily engorged milk producing vessels all the better to force my child to cuddle with me! And even then, we fought and struggled each feeding time so that my only nurturing moments spent skin to skin were also clearly demarcated to me so that I knew she was only getting this close in order to put more of those cute fat rolls on her hide and nothing more. I was clearly the milk truck, bringing food at her behest and only because of the unfortunate design of my human body did she assume the requisite cradle position. And, I was content with our little dance. I knew she only wanted milk but I was taking my cuddles from her anyway, sneaky mom that I am.

So, when last week she suddenly became scared of strangers or even people she knows who approach too quickly or don’t squeak at her with the preferred high-pitched mom-like voice, and clung to me with all her might, burying her face and body into my armpit and attempting to hide as much of her 17lb. self as possible in doing so, I literally cried. I admit it. This is by far my most favorite of all her milestones to date. Rolling over and babbling and eating solids are all over-rated. Stranger anxiety is my new best friend! Ha! Mother nature has finally given me a chance to have some petits calins as the French say. Now, anytime I want a cuddle I can just take her and show her the world full of strange people she has never met! The grocery store is a wonderland of such cuddle time. And I am a contented mother to at last have a baby who wants dearly to be held in my arms each day, FACING me, looking into my eyes and heart as if to say, “See, I knew it was you holding me the whole time.”

Aaaah. Life is good.

A few days late, I’m more like the proverbial man forgetting my anniversary date, but I made up for it with a thoughtful, sappy card which is not at all man-like.

So, Chrissie and Eric watched Gianna for us while we got gussied up and took ourselves to the best French restaurant in town. Poor Benoit. Anytime there is a special occasion and we’re in need of a fancy restaurant the only choices are usually restaurants serving food he’s grown up with at the family dinner table! I can only imagine how he feels forking over $150 for a dinner his mom could have made. But, he does it and never grumbles. That is true love!

We’ve managed 2 years of matrimonial bliss as of July 13th and 6 years as a couple. It doesn’t feel like that much time has passed which is probably a good thing since we’re counting on at least 50 more years. It’s just darn lucky that we don’t have to face dirty diapers and colic for all those years too. Here’s a tidbit statistic for your daily learning exercise: 52% of all divorces will occur before a couple reaches their 15th wedding anniversary. Yikes! So, let me do the math…that’s 2 years down, 13 more to go before we can hurdle this scary statistic. But, I have no doubt that 15 years will go by in a heartbeat. The last two have, and for that matter, the last six have too!

Je t’aime mon amour!