Don't call her pretty, ask her a question...

Yara was loving wearing her oversized-bead necklace she had made for herself. Which was all well and good until it was was bath time.

"Nooo!" (Yara)

No surprise, she didn't want to take off the necklace.

"Why don't you want to take it off?" (me)

I asked, ready for an exchange that I could predictably steer from "because I want to wear it in the bathtub" (Yara), to "well, if you do that, the colors on your beads will go away, do you want the colors of your beads to go away?" (me), to "no" (Yara), to "well then you can take off your necklace, take a bath, and put the necklace back on after you finish your bath" (me), "OK" (Yara).

Boy was I in for a surprise.

"Because it makes me pretty" was her answer.

Panic! My head was spinning. How could this be?? Ju and I never (well, almost never) use the P word, in fact we rarely use the C word (cute), or even the B word (beautiful), and especially not to Yara to qualify her appearance. My heart sank. She's only three and the world had already convinced her she needed to be pretty.

"Well you know, your necklace doesn't make you pretty. You're already beautiful just the way you are" I managed to blurt out.

In retrospect, I may have been slightly over-reacting. But, I started paying attention. While Yara receives praise for trying something new, for not giving up, for sharing, etc. in the shelter of our home and at her Montessori school, the moment she steps into the world out there, 9 times our of 10, the first thing she hears is "you're so pretty" or some variant of that. Btw, you can quote that 9/10 as an official stat because I counted for at least 3 days.


Then I read this blog about How to talk to girls. 15% of girls under 12 years in the U.S. now wear mascara, eyeliner and lipstick, and 25% of young American women would rather win America's Next Top Model than the Nobel Peace Prize. Yikes.

So next time you see a little girl, don't tell her she's pretty. Ask her what she's doing, where she's going, what she likes.

As for me, I'm busy brainwashing Yara with songs of gravity and friction.

37 months in!

Why don't I just plan on getting punched in the face?

When in Brazil…

Despite its reputation for vibrance and flamboyance, white is the default color for lounging in Brazil. Forgetting my overarching procurement rule-of-thumb for the past year and five months - i.e. can X withstand a a mini tornado (of cuteness) - and caught up in the bliss of landing in Sao Paulo on new years day, I bought myself a couple oh-so-slick white linen shirts.

Day 1 she squeezed what seemed like a litre of water melon juice on the first of those shirts - she was running around the garden attacking a massive slice of watermelon, and suddenly realized that it would be so much more fun if were sitting on her Pa's lap. 

Day 2 she pee'd on the second shirt - as she enjoyed her new found freedom hanging out naked in the hot southern sun, she did what anyone in a bind would do, jump into the nearest set of open arms. She quickly followed the pee stain up with an accidental swipe of the red crayon she was carrying around.

I had such big plans for those shirts, just I had so many big plans for so many things which sooner or later were rewritten by you-know-who. A couple years ago, I would have been annoyed, maybe even unhappy, if some outside force had gotten in the way of my plans. But now, I mostly enjoy the freedom of knowing that my plans' chances of materializing on any given day are slim-to-none.

Mike Tyson once said "everyone has a plan until you're punched in the face". It has indeed been one punch in the face after another. Like Mike's kind of punches, each one has left me breathless. But unlike Mike's, they've woken me up, brought me perspective, and slingshot me back into the present where a bundle of love was waiting for me with her own plan.

17 months in!

Do I need her to need me?

It was time for her to go to bed, and she was tired, making little grumpy sounds while covering her eyes with one hand (and using the other as a pacifier). But, just as she was about to drift off to baby dreamland, she would wake herself up. 

Repeat.

Repeat.

It had been a couple weeks since she needed me to help her fall asleep, but now it was time for Pa to make himself useful (early on, we figured out that being held by Ma was not especially effective in helping her fall asleep when she was tired but fighting it - given the proximity to all that yummy milk...). 

I remember those first few weeks, just the two us alone in the room, cradling her in my arms and holding her head close to my chest, hoping the sound of my heartbeat would somehow comfort her to sleep, singing three-little-birds on repeat in case the sound-of-heartbeat thing didn't work. baby don't worry, about a thing, cause every little thing is gonna be alright. Repeat. Repeat.

Sometimes, it took 10 minutes, sometimes it took an hour and 10 minutes, but every time she would fall asleep in my arms, I would feel a sense of accomplishment that I had never experienced before. 

As I held her in my arms tonight, listening to her whimpers grow quieter, feeling her bury her head into my chest, I felt at peace, fulfilled, complete.

And, I realized that I needed this as much as she did.

As that thought started to sink in, it dawned on me that someday soon, maybe in a week, or a month, or a year, she wouldn't need me to help her fall asleep anymore.

Panic.

23 weeks in!

Can dads ever have the stuff that moms are made of?

We were lucky.

Our daughter started to sleep through the night early on, in her crib. Waking up every couple hours to feed and put her back to sleep and starting the day like we'd pulled back-to-back-to-back all nighters was a fading memory, lost somewhere in the blur of those first few sleep deprived months.

Then last month, we were hit by the most perfect of storms on our baby voyage.

Our daughter started going through another developmental spurt. Among other things, this meant she was learning how to categorize - I'm quite sure she has me pegged in the i-can-make-you-pick-things-up category. It also meant she was experiencing a major shift in how she perceived the world around her, which would be incredibly confusing for anyone and meant that she needed to be close to us and held by us, all the time. 

At the same time, we realized that she was allergic to dairy, and had to switch her infant formula (which we had introduced at 6 months to complement breastmilk) to some awful smelling-tasting non dairy version which she rightly insisted was totally unacceptable - which then meant she didn't get a full feed before going to bed, and needed to eat several times before morning came. And, as if that wasn't enough, she fell sick, with a fever that lasted a couple days and a cold that lasted a week.

She was back in bed with us, waking up every couple hours needing food and love, sleeping restlessly in between, and murmuring and rolling around enough to keep us from getting more than 30 mins of sleep at a stretch. A few days of that routine, and I fell sick, maybe with the same bug she had, maybe just beaten down by exhaustion. I slept on the couch, and my wife soldiered on for marathon night after marathon night, feeding, holding, comforting and loving our daughter as she slowly gained back her health and confidence.

At 6 am one morning as I grumbled awake, I could hear my wife speaking to our daughter ever so softly, in the same gentle voice I had heard in the distance throughout the night. I was still feeling tired, at my wits end, and I'm ashamed to say, annoyed at the little creature whom I love so much. And I hadn't even been in the same bed for the past three nights. My wife had, and as I heard the bedroom door open and watched her walk toward me, her slow, almost forced movements gave away the exhaustion I know she felt. But as she gazed up from the bundle she was holding close to her chest, what I saw was not exhaustion, or frustration, or even annoyance. 

I saw kindness, the kind that doesn't fade with fatigue. I saw love, a love that can keep expanding until the universe is filled with it. I saw a mother, so tired she could barely keep her eyes open but determined to keep her child safe and healthy no matter what.

As I quickly got over my self pity, I couldn't help but question my own capacity for such unrelenting love, and I couldn't help but wonder, can dads ever have the stuff that moms are made of?

Happy Mother's Day.

9 months in!

Can I be proud of my 22 inches?

“Wow” exclaimed the nursed as she looked down. My little baby girl was 22 inches tall, well 21.5 inches actually but let’s round up, “isn’t she a tall one”!

She seemed pretty short to me, but I couldn’t help myself so I looked up just how tall 21.5 inches was. Turns out the cutie is between the 80^th and 90^th percentile! She’s winning already!

Now I know that the early childhood development experts all say that praise should be given for effort, and gloating over how smart your child is (or how tall she is or any other “fixed” state that she “is”) can be unhealthy. Actually, I think I’ve seen it described as “toxic” by one particularly grumpy researcher. But I just couldn’t help myself, I went straight over to little long luscious creature and blurted out, “[coo coo], aren’t you so tall, [coo coo], well done”!

Seriously, “well done”?? Of course it made no sense, and yet, I felt such a deep seated pride. I feel like I just joined that super annoying club of overly-proud over-sharer parents, but I’m not afraid to own it.

And I can’t wait to tell my daddy buddies!

P.S. height seems to be strongly correlated with frequency of feeds, especially overnight feeds...

19 days in!

What could I possibly learn in ninety minutes?

10:30am Sunday morning, not this week

Woke up an hour and a half ago

Enjoyed some delicious cuddles

Skimmed the NYTimes…Obama…Romney…blah blah…China…Europe…blah blah

Read a chapter of Here Comes Everybody…crowdsourcing…mobile-social…blah blah

Started to sketch out a powerpoint deck…white-space…blah blah

Interrupted deck sketching to discuss the most important issue of the day…

Where should we have brunch? Let’s go check out a new spot!

10:30am Sunday morning, this week

“Wake up” time has lost meaning, but we could go with 2am, 5am or 8am.

2am wake-cuddle-feed-burp-change-feed-swaddle-sleep cycle was rough. She had a tummy ache and nothing we tried seemed to console her. I think I felt my heart break every time she looked up at us, pleading for us to make it go away. She finally fell back asleep an hour and a half later, maybe because so much crying eventually tired out her little lungs, or maybe because just being held by mom eventually soothed her pain.

5am change was a little messy. Learned to swap out the changing mat from under her in the middle of the daiper change. Nobody told me that would be a required daddy skill or I might have practiced.

8am wake-cuddle-feed-burp-change-swaddle-sleep cycle ended with her lying on my chest, skin to skin, drifting gently in and out of sleep. Her needs were so basic, share the warmth of a body and hear the beating of a heart.

The next ninety minutes felt like an eternity, a place between thoughts, a time between days. I felt like my heart grew with every little breath she took, and I felt like maybe, just maybe, I had learned to accept unconditional love.

11 days in!

Am I having an identity crisis?

It’s been the most amplified four days of my life.

I used to think I was fearless. Then I watched my wife endure twenty one hours of contractions and fight her way through an hour and a half of pushing to bring our little baby into the world. To say I was “afraid” during labor would be like saying I was “happy” after delivery. Imagining the multitude of birth related complications that might arise and endanger my wife’s health, all of which were theoretically possible but statistically improbable, I was terrified. I experienced fear, true fear, for the first time in as long as I can remember.

I used to think I was graceful under pressure, level-headed and resourceful when sh*t hit the fan. That fantasy lies in a million little pieces on the floor of the hospital recovery room. The helplessness I felt that first night with our baby girl, not being able to console her as she seemed to struggle with her little breaths, was so foreign yet so intense. In the minutes before the nurse on-call arrived, I glimpsed a sense of helplessness so deeply that it felt molecular.

I used to think I was content, at least as content as a restless soul could hope to be. Then I experienced my first skin to skin contact with my baby girl, thirty six hours into her young life. I found a serenity that I could not have imagined possible. I wonder if Siddhartha would have left his newborn in search of enlightenment had he experienced the bliss of connecting with something (and someone) so pure.

I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror this morning while shaving, it was the first time I had seen myself in four days. I could barely recognize the person looking back at me. His confidence had been shaken, his sense of perspective toppled, his grounding uprooted, his history rephrased, his future recast.

And yet, it didn’t feel like a crisis. It felt more like an evolution. It felt awesome.

4 days in!