tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57175700634769126142024-03-13T19:18:20.106-04:00Gaddy DaddyCONFESSIONS OF A STAY-AT-HOME GAY DADDYJacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.comBlogger53125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-81311531152023525372011-08-24T15:11:00.000-04:002011-08-24T15:11:52.532-04:00The Down and Dirty on Diapering<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><em>This is a guest post from Stewart, aka "Papa":</em></strong><br />
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<strong>Earlier this summer, I happened to catch an interview on sports radio of New York Jets running back Shonn Greene. At the time of the interview, the NFL lock-out was still in place, so Greene wasn’t permitted to work-out with the team in preparation for the upcoming season. He was on the radio instead to promote a big barbeque being held in the city for first-time fathers, sponsored by Pampers, that Greene and some other local celebrities were hosting. He mentioned that he is a first-time father himself, with a 7 month old son at home. Given the NFL lock-out situation, the radio interviewer jovially asked Greene whether or not, with all of his unexpected free time, he was keeping busy by changing his son’s Pampers. Greene laughed and said essentially “all but the poopy ones” -- which he left to his wife. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong><strong>Jacob pointed out to me that this was a rather curious response for a man promoting a Pampers event to give -- “Pampers – best left to your wife!” -- and likely not the message the execs at the diaper company were striving for in pushing their brand on new dads. But I was more chagrined by the fact that he is skipping out on one of quintessential experiences of parenting a baby. That’s right, my entirely unsolicited advice for the Jets running back is this: You’re missing out! Change some poopy diapers! </strong><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Now we know why Shonn Greene wears gloves</td></tr>
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<strong></strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>I have been an uncle for approximately 10 years now, and throughout the first few years of each of my niece and nephews’ lives, whenever I saw them I was encouraged by family to change their dirty diapers. My family told me that far from them pushing on me a thankless job, they were actually doing me a favor -- taking on this role would afford me the enviable opportunity to embarrass my niece and nephews for time immemorial with the classic retort to any of their later flack: “I used to change your diapers!” While that was all well and good, I remained suspicious that the real motivation of their pep talk was simply to get out of changing a diaper. Now that I am a parent myself, I am sure of it. I must admit that there have been times when we’ve had guests over to see Max, and he decides to drop a little present into his diaper, that I’ve been tempted to continue the family tradition of “re-gifting” that present for our friends to handle. </strong></div><br />
<strong>So, armed with my suspicions, I never did change my niece and nephews diapers. After all, one of the great perks of being an uncle or aunt is that you get to spoil your nieces and nephews as much as you want. You become their favorite, and the second an inconvenient or undesirable parenting moment arises -- like a full diaper -- you get to hand those smelly little tykes back to mommy or daddy.</strong> <br />
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</strong></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijfZ89lMsPgyReEBZu3GMkAOM9kdO4CjOxyTZW9kSk-sLvMoC7HuR_mVfKzmeH8z_tIkGmyL87bGVnJUz2NOH-eQtbcLgkXXNi_z2wywL5yrpyDqFa0wx7ymfvYX0XtzXKnlQyQ8fVPA0M/s1600/mban2030l.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320px" qaa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijfZ89lMsPgyReEBZu3GMkAOM9kdO4CjOxyTZW9kSk-sLvMoC7HuR_mVfKzmeH8z_tIkGmyL87bGVnJUz2NOH-eQtbcLgkXXNi_z2wywL5yrpyDqFa0wx7ymfvYX0XtzXKnlQyQ8fVPA0M/s320/mban2030l.jpg" width="280px" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong></strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>There was one exception. About two and a half years ago, I was asked to babysit my then two year old nephew Luke for an evening -- alone. Before leaving, his mother rattled off Luke’s nighttime routine, which included, if necessary, changing his diaper before bed. I just kept nodding: “oh yes, of course of course.” Well, when that fateful bedtime hour hit and it was time for Luke to get into his PJs, I realized I had no idea how to know if this change in ensemble required a diaper change. Or, more importantly, how to perform it. At this point Jacob and I knew that parenthood was in our future, so I decided I better go for it, before poor future Max became my guinea pig. Of course changing an active 2 year old is a little different from changing a sleepy, sedentary newborn. I ended up changing Luke in the bathroom while he was standing up and chattering away about whatever he was into at the time (trains, most likely, but I was too focused on the daunting task at hand to listen properly). It turns out that changing a child while he or she is standing up is a fairly unorthodox and advanced diapering technique, and I was way out of my league. And, wouldn’t you know it, his original diaper was dry and didn’t need changing after all. Too late. Thankfully, Luke didn’t seem to mind my fumblings with the tabs of his new diaper, or puzzlement over which was the front end and which was the back, or the sad, droopy end result that he wound up wearing under his PJs as a result of my ineptitude. But, while I was nervous all the next day that I would get a phone call from his mother about the plastic trainwreck I had patched around her son’s butt, the call never came and I breathed a sigh of relief. I had done it! </strong><br />
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</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>With Max in my life, I must have changed a thousand diapers by now -- of every degree of wetness and of every shade and consistency of poop. I’ve changed a poop in the men’s room of a highway rest stop in the middle of nowhere while feeling the collective stares of the truck drivers passing through as I sang “twinkle twinkle little star” to Max to keep him calm enough for me to finish the job. I’ve changed a poop in an airplane bathroom that had no changing table and was so small I could barely bend down to maneuver. I’ve changed a poop while wrestling Max on my lap while sitting on the toilet of a public restroom because the sink was too small and the floor was wet. And I’ve ventured into the women’s restroom to get the job done, stressing all the while over the reaction I might get from the ladies who could walk in at any moment. And as long-time readers of the blog know, Jacob has had his own diapering misadventures with Max, as chronicled in this <a href="http://gaddydaddy.blogspot.com/2010/08/some-well-intentioned-advice-redux.html">early post</a>, as well as <a href="http://gaddydaddy.blogspot.com/2010/11/pumpkin-pie-and-humble-pie.html">this one</a>.</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Getting down to business</td></tr>
</tbody></table></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>I know that I am far from alone in these experiences, and I’d love to read in the comments about your own diapering fiascos. But how are these experiences an endorsement for being an active participant in cleaning your child’s diaper messes? Put simply: it’s character building. It is not an exaggeration to say that in these small, trying moments of parenthood I’ve felt a particular closeness with Max, perhaps resulting from an intimate embarrassment shared and survived. I’ve also felt a palpable sense of accomplishment in carrying Max out of a restroom and back into the world looking perfectly clean and content, and me acting perfectly nonplussed, when in reality the past five minutes of changing his dirty diaper felt like fifty, with neither of us having any desire to re-live a single one of them. So Shonn Greene may think he’s making out by leaving the dirty diapers to his wife, but I strongly disagree. You may sacrifice a little of your dignity in the process of changing them, but it grows back stronger – like breaking down muscles in the gym in order to pump them up. Surely a pro football player like Shonn Greene can appreciate the value in that.</strong></div></div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-73922798486730210262011-08-15T15:51:00.000-04:002011-08-15T15:51:30.455-04:00A Prophecy Fulfilled<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Earlier this month I celebrated a milestone birthday: I turned 38. I realize that most of you probably think that I’m two years early in making this proclamation, but let me explain why the age 38 has such significance to me. I mentioned in a </strong><a href="http://gaddydaddy.blogspot.com/2011/03/our-ten-year-journey-to-ten-months.html"><strong>post</strong></a><strong> I wrote last March about the 10 year anniversary of my first date with Stewart that ever since I came out as gay at age 22, I envisioned for my future not only a kid in my life, but even the exact age I wanted to be when the kid was born: age 38. Because I felt like a late bloomer at the time, I rationalized that the intervening years would give me enough time to mature and get my shit together, which included plenty of time to experience being a single guy, and then plenty of time after that to find Mr. Right and settle down in a serious relationship. I knew I would need that stability and security before I could ever tackle parenting. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong></strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Still, picking age 38 to have a kid instead of, say, age 35 or 40, still sounds pretty arbitrary. But actually -- and perhaps this was purely subconscious -- the age 38 has numerical significance for me. Thirty-eight years old is the mid-point age between when my dad had his first child (at age 30) and when my dad had his fifth and last child, me (at age 46). At age 22, I knew that I would not even be close to being ready to have a child by 30. My goal for 30 was to be in a serious relationship, hopefully, or at least to have had a meaningful relationship by that point. On the other hand, I knew that I didn’t want to wait to start having kids until I was 46. While I am very lucky that my dad always had lot of energy raising me and is still spritely for his age, I can’t count on those wonderful genetic qualities being passed along to me. </strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Over the years after I came out, my age-specific goals somehow never left my mind. First I met my goal of being in a serious relationship by age 30, having started dating Stewart a few years earlier. By the time I was 35, Stewart and I knew that we wanted to start a family together, and my target age of 38 was looking good. But I decided that it made no sense to wait to try to get the age perfect, for several reasons. First, although I had reached a comfortable place in my life, I realized that even so there was never going to be a day that I would simply wake up and say: “Now I am ready to have a kid!” I don’t think anyone ever feels completely ready for such a major life change. So I thought Stewart and I should just take the bull by the horns and go for it instead of letting my goal of age 38 turn into an excuse to put off such an intimidating undertaking. Second, as I have discussed </strong><a href="http://gaddydaddy.blogspot.com/2010/08/apple-of-our-eye.html"><strong>before</strong></a><strong>, having a child through surrogacy involves a lot of factors, and you can’t pinpoint how long it is going to take before you are successful. We were very lucky to find the surrogate of our dreams almost right off the bat, and that she was as motivated as we were to get the process going and to get pregnant. So while Max arrived during my 36th year on this planet, becoming parents could have easily taken until I was 38, even starting the process as early as we did (see my </strong><a href="http://gaddydaddy.blogspot.com/2011/08/star-is-born.html"><strong>last post</strong></a><strong> about how surrogacy can take years for some couples).</strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>There have been many birthdays past where I have lamented to myself: “Oh my god, I am now such and such an age and look where I’m at in life. I haven’t achieved x, y or z yet,” perhaps in relation to my career or something else. But now at age 38 I look around and I can’t believe the wonderful place my life has taken me. I am a stay-at-home dad, married to an amazing husband, and we are raising an amazing 15 month old son. Also, we have such a great support system from our families and friends. Despite the proclamation I made at 22 years of age about my life goals, in my wildest dreams I did not dare to imagine that I would be sitting where I’m sitting now. I’m more than lucky.</strong></div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-30387433497780377072011-08-05T17:13:00.000-04:002011-08-05T17:13:33.399-04:00A Star is Born<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Following up my previous post, last week Stewart and I spoke to prospective dads at the city’s LGBT Center about traditional surrogacy, just as we did in 2010. The meeting had an excellent turnout – doubling last year’s total – which is particularly impressive given that it took place in July when a lot of people are away. I’d like to attribute this bump-up to more people being open to traditional surrogacy, but it’s more likely due to the increasing popularity of surrogacy in general amongst gay couples in town. Now that we all can officially get married, pleas from our parents for grandkids inevitably follow! </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong><strong>As much as I’d like to report that Stewart and I were the stars of the meeting, that distinction must go to our traveling companion: Max. While bringing him allowed us to both attend, while avoiding the hassle and cost of a babysitter, our main reason for having Max attend was not for our own sake, but for the sake of the other members of the group. We wanted to show them that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. </strong><strong><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>As many of you know, Stewart and I were very fortunate when it came to our surrogacy journey. We matched with our surrogate, Christie, a little over a month after we first posted our ad on the Surromoms Online website, began the fertility process a few months after that, and Max was born less than a year later. Believe me, this is a very quick journey to parenthood compared to most of the guys in our group. Sadly, there are couples who attend the meetings who we first met when we began attending them in early 2009 who are still trying to conceive a child through surrogacy. It is only natural for these couples to feel some frustration and despondency at the long wait for their time to come. Perhaps the child that they thought would be right around the corner has turned into a hazy abstraction for them, leading them to wonder if the long slog to parenthood is even worth it. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong><strong>We brought Max to the meeting to remind them of why they have invested so much time, effort, money and heart into the surrogacy process. As they could see embodied in our Max, wobbling in front of them at the start and end of the meeting, there is a wonderful living, breathing, adorable, playful, maddening child in their future that is worth all of the struggles they have faced in their quest for parenthood. The best part for us: we could even see it in their faces as Max fearlessly worked the room with his chirps and babbles, stumblings and bumblings, and his big smiles when the group was forced to concede to him that he was, indeed, the star of the show. Not bad for a kid who can’t even talk yet!</strong></div></div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-13060422149954803602011-07-27T17:59:00.000-04:002011-07-27T17:59:15.830-04:00Tonight's Message: Be Open to Openness<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>This evening Stewart and I have been invited back to discuss our surrogacy experience at the <a href="http://www.gaycenter.org/">Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center’s</a> monthly <a href="http://www.menhavingbabies.org/planning-biological-parenthood-gay-men.html">“Planning Biological Parenthood for Men”</a> meeting. We attended these meetings in the months leading up to, and during, our surrogate’s pregnancy with Max, and learned an amazing amount about the surrogacy process from those who had been through it. Once Max was born, we were asked to return to the group, this time as the speakers instead of as the listeners. I blogged about that meeting <a href="http://gaddydaddy.blogspot.com/2010/08/early-crisis.html">here</a>. I can’t believe that it has been almost a year since we first spoke to the group. So much has transpired!</strong><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>As some of you might recall from that post, when we were asked to talk to the group last year I was very concerned about what Max was going to wear. We were introducing Max to a room full of very discerning gay men, so I wanted Max to wear a hip outfit; but, at the same time they were the wannabe dad kind of gay men, so I didn’t want Max to look too hip. In short, it was complicated! A year later, though, the only criteria I have for his outfit is that it be clean and have minimal stains. Actually, that’s not as easy as it sounds since we’re talking about a 14 month old here!</strong><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>On a more serious note, Stewart and I are thrilled to have the opportunity again to discuss our experiences because we are big advocates of the method we chose to create our family: independent traditional surrogacy. Plus, our enthusiasm for this choice has grown even greater over the past year due to the amazing relationship we’ve maintained with our surrogate, Christie, and her family, as well as the other family that Christie conceived and carried a child for via traditional surrogacy (a beautiful little girl named Georgia who you can read more about <a href="http://gaddydaddy.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-mothers-are-made.html">here</a>). Last year we could only tell the group about the type of relationships that we hoped to keep with these families. This year we can tell them about our actual experiences, which I think is the best evidence possible for why couples looking to start a family via surrogacy should at least seriously consider taking the independent, traditional route.</strong><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Stewart and I pursued independent traditional surrogacy (where the surrogate is both the egg donor and carrier, who you find yourself) rather than gestational surrogacy (where you find a separate egg donor and carrier through a process usually arranged via a professional agency) for several reasons. We wanted to conceive with as few people involved as possible, to make an already complicated method of creating a family as uncomplicated as possible. We also wanted to develop a natural relationship with Max’s biological mother -- as opposed to choosing her from donor stat sheets -- and really get to know her. And it was important to us that Max not only know the identity of his surro-mom, but also that he grow up knowing her as a person. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjOVcK9uo3R2NFtk-Gf2GUhmgpZcj57aLt75ZDJBFbKyXXwoA_3auT4IxvLgUpgcAUJ_dl3SiNnapdJ1v2UZ4QedaFLXS8qN_ZIALib4yyHozNvJmn4BlYCsw6eMLsHQMrQj00YC-Dt8K2/s1600/IMG_1885.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjOVcK9uo3R2NFtk-Gf2GUhmgpZcj57aLt75ZDJBFbKyXXwoA_3auT4IxvLgUpgcAUJ_dl3SiNnapdJ1v2UZ4QedaFLXS8qN_ZIALib4yyHozNvJmn4BlYCsw6eMLsHQMrQj00YC-Dt8K2/s320/IMG_1885.jpg" t$="true" width="320px" /></a></td></tr>
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</tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Call me a crazy pessimist, but I believe that no matter how you raised, or raise, your kids, they are going to be angry at you for something. For Max, I much prefer that anger to be about mundane things like why he isn’t allowed to ride his bicycle without a helmet than about something as deeply felt and personal as his identity. Besides, Max should know the woman who has given our family the tremendous gift of its very being. So one of the main reasons we matched with Christie is because she was on the same page as us in this important regard. But while we all agreed on open, ongoing contact, we left unanswered what that meant. I don’t think any of us were really sure. We choose instead to let our new lives -- with Max suddenly a part of them -- tell us organically what felt right. </strong><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong>A while back Christie wrote a moving <a href="http://gaddydaddy.blogspot.com/2010/11/tie-that-binds.html">guest post</a> about her experience as our surrogate, and in that post she described our relationship as an extended family. That truly is the best way to describe it, and is a term that not only describes the relationship that we have with her and her family, but also the one that we have with Georgia and her parents as well. Since Max was born, we have seen Christie and her family multiple times in multiple locales, including most recently on a beach vacation to Florida that also included Georgia’s family. Seeing the kids all together, happily playing, alone made it a wonderful trip. </strong></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIE5KpkTggaLQfLXT2d1sleVFLLRbhn_fHfYvz7PLOc2EpmnMzGqz4PFI2IKiLoYDyHKUE-zAIIQkkGM5L4CE4i8An-XxQzXijck0PqVEKnUs2t6H2ijpbNvz47YYc6TWCs7WcdN7bt_52/s1600/IMG_1880.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIE5KpkTggaLQfLXT2d1sleVFLLRbhn_fHfYvz7PLOc2EpmnMzGqz4PFI2IKiLoYDyHKUE-zAIIQkkGM5L4CE4i8An-XxQzXijck0PqVEKnUs2t6H2ijpbNvz47YYc6TWCs7WcdN7bt_52/s320/IMG_1880.jpg" t$="true" width="240px" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">with half-sis Georgia</td></tr>
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<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: justify;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong>And that is what strikes me most about our relationship with Christie and her family -- not the number of times that we have seen them, but that we are part of each other’s lives in such a natural, unforced way. During our regular workaday lives apart, if anyone in our families does something fun or interesting, we don’t hesitate to email or text each other about it on the spot, and maybe snap a photo to go along with it. And when we hang out together, we are all equally happy running around town with the kids or just sitting on the couch enjoying idle chit-chat while the kids romp around. In other words: normal family stuff. Normal, but incredibly special and extraordinary at the same time. </strong></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiBozbwS0QXtCUUF1BVHXDrFjLJUEmI5w_MCuNm9rVLodp172sDSsQqnVUIZjA68LH9GPx3CKNTG8aiHvK8sZ_VumtQIi3-RJXdMg3rPbfmnN4GVN-rAHW2RgA8T_jfe4LeGpA_174W6eC/s1600/IMG_4104.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiBozbwS0QXtCUUF1BVHXDrFjLJUEmI5w_MCuNm9rVLodp172sDSsQqnVUIZjA68LH9GPx3CKNTG8aiHvK8sZ_VumtQIi3-RJXdMg3rPbfmnN4GVN-rAHW2RgA8T_jfe4LeGpA_174W6eC/s320/IMG_4104.jpg" t$="true" width="320px" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: center;">with half-bros Drew & Dean</td></tr>
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</div><strong>If tonight Stewart and I can convey even a fraction of this wonderment to our surrogacy group, we just might convince some hopeful couples to see the potential that independent traditional surrogacy has to be a truly magical way to create a family.</strong></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"></div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-14069475660367593052011-07-25T17:42:00.000-04:002011-07-25T17:42:08.100-04:00Something Good<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><em>If you are even the most casual reader of this blog, you will know that here at Gaddy Daddy we believe that the concept of family contains multitudes. In that spirit, I am pleased to present the following post about the <a href="http://www.freshair.org/">Fresh Air Fund</a>. Through this amazing program, every summer nearly 10,000 New York City children from low-income communities spend a week or two of summertime bliss with volunteer host families from out of town who open up their hearts and homes to them. This summer the Fresh Air Fund is in need of 850 more families to sign up. If you, or someone you know, might be interested in participating in the program, please contact the Fresh Air Fund: <a href="http://freshairfundhost.org/">here</a>.</em></strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong></strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong><em>This post is authored by our good friend Joy, who has wowed us not <a href="http://gaddydaddy.blogspot.com/2011/02/just-show-up-love-story.html">once</a>, but <a href="http://gaddydaddy.blogspot.com/2011/05/number-sixteen.html">twice</a> before at Gaddy Daddy with beautifully written, moving and eye-opening narratives about parenthood. It should come as no surprise that this inspirational post is yet another must read, well worth the time even if you are not able to support the cause.</em></strong></div></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9hkb1hg6P9wg7BTVfJBVYl2qj4TcdP3gYz70oaZ0GmiqSJqCs-wIZKV7A7OG1EK5Luz-w4mXt5VjniFk6WJkWlz6Y6TDoNU7S9Vwhwk1GANf4iKIpu4UFv5ZrTh90_-Usf3YPqEyJiFSK/s1600/FreshAirFund.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="86px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9hkb1hg6P9wg7BTVfJBVYl2qj4TcdP3gYz70oaZ0GmiqSJqCs-wIZKV7A7OG1EK5Luz-w4mXt5VjniFk6WJkWlz6Y6TDoNU7S9Vwhwk1GANf4iKIpu4UFv5ZrTh90_-Usf3YPqEyJiFSK/s400/FreshAirFund.JPG" t$="true" width="400px" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong>Pam wasn’t writing that day, which was odd. She was the oldest woman in the class; the leader. With her gentle manner and calm demeanor, she often set the tone, and set an example for the younger students. With her on my side, I knew I had the respect of all the women in the room. But there she was, staring at her black-and-white composition book, pen lying flat on her desk, arms crossed defiantly across her chest. </strong><strong><br />
</strong></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>I had given one notebook to each student at the start of class based on the specific instructions I received: no spiral-bound notebooks, as the spirals can be sharpened into weapons. No red notebooks, as red is a gang color. This class was being taught in prison, and prison rules are to be closely followed. I found that out the day I arrived to teach in a tank top. It was summer, over ninety-five degrees out. I knew I couldn’t wear green, as that was the color of the women’s uniforms. I knew I couldn’t wear open-toe shoes, in case there was a riot and I had to run. But I didn’t know tank tops were forbidden because they are apparently considered too sexy. I almost wasn’t allowed in that day, but after several guards conferred on the matter, I was permitted to teach my class. </strong><strong><br />
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</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>That day, the day Pam wasn’t writing, I had asked the students to write about a time something good happened. I leaned over to Pam, who was sitting in her usual chair directly to my right.</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>“Are you stuck?” I whispered, so as not to disturb the other women, who were writing with bowed heads and expressions of concentration.</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>“Yeah,” she said, not looking up from her blank note book page. “I can’t think of anything good that ever happened.”</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Pam had written about her childhood in previous classes. I knew she grew up sharing a room with her three sisters, sleeping two to a bed. I knew her mother was often harsh and occasionally abusive. I also knew Pam was in jail for a long sentence—25 years—and that she was nearing the end of her term. I also knew her crime: manslaughter. So I knew Pam hadn’t had many good things happen to her. But even the darkest lives usually have moments, sometimes very small moments, of light.</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>“It doesn’t have to be a big thing,” I said softly. “It can be a really small good thing. Maybe something that surprised you?”</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Pam bit on the end of her pen and I looked at her. It was really hard to tell how old Pam was, or how old any of the women were. Stripped of makeup, jewelry, or their normal clothing—everyone was in army-green uniforms—all of the women appeared younger than they were. There were a few girls in the class who appeared like teenagers, and I was shocked to find out, through their writing, that they were in their late twenties. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Then Pam started to write. “I thought of something,” she said. “Something good. Really good.”</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>After about fifteen minutes, I told the students to finish their last sentence so we’d have time to hear a few people read before the end of class. I was used to teaching homeless teens, who often had to be coaxed to write even a few lines. But my students at the prison seemed to be able to write all night. I think they liked the calm environment of class, the normalcy of sitting in a room with desks and bulletin boards. Usually the room I taught in was used for GED. The papers tacked to the bulletin board, some with stickers and smiley faces, make the room look like a fourth-grade classroom. In that room, it was easy to forget my students were incarcerated; that at the end of the evening I would walk out the door and eat a slice of pizza on my way home, while they would be escorted back to their small locked rooms. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>I’m not naïve. I know some of these women committed serious crimes. But I also strongly believe that many of them were victims of the circumstances in which they grew up, rife with poverty and violence. Many of them wrote about the abuse they suffered, both physical and sexual. We often spoke about anger; what to do with it, how to both honor the very real reasons they had to be angry, yet not let anger overpower them into making bad decisions and getting into trouble. I tried to help them see they could respect their anger by putting it on the page, by writing about it. In that way they could get their anger out, but not in a way that would hurt themselves or others. One woman in class was reluctant to write about the abuse she had suffered, even when I told her she could write about it, then rip the page out of her notebook and throw it away. I kept thinking she was afraid that someone would see her writing, but finally she admitted that she was afraid to see it herself. “If I see it, then I have to believe it,” she had said. “And I still don’t want to believe it.” </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>When time came for the students to read that day, Pam volunteered. As she started reading, it was almost like she retreated into the past. The details she remembered made it seem like she was writing about something that had happened the day before, not in 1967.</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>As a child, Pam had asthma, and on the advice of a doctor, who thought getting out of the city would help her breathing, Pam’s mother signed her up for the Fresh Air Fund. Not any of her sisters; just Pam. She remembered everything about the morning she left for her first-ever summer vacation. Pam was six years old. She and her mother got up very early in the morning and took a subway to Penn Station. Pam was not scared at all; even when the time came to say goodbye to her mother. She was completely ready for departure, for freedom.</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Pam wrote about waiting with the other children for the train, the kind of sandwich she ate while she waited, and transferring from the train to a bus to go even further away from the city. She didn’t sleep at all even though she had awoken much earlier than usual—she didn’t want to shut her eyes because she refused to miss a single moment of looking out the window at grass, trees, and open space. It was the first time she had even seen these things, aside from city parks. And she was transfixed.</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>A big surprise came when the bus finally stopped in Maine. Pam thought she was going to a Fresh Air Fund camp, but in fact she and the other children on her bus were going to spend a few weeks with families. Pam remembered the shock of seeing so many white, smiling faces coming to retrieve so many small, black children. Pam didn’t know many white people back in the city, and those she had met had never seemed too happy to see her. Some kids from the bus cried, but not Pam. She happily joined her host family—a mom, a dad, and three children, all around Pam’s age. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>In the following weeks of class, I urged Pam to continue to write about her experience with this family. I learned that her time spent with them was the happiest time in her entire life; that she returned to spend summers with them for many years, and that she is still in touch with the children, who are now grown-up. Pam also told me that she wrote about her time with the Fresh Air Fund one Thanksgiving as part of a writing contest, and her piece was chosen as the winner. I believe Pam said her mother used the prize money to buy Thanksgiving dinner for the family. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Sadly, the cycle of classes I was teaching ended before Pam could finish her story. I urged her to continue on with it, and I hope she did. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>I also hope those of you reading this who live outside of New York City will consider hosting a child through the Fresh Air Fund. By doing so, you have the opportunity to provide an inner-city child with what may turn out to be the happiest memories of his or her life. 850 host families are still needed for this summer, and all types of families are welcome to participate. To learn more, click here </strong><a href="http://www.freshair.org/host-a-child"><strong>http://www.freshair.org/host-a-child</strong></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div></div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-1031613043256575422011-07-07T13:41:00.000-04:002011-07-07T13:41:10.112-04:00Wedding March<div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong>As most of you are probably aware, my home state of New York recently <a href="http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-06-24/news/29724140_1_gay-marriage-gay-couples-james-alesi">passed a bill</a> granting gay couples the right to marry. <a href="http://www.governor.ny.gov/">Governor Cuomo</a> signed the bill into law late Friday night, June 24th, which (wholly coincidentally) was perfect timing to kick off New York City’s <a href="http://nycpride.org/">gay pride weekend</a>, which always takes place over the last weekend in June. Stewart and I are already legally married, thanks to our northern neighbors in Canada, but nevertheless we were absolutely thrilled that the state will finally recognize our marriage, and that it will allow thousands of other gay couples to plan and hold their own dream wedding in our hometown. </strong><strong><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4W14FKsqTRi37vnP4IwgX6bedstvTLxKSGhdN2jjY29qqCnNJHMYj-pgDIgF1B2ZogtjEAgGURDTgRnNVtTcpSYSptLzYB-qvJGp06_ZrU-oHtJqpctYJLuw8xonfhjdcaJXLkg01PylF/s1600/marriage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="218px" m$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4W14FKsqTRi37vnP4IwgX6bedstvTLxKSGhdN2jjY29qqCnNJHMYj-pgDIgF1B2ZogtjEAgGURDTgRnNVtTcpSYSptLzYB-qvJGp06_ZrU-oHtJqpctYJLuw8xonfhjdcaJXLkg01PylF/s320/marriage.jpg" width="320px" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong>Like most gay New Yorkers, as soon as we heard the news that the marriage bill would pass the state senate, we knew instantly where the party would commence -- at the iconic Greenwich Village gay bar: the <a href="http://www.thestonewallinnnyc.com/Welcome.html">Stonewall Inn</a>. That is where the gay civil rights struggle for equality unofficially <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots">began</a>, in the form of a skirmish between its gay patrons and police over their unwarranted raid of the bar back in late June 1969 -- hence the city’s gay pride parade taking place in late June ever since to commemorate that special night of defiance. So of course it being gay pride weekend, and another historic night being upon us, the Stonewall Inn was everyone’s instant destination. </strong><strong><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyNzHLc7Hjst_E0XqrTWPjg3Cttu4aPTF_vSdoRxtEt2AsVlXx17fvhCSomd0SrvZNbx41Ck8eznGJv3azzDXhBxNPtYgpcdUtGvtRHKmXFmcAd_TJF1NGxD3nH74mNQYnNzbqyVyXwUh-/s1600/PhotoStonewall_riots.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="256px" m$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyNzHLc7Hjst_E0XqrTWPjg3Cttu4aPTF_vSdoRxtEt2AsVlXx17fvhCSomd0SrvZNbx41Ck8eznGJv3azzDXhBxNPtYgpcdUtGvtRHKmXFmcAd_TJF1NGxD3nH74mNQYnNzbqyVyXwUh-/s320/PhotoStonewall_riots.jpg" width="320px" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stonewall Inn riot</td></tr>
</tbody></table></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Unless, of course, you are a gay couple caring for a sleeping one year old. Stewart and I couldn’t make it to the Stonewall Inn that night for that obvious reason. That made it particularly important to us to make it to the pride parade to take place down 5th Avenue that following Sunday afternoon, so that we could have our moment of celebration too. To be honest, in the pre-Max years this parade was not all that important to us. Our focus that day instead had been on an annual brunch that we traditionally had for friends at our apartment before the parade, and to the bar-hopping festivities that commence after the parade has wound down. Due to Max being in our lives, we haven’t had our gay pride brunch for the past two years, and last year Max was too tiny for the parade. </strong><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong>Between the historic nature of the marriage equality bill having just passed, and Max now being old enough to marvel at all of the sights and sounds of the city, we were determined to get to the parade this year, and luckily we had some very good couple friends with us to join us (one of whom are getting married next month themselves!). Like past years, this year we didn’t stay at the parade for long, but that didn’t prevent me from getting all teary-eyed once we arrived, which believe it or not is very unusual for me. Right as we showed up, with Max on my shoulders, we saw Governor Cuomo march past. The crowd cheered louder than I’ve ever heard them, because everybody knew that not only did he sign the marriage equality bill into law, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/25/new-york-gay-marriage_n_884527.html">he was the key supporter</a> who risked his political capital to make sure the bill passed the republican-controlled state senate. No previous democratic governor had put forth that effort or achieved that result -- even when the senate was controlled by fellow democrats. </strong><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvEEz8fYjVjGNjiSDQxvVLIORd2m4iyS70YZMX8RT4Dw0MCLPTpaUrWXgQzYJ7nd3dOtJzoULdOiWy_o2eLoax-GCqWU2GgRX06vlpmro33BA0E-UANBwish97EKWPS0eLF8L0CJTrMpEV/s1600/AndrewCuomoPride.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="233px" m$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvEEz8fYjVjGNjiSDQxvVLIORd2m4iyS70YZMX8RT4Dw0MCLPTpaUrWXgQzYJ7nd3dOtJzoULdOiWy_o2eLoax-GCqWU2GgRX06vlpmro33BA0E-UANBwish97EKWPS0eLF8L0CJTrMpEV/s320/AndrewCuomoPride.jpg" width="320px" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gov. Cuomo and other supportive pols marching in the parade</td></tr>
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<strong>And if the raucous cheers in recognition of his heroic efforts weren’t enough to get me choked up, the <a href="http://gaddydaddy.blogspot.com/2010/10/fragile-dwellings.html">“It Gets Better” project</a> was marching right behind the governor, followed by the <a href="http://www.thetrevorproject.org/">Trevor Project</a> (a national organization providing crisis and suicide prevention services to LGBT youth). It is no surprise that these floats were linked to Cuomo and his accomplishment. After all, marriage equality is a very tangible sign that life does “get better” for the LGBT community, and hopefully LGBT youth witnessing first-hand their state government beginning to treat gay relationships with as much respect as their straight counterparts will give them the courage to live open and proud lives. </strong><strong><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn2SccrJ_eFYvtKTcViVzrZ4rPJnZHUst4zw8aRzqXEPjphl2cMkRZUlyiqS7AzOR88gPNZMYMXMn3DkW0dXWp3wqTkU9KFkRPK4R4DTh9Zvq0q94zA8t-IWU2PvaIwFNPiudr4qb0WiLF/s1600/parade.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240px" m$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn2SccrJ_eFYvtKTcViVzrZ4rPJnZHUst4zw8aRzqXEPjphl2cMkRZUlyiqS7AzOR88gPNZMYMXMn3DkW0dXWp3wqTkU9KFkRPK4R4DTh9Zvq0q94zA8t-IWU2PvaIwFNPiudr4qb0WiLF/s320/parade.jpg" width="320px" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Max and his daddy taking in the festivities</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong>And I was particularly thrilled to watch the parade, with all that it symbolized this year, with Max on my shoulders watching along with me. Because I realized that Max will now blissfully get to grow up never knowing a time in his life when his parents’ marriage wasn’t official or wasn’t recognized by the state. This is one aspect of our lives that we’re happy to be perfectly banal in the eyes of our son.</strong></div></div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-7737093706014668982011-06-30T18:16:00.000-04:002011-06-30T18:16:24.345-04:00Southern Comfort<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>This summer is flying by so fast! It has already been a couple of weeks since we returned from our vacation. We spent five days on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, and two in Savannah, Georgia. The last time Stewart and I were away for a week was a year and a half ago, when Max was not yet in the picture. Obviously, a vacation with Max is much different than one with just the two of us. The biggest difference is in the type of vacation we chose to take. We enjoy the beach, but we usually tend to go on active vacations, where we do a lot of hiking and exploring. But with Max, we were more than happy to just chill out by the pool and visit the beach once in a while. We actually spent more time on the beach than we thought we would, because surprisingly Max wasn’t into eating the sand (as opposed to rocks, twigs, and leaves, all of which he’d stuff into his mouth with abandon if given the chance!) </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong></strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Having just returned from a vacation in the South, many people have asked us about how our “alternative” family was perceived down there. We weren’t too concerned about it in planning our trip, or otherwise we wouldn’t have gone. Stewart and I try to be optimistic and not pre-judge strangers who come into contact with us as a family. Living in worry and fear of the worst is not a good way to live life, nor is it a good example to set for Max. And I was pleased to be able to tell those who asked that in both Hilton Head and Savannah everyone we encountered was very nice to our family. Not only that, but many of the people we met were very enthusiastic about Max (I hope it is not getting to his head!) For example, by the end of our stay in Hilton Head, practically everyone hanging out by the pool knew Max and wanted to interact with him. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4Px5qpMzKqf0zij08ddiZZZ4oRCJJGCUrKmr-ny32jt3MScltLqgpiEzeSklc6heUcaaX9nRxokbA9n2_ExKSAtffEkysHG9Tl0JgvLtpzacYGFIypBfHlj7yP6S0zF3x6kyz4j5LW5xd/s1600/IMG_3947.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320px" i$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4Px5qpMzKqf0zij08ddiZZZ4oRCJJGCUrKmr-ny32jt3MScltLqgpiEzeSklc6heUcaaX9nRxokbA9n2_ExKSAtffEkysHG9Tl0JgvLtpzacYGFIypBfHlj7yP6S0zF3x6kyz4j5LW5xd/s320/IMG_3947.jpg" width="213px" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our "Big Squirt" on the hotel pool deck</td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>There were a few awkward moments from the trip that jump out -- mainly (and thankfully) due to their rarity. These occurred when we encountered people who did not know what to make of our family structure, or perhaps were simply in denial about it. At the hotel breakfast buffet in Hilton Head, on two different mornings with two different waitresses, Stewart and I were asked if we needed separate checks. It wasn’t like one of us was solely taking care of Max during breakfast, while the other one read the paper or sat ten feet away; we were both clearly parenting Max throughout the breakfasts (mainly, imploring him to eat the banana and not to squish it between his fingers or throw it on the floor!) We never heard them ask any man and woman with a child if they wanted separate checks, and never in New York have we been asked that question when out at a restaurant with Max. So culture clash seems like the most likely explanation. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Another awkward -- but more funny -- moment came when one time our family was getting out of the hotel elevator and a woman with a strong Southern accent asked Stewart and me if: “y’all are brothers, because your noses look similar.” I replied that we are definitely not brothers! Besides both of us being white guys of approximately the same height, I don’t think we look that similar. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>But perhaps the most bizarre encounter came in Savannah. Stewart, Max and I were at a park and Stewart was insisting on taking a photo (per usual). A batty old woman approached us and asked us if we would like her to take a photo with all three of us in it. I whispered to Stewart that maybe we should decline because the woman seemed a little off of her rocker, but Stewart said that he didn’t care: “a photo is a photo and getting one with all three of us in it isn’t always easy.” So we had the woman take the photo, and as she handed the camera back to us, she said, pointing first at Stewart, then at me, and lastly at Max: “Let me guess: grandfather, father, son.” A smile must have crept onto my face at her crazy proclamation, because the woman got excited and said: “I knew I was right!” and wandered off as we stood there in silent amazement. Despite my smile I felt a little bad. While Stewart is older than me, as I remind him of often, he is only older by eight months and hardly looks like anyone’s grandfather. I tried to console Stewart by telling him that the woman probably thought I looked about 20 years old, meaning she wouldn’t have been that far off in estimating his age if he had had kids young, as they are wont to do in the South. Stewart wasn’t buying it. I can’t say I blame him. If this had happened in reverse, and she thought I was the grandfather, I probably wouldn’t be blogging this story (or if I did I wouldn’t be laughing while typing it up!) Fortunately Stewart has a great sense of humor about it in retrospect.</strong></div><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijlhIvkMsNY0GDYiQ3MokSXlDpz-pSiEHsnVMJbgCwRnJ3Gs60Iv7YX7ha2A4jTNwl6pAWFiU3twrpx1fX42tT3KEmjAm_DNY8NW1IyjcMrn7lwTiY70AIcT-7jTxhOgMWWkvR_-T9T2x0/s1600/IMG_1688.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240px" i$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijlhIvkMsNY0GDYiQ3MokSXlDpz-pSiEHsnVMJbgCwRnJ3Gs60Iv7YX7ha2A4jTNwl6pAWFiU3twrpx1fX42tT3KEmjAm_DNY8NW1IyjcMrn7lwTiY70AIcT-7jTxhOgMWWkvR_-T9T2x0/s320/IMG_1688.jpg" width="320px" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me, Max and "Grandpa" in Savannah</td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>When the most awkward family situations are the funny, innocuous ones I’ve just described, you know we had a great vacation among great people. Who knows what prior beliefs some of the people we met had about gay people, or about gay people getting married and having kids. But I’d like to think that their experience of having met us and Max, and seeing that we are just another young(ish) family trying to enjoy a nice vacation, either made them realize -- or solidified their pre-existing belief -- that we should be welcomed into their tourist towns with the same famed Southern hospitality they offer up to everybody else. That’s how we felt when down there and we’d go back to both spots.</strong></div></div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-71257279071755431432011-06-20T18:18:00.000-04:002011-06-20T18:18:55.841-04:00Chucking the Checklist<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>Max is at an intermediate stage of his development, stuck between being a baby and a toddler, and therefore the people we meet out and about are no longer satisfied just by learning Max’s age. They also want to know what developmental milestones he’s reached. So after they ask how old he is, the next question (usually one of several) is “Is he walking yet?” And I know I’m not alone in getting this question. My friend who has a kid three days older than Max complains that her doorman asks every other day if her kid is walking yet. My advice to her is: threaten to withhold his holiday tip if he asks again! In all seriousness, the questioners are usually well-intentioned, and I don’t think they mean to be annoying to the parent who has to respond to the same inquiries time and again . . . but, let’s face it, the questions do get tiresome. </strong></span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong></strong></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong></strong></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>So I try to get over the topic as soon as possible, getting all the info out to them in one fell swoop -- something like: “Nope. My kid is not walking yet, not saying any words yet, or recognizing any parts of his body yet; but . . . he is truly advanced in the teeth department!” My response is intended to be informative, but also, by bringing up Max’s dental accomplishments, hopefully hints at how silly I think the whole comparison game is for kids whose ages are still measured in months. Basically I’m saying to these people in a joking way: Unless your kid, grandkid, or whoever else you’re comparing my Maxxie to, has or had four front and bottom teeth, plus two molars, already in at 13 months old, you’re no one to talk comparisons with my child! </strong></span><br />
</div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong></strong></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>While I like to think of myself as pretty mellow when it comes to assessing whether Max’s development is keeping up with that of his friends’, I do have my slip-ups when my competitive streak slips out. One of Max’s playmates, who is six weeks older than Max and seems advanced in all of the main developmental yardsticks, for several months now has been able to point to his nose and ears when prompted. So, shortly before Max’s birthday, I couldn’t help myself but to test him for this skill . . . with no success. At Max’s 12 month visit with his pediatrician, I casually mentioned to him that Max is not able to recognize his body parts. The pediatrician responded by looking straight at Max and asking: “Max, you are not a trained seal, are you?” Point made, and naturally that humbled me and reminded me that my instincts about how silly all these developmental comparisons can be was spot on in the first place. </strong></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5wol02dugC0duI5C4T4d1TdWF6TcIcnAnwa-WdGMY0jKnVKWBYCrb1Bd4MmAr4YX6ECv9A4FzsJjd_m_P8bYsB3ujx95qhJQUvsnTxt9ZA7Juv5j7LezVa9WgokhRE3z8J38HIEfREkYL/s1600/mgrn161l.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239px" i$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5wol02dugC0duI5C4T4d1TdWF6TcIcnAnwa-WdGMY0jKnVKWBYCrb1Bd4MmAr4YX6ECv9A4FzsJjd_m_P8bYsB3ujx95qhJQUvsnTxt9ZA7Juv5j7LezVa9WgokhRE3z8J38HIEfREkYL/s320/mgrn161l.jpg" width="320px" /></a></div></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong></strong></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>A couple of weeks later, my same friend with the inquisitive doorman mentioned that she visited the American Academy of Pediatrics </strong><a href="http://www.healthychildren.org/english/ages-stages/baby/pages/Developmental-Milestones-12-Months.aspx"><strong>website</strong></a><strong> to look up developmental milestones for one year olds. As is human nature, she immediately focused only on the ones that her kid wasn’t doing yet: </strong></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong></strong></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>• Says “dada” and “mama”</strong></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong></strong></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>• Uses exclamations, such as “oh-oh!”</strong></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong></strong></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>• Tries to imitate words</strong></span><br />
</div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong></strong></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>Of course Max wasn’t doing any of these things either. And, unfortunately, the number of teeth that a child has did not make the Academy’s list! To try to reassure my friend, I told her that Max was in the same boat as her kid. I was all nonchalant, like: “Why are you looking these things up? You are only setting yourself up for disappointment. These developmental steps will happen when they happen.” I truly believe that to be the right attitude to take -- but of course in my pep talk to her I omitted the part about my own recent neuroses in this area that I had displayed in my nervous questioning of Max’s pediatrician about his nose-pointing deficiencies. </strong></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
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<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: justify;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>All this said, I’m not trying to downplay the enjoyment parents do and should feel when kids reach developmental milestones. I am enjoying watching each of Max’s friends develop on their own time. It’s exciting to see the ones that have begun to take their first steps. It’s like they are drunken soldiers! Of course, I enjoy seeing Max develop the most, and he is truly at a great age for it. At the moment, Max is standing up on his own for up to 15 to 20 seconds (at the longest) before he topples over or sits himself down. It’s really cute to watch, and particularly because he is so proud of himself when he does it! </strong></span></div></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: justify;"><strong></strong></div><strong> </strong><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTCKnam0XOw_2YwFgpfo8fB4WfJA_SOKQ8oivnhdA0_d3Qu3N67Ca_oKCOgdfajmFP-qdXjUNlQ0QPg1depLI0LoRucGjcaCADjkEZ8nqHxcf0euPuTm993VYELpPrlpV4UoJpZG31XjiO/s1600/standing.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><strong><img border="0" height="320px" i$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTCKnam0XOw_2YwFgpfo8fB4WfJA_SOKQ8oivnhdA0_d3Qu3N67Ca_oKCOgdfajmFP-qdXjUNlQ0QPg1depLI0LoRucGjcaCADjkEZ8nqHxcf0euPuTm993VYELpPrlpV4UoJpZG31XjiO/s320/standing.JPG" width="239px" /></strong></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Max standing (daddy method)</strong></td></tr>
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<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>And, as an example that most babies eventually do develop the skills set forth for them on all the checklists out there -- sort of -- in just the past week, when I ask Max where his nose is . . . he points to mine. It is so adorable, and at least he is pointing to someone’s nose when prompted! Needless to say, I’ll take it. Max is pretty perfect in my book and it’s very easy for me to be proud of whatever he accomplishes, whenever it happens and whether or not it is on somebody else’s checklist.</strong></span></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUZLeUnyxVlowQgTc1YdKTRAYOeH1pk5cLQwFLa8adI2RYK4Kf_m7gWjfDKbRIuuRLiCwiMys9pPF5wdnDlh47X314RNqJII3fRhSVdQr216GN3aJGAJPF1FUpLgrAyPKz79q4TUY9Svnr/s1600/chair.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><strong><img border="0" height="320px" i$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUZLeUnyxVlowQgTc1YdKTRAYOeH1pk5cLQwFLa8adI2RYK4Kf_m7gWjfDKbRIuuRLiCwiMys9pPF5wdnDlh47X314RNqJII3fRhSVdQr216GN3aJGAJPF1FUpLgrAyPKz79q4TUY9Svnr/s320/chair.JPG" width="239px" /></strong></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Max standing (chair method)</strong></td></tr>
</tbody></table></div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-9415730642663558182011-05-31T20:50:00.000-04:002011-05-31T20:50:03.158-04:00When Three's a Crowd<div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Naturally in any triangle of human relationships someone is bound to feel left out. When it came to my relationship with Stewart and Max, however, it never crossed my mind that this concept would directly apply to me! When I am alone with Max he gazes at me like I am his one and only. But whenever Stewart enters the room, I suddenly become chopped liver in Max’s eyes and he only has time for his papa. At first, I championed Max’s fondness for Stewart. I loved that Max would smile, get all giddy, and make his way immediately over to Stewart when he came home from work. First off, Stewart is an excellent dad and deserves all the recognition that Max can give him. Secondly, it is an easy way to pass Max off to Stewart at the end of the day so that I can have some time for myself. </strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Over the past month or so though I’ve lost my benevolent attitude towards Max’s behavior, because his preference for Stewart has grown beyond my limits! These days, when Stewart tries to hand Max over to me after they have spent time together, Max starts wailing and reaching out for his papa. When Max is with me in one room of the apartment, and knows that Stewart is somewhere else in the apartment, he will crawl his way to whatever room Stewart is in. And there is a game that Max likes to play that is particularly disheartening. When Max is being held by Stewart and people come up to them -- family members, friends or even random strangers -- Max will reach out his hands, motioning them to take him from Stewart; but, just as they are about to do so, Max turns into a big tease, yanking his hands away and turning in the opposite direction. I used to think this game was sort of entertaining, until I became the main target! </strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong> </strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>I will admit that my feelings get hurt, especially given that I am the stay-at-home parent who spends all day with the kid, entertaining him, feeding him, changing his diapers, soothing him and looking after his many other needs. I had been in a complete state of denial that Max would ever favor one of his parents over the other -- but especially over me given how much of this daily love and sacrifice I dispense! I mean, come on folks, how many kids get to spend their days with a cool fun dad like me?! </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Fortunately, Max’s favoritism of Stewart is not personal, but rather a perfectly normal phase of childhood. In a </strong><a href="http://www.parents.com/toddlers-preschoolers/development/behavioral/favoring-one-parent/"><strong>recent poll at Parents.com</strong></a><strong>, more than 90 percent of mothers and fathers said that their children favored one parent over the other at some point. Indeed, favoritism is considered healthy behavior for an emerging toddler. According to </strong><a href="http://www.parents.com/toddlers-preschoolers/development/behavioral/favoring-one-parent/"><strong>Parenting magazine</strong></a><strong>: </strong></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Playing favorites is actually a sign of emotional and cognitive growth. It helps your child explore relationships and intimacy, exercise her decision-making skills, and assert her independence.</strong></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>It is also not unusual for a one year old to favor the working parent, who is not with the child all day, over the stay at home parent. In other words, all of my nurturing of Max that I thought would beholden him to me is apparently working against me! Basically, he’s taken me for granted – a good way for a baby to feel, for sure. Stewart, meanwhile, leaves Max at least every weekday morning, so Max is naturally more clingy to him when he is around, since Stewart’s companionship is not as much of a given in Max’s mind. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>I’ve also learned that a child will go through phases of favoring one parent for a spell, and then switching 180 degrees and preferring the other parent instead. For example, </strong><a href="http://parents.berkeley.edu/advice/parents/favoring.html#one"><strong>check out these mothers in an on-line parenting forum</strong></a><strong> complaining about their husbands being favored when their kids were one year olds, and the encouragement back from other moms to wait it out because soon enough the shoe will be on the other foot! And I have to admit that this has been our experience. When Max was three or four months old, Stewart used to come home from work and complain that Max would only look at me and not him. I would say I think you’re imagining things, but secretly I was a little happy about it since I was spending all this time with Max and appreciated the recognition from him. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>I hope Stewart is more mature than me and is not secretly enjoying the current period of time of being the favorite, however long it might be. Because it isn’t fun. Despite knowing in my head all that I mentioned above about why I shouldn’t feel shame about being the odd man out with Max, I still do. I am not exactly sure why, but it is probably because I spend most of my days with Max and still feel a little rejected by him. All I can tell myself is that just as it is a natural phase for him to sometimes act as he does, it is also natural for me to sometimes feel disheartened by it. But I am not complaining, because one thing that is constant throughout all of Max’s temporary phases is how much I love him, and how much I know he loves me back. </strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong></strong></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-52770976540660214752011-05-26T16:02:00.000-04:002011-05-26T16:02:29.441-04:00The Complete Tales of Stew and Pooh<div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>In my <a href="http://gaddydaddy.blogspot.com/2011/03/pulp-fiction.html">last post</a> I wrote about Max’s affection for board books, and promised a future post about our favorite books to read together. But one book stands out so much that I thought it made sense to dedicate an entire post to it.</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong></strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>As you can surmise from the post’s title, I’m talking about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnie-the-Pooh">Winnie-the-Pooh</a>. Pooh and I have had a long relationship. I was a dreamy child who would happily while away countless hours alone in my bedroom concocting elaborate interactions among my dozens of stuffed animals. They all had names and they all liked to play games with me. But first of course they had to go to school, which consisted of rows of desks I fashioned from hardcover books laid sidewise. They each had homework that they wrote on scraps of paper that they kept under the front covers of their desks. I was the teacher and homework-grader, and while some of the stuffed animals were better students than others, they loved school and their teacher and they especially loved recess. </strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>So naturally as a young child I gravitated to books about personified animals. I loved <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Velveteen-Rabbit-Toys-Became-Real/dp/0761458484/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306438865&sr=8-1">The Velveteen Rabbit</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wind-Willows-Kenneth-Grahame/dp/1613820429/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306438892&sr=8-1">The Wind and the Willows</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tale-Peter-Rabbit-Reading-Railroad/dp/0448435217/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1306438918&sr=8-2">The Tale of Peter Rabbit</a>, and of course <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Winnie-Pooh-Milne/dp/0525477683/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306438972&sr=8-1">Winnie-the-Pooh</a>. I certainly related to Winnie-the-Pooh’s Christopher Robin, who in the books bemusedly oversees the foibles of his menagerie of stuffed animals and is always there to swoop in at the last moment to extract them from their usually self-made predicaments. I was the Christopher Robin for my own collection of stuffed animals and they were just as lovable and prone to pickles as Pooh, Piglet, Roo, Tigger and the other animals roaming Hundred Acre Wood. (As an aside, I will admit that I was completely confused as a child as to why Christopher Robin wore a blouse and wore Mary Janes on his feet. I couldn’t decide if it was more likely that a girl was named Christopher or that a boy actually dressed and went out in public like that!) </strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>While, like any child, I eventually outgrew Winnie-the-Pooh, the series has periodically re-surfaced in my life in delightfully unexpected ways. </strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>When I was in high-school I took a class about the world religions. The teacher took great pains to tout the wisdom of the Eastern religions to us over what he considered to be the oppressive nature of the Western religions -- much to the consternation of his entirely Judeo-Christian class of students, who had yet to reach the level of maturity required to appreciate the pedagogical benefits of an alternative point of view. We thought he was a witch-doctor. In that class our teacher introduced us to the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pooh-Benjamin-Ernest-Shepard-Illustrator/dp/B004HWQUQK/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1306439188&sr=8-6">Tao of Pooh</a>, a book by Benjamin Hoff that endeavors to introduce the principles of Taoism to Westerners through the accessible vehicle of the Winnie-the-Pooh series. As explained by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tao_of_Pooh">Wiki</a>:</strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><strong><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Hoff uses many of Milne's characters to symbolize ideas that differ from or accentuate Taoist tenets. Winnie-the-Pooh himself, for example, personifies the principles of wei wu wei, the Taoist concept of "effortless doing," and pu, the concept of being open to but unburdened by experience. In contrast, characters like Owl and Rabbit over-complicate problems, often over-thinking to the point of confusion, and Eeyore pessimistically complains and frets about existence, unable to just be. Hoff regards Pooh's simpleminded nature, unsophisticated worldview and instinctive problem-solving methods as conveniently representative of the Taoist philosophical foundation. </strong></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"></div></strong><strong><br />
</strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Who knew? Given that my world religions class was in a permanent state of near-rebellion, assigning the class the Tao of Pooh was a brilliant move by our teacher. What teenager could resist reading Winnie the Pooh at the dinner table and sassing back to his exasperated parents that he’s simply finishing his homework?</strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>But my academic foray into the House at Pooh Corner did not stop there. In college I took a small freshman seminar on existential literature. We read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Age-Reason-Penguin-Modern-Classics/dp/0141185287/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1306439238&sr=8-2">Sartre</a> and his lover <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Second-Sex-Everymans-Library-Cloth/dp/0679420169/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2">de Bouvier</a>; we read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Plague-Penguin-Modern-Classics-Albert/dp/0141185139/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1306439339&sr=1-2">Camus</a>. The class just screamed “college” and I loved it. For our final paper we were tasked with applying existential theories to some form of popular art. One classmate applied existentialism to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pink-Floyd-Wall-Anniversary-Deluxe/dp/B0006ZE7G2/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1306439398&sr=1-1">Pink Floyd’s The Wall</a>; another to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CQHIP-38jA">Madonna’s “Material Girl” video</a>. I applied it to Winnie-the-Pooh -- or, more specifically, a poem by A.A. Milne that featured the classic Winnie-the-Pooh characters. (Sadly I cannot remember the title or find it on-line). My paper was ominously called “Childhood: Enter at Your Own Risk,” and was about how while the popular conception of childhood is of care-free frivolity, in actuality, for the child, it is an anxious time of fear and uncertainty -- and thus childhood is like existential literature (cue eye-roll, I know, but work with me here!) Exhibit A for my paper was a Milne poem from a dusty tome I found in the Vanderbilt University library in which the Pooh characters were experiencing their typical angst over some pickle they had gotten themselves into. The kicker was that the poem ended with the characters bemoaning their fate and how they wish Christopher Robin would come bail them out . . . but the poem just ends and he never shows up! (Just like <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Samuel-Beckett-Waiting-Critical-Interpretations/dp/0791097935/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306439490&sr=8-1">Waiting for Godot</a>!). You’ll have to trust me, but the paper was brilliant and I got an A. </strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Fast forward to commencement weekend 3 years later. My roommate and I are in our room packing up our gear to head home. Lo and behold on my bookshelf I find the very book of poetry that I had checked out freshman year and that naturally had never made its way back to the library. Upon seeing it, I bragged to my roommate about the wildly successful Pooh paper I wrote freshman year, and cracked open the book to show it to him. My roommate began reading the poem, with me reading over his shoulder, and when he got to the end of it he tried to turn the page -- but it was a little stuck to the next page. He slid his pinkie in-between, dislodging them, and flipped over the page. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the poem continued on the other side! I had completely missed the final stanza due to the sticky page! I read along with him in dawning horror as the poem concluded with Christopher Robin indeed coming to the rescue of his little animal friends. In other words, the poem that I had proudly made the centerpiece of my freshman paper about the hopelessness of childhood completely undermined its central thesis. Not to mention that I had defrauded my professor. My A grade instantly turned from a source of pride into a mockery. I was seriously unnerved, as I was graduating that weekend with honors in English and a not small part of my self-esteem at the time was wrapped up in this accomplishment. My roommate just laughed. He was a mechanical engineer. Coincidentally, the English Department was having a cocktail party that evening for all of the senior classes’ English majors and their families. I knew my seminar professor was going to be there and I debated whether or not to tell him. I hadn’t officially graduated yet. Could he change my grade ex post facto? Strip me of my honors? Prevent me from graduating? Absurd through and through, of course. My professor was an incredibly nice man and would have gotten a kick out of it. But still . . . I didn’t tell him.</strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Now fast-forward 15 years. Your surrogate is pregnant with your child and suggests that you and your husband read aloud to the fetus. A natural reaction to this suggestion might have been, “Say What?” Mine was: Let’s choose Winnie-the-Pooh! You see, we learned very early on in our journey with our surrogate Christie that she knows what she is talking about when it comes to pregnancy (and a lot of other things) that we just . . . don’t know. Christie told us that our baby could hear voices from the outside world starting around six months in utero, and would be able to recognize them once he was born. So she suggested that we tape ourselves reading a book that she could then periodically play aloud for the baby for the remainder of her pregnancy so that he would feel comfortable with our voices once he was born. </strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>It was a very sweet and thoughtful gesture that Jacob and I enthusiastically embraced. We bought the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Tales-Winnie---Pooh/dp/0525457232/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306439592&sr=8-1">Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh</a>, a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sony-ICD-BX800-Memory-Digital-Recorder/dp/B00387E5AS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306439615&sr=8-1">digital recorder</a>, and -- get this -- “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bellybuds-Pregnancy-Bellyphones-Prenatal-Voices/dp/B002OCBB1O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306439683&sr=8-1">belly buds</a>” for Christie, which are headphones designed specifically to be adhesed to a pregnant woman’s stomach so that the sound from them is targeted directly into the womb. Seriously. I have learned not to be surprised by anything I see that is marketed towards hormonal pregnant women. That Christie humored us and agreed to use them should alone qualify her for sainthood! </strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Jacob and I had a great time taking turns reading Winnie-the-Pooh to Max via a digital recorder and emailing the files down to Atlanta for Christie to download onto her ipod. I got surprisingly emotional during the process, and several times had to stop the tapings. Even though Max was over 700 miles away, reading to him was an incredibly intimate experience and brought Max right into our apartment with us. I felt like a parent for the first time, and that is a feeling that Jacob and I had been dreaming about for a long time. That Max’s very first story from his daddies was Winnie-the-Pooh completes a special circle for me that started when I was a little child with a room full of stuffed animals. I know I’ll be romping in Pooh’s Hundred Acre Woods with Max for many years to come, and I hope he gets as much out of the series as I have.</strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong></strong></div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-53821038301803223682011-05-16T15:47:00.000-04:002011-05-16T15:47:28.075-04:00Number Sixteen<div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><em><strong>My good friend Joy wrote one of the most popular -- and important -- </strong><a href="http://gaddydaddy.blogspot.com/2011/02/just-show-up-love-story.html"><strong>posts</strong></a><strong> to be featured on Gaddy Daddy, so it was a no-brainer to invite her back to share more of her insights on parenting. Naturally, her new post is once again beautifully written and thought-provoking. Thanks Joy, and to my readers: enjoy it!</strong></em></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>When I went into labor, I packed a bag full of entirely useless things: a few of my nicer maternity outfits to wear at the hospital when guests came to visit; makeup, so I’d look my best in the first picture of me with my son; shampoo for the shower. Needless to say to anyone who has ever had a baby, I didn’t use any of these items. I did not change out of the hospital gown until I went home, and if I could have worn it on the streets of New York City and into the car, I would have. Not only did I not wear makeup in the hospital, my mascara had dried up by the time I unscrewed the cap again months later. As for the shampoo, I didn’t shower for nearly a week, and from the look of my fellow patients on the maternity ward, neither did they. I could hardly stand upright, let alone consider washing myself. And after a while, my hair was so dirty that it naturally molded itself into a ponytail on top of my head. I hardly even needed a rubber band. </strong></div><div align="justify"><strong></strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><br />
</strong> </div><div align="justify"><strong>I did bring one right thing, though: my grandmother’s diamond earrings. I put them on before I left for the hospital, and I wore them for nearly the entire year after my son was born. Before becoming a mother, I was a dangly-earring kind of person. Because I’m tall with a long neck, I always thought larger earrings helped balance me out. And even though I knew a newborn wouldn’t have the coordination to reach up and pull a big earring, it just seemed more practical to wear studs. I think it also occurred to me that my grandmother’s earrings might bring me some of the strength for which she was renowned. </strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><br />
</strong> </div><div align="justify"><strong>My grandmother was not a “grandmother” in the traditional baking-cookies sense. And by that I mean that she did not like children. It wasn’t something her ten grandchildren were meant to take personally; from my mother’s reports, she hadn’t particularly liked her four daughters when they were children, either. “I think she liked me better when I got a driver’s license,” my mother has told me. “Because then I could be useful to her.” </strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><br />
</strong> </div><div align="justify"><strong>My grandmother wasn’t a mean or neglectful mother; she just wasn’t particularly warm and cuddly. She didn’t negotiate with children; her word was the final word. My mother and her twin sister were dressed identically until they were fourteen years old, despite their different heights, appearances, and tastes. They were not allowed to have their own friends because once while my mother was on a playdate, my aunt cried for the entire time she was gone. My mother has told me many times that she would sit at the piano practicing for hours while my grandmother was in another room, presumably listening. My mother would call out, “Was that good, Mommy? Was that good?” hoping for the praise that rarely came.</strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><br />
</strong> </div><div align="justify"><strong>My grandmother was entirely unsentimental. She thought toys were dust collectors, and when my mother and her twin sister were ten years old, she forced them to give their prized china dolls to their young niece. My cousin Marcy had no interest in dolls; she was a horse girl. My mother mourned the loss of her beloved Linda, whose lashed eyes closed when you tilted her back and who said “Mama” when you tiled her upright. My mother’s own grandmother, who was the warm and cuddly type, had made a wardrobe of clothes for Linda, which my mother packed up one day at her mother’s order, along with Linda, to give to Marcy. I can only imagine that my mother (also the warm and cuddly type) was devastated to part with Linda, and her pain was compounded when, a few weeks later, on a visit to my cousin’s house, she found Linda lying in the front yard. Linda was naked and her china face was cracked because she had been left out in the sun.</strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><br />
</strong> </div><div align="justify"><strong>Given these and other stories about what I perceived to be my grandmother’s heartlessness (Pinky, my mother’s pink bear that went missing one day, blamed on the housekeeper; the Ginny doll, there one morning and gone when my mother returned home from school), and my own experiences with her when I was a child (which largely consisted of her coming to visit on weekends and going shopping with my mother while I was left at home with my grandfather, who chain-smoked and watched the Red Sox at top volume), I had never really sought to emulate her. But now that I have become a parent, I find myself doing just that. </strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><br />
</strong> </div><div align="justify"><strong>My grandmother never freaked out. Ever. She rarely if ever complained. She was rock solid. My grandmother was honest. She told it like it was; she didn’t worry about other people’s feelings, even though sometimes her directness hurt people. One time it hurt me. I was riding in the car with my parents and my grandmother when I was in college. My grandmother was talking about the beauty of a cousin of mine. “My Joy is beautiful, too,” my mother said, to stroke my ego, or her own. It was meant to be a rhetorical statement, but my grandmother didn’t let it go. “No,” she said, shaking her head back and forth. “Joy has other attributes, but Rachel is the beautiful one.” She didn’t seem to realize—or care—that I was right there, in the seat behind her. My grandmother didn’t say things just to be nice. She said what she believed. To my mother, beauty is the ultimate goal. “You look like a model,” is her highest praise. To my grandmother, beauty is just one thing a person may or may not have. </strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><br />
</strong> </div><div align="justify"><strong>When a member of the family was going through a hard time, my mother would often tell me she and her sisters had decided not to tell my grandmother, in order to spare her the worry. I always thought the energy they put into protecting my grandmother was wasted. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about us; she just didn’t express that care by agonizing. </strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><br />
</strong> </div><div align="justify"><strong>When she was older and started experiencing health problems, I would often ask her how she was feeling. Ask my mother or me how we are feeling when we’re unwell and you’re in for a detailed explanation of our symptoms, what the specialists say, what treatments we have done and what we plan to do next, and so forth. But my grandmother never provided much detail. “I’m doing what the doctors tell me to do, dear,” she would say. And then she’d move on.</strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><br />
</strong> </div><div align="justify"><strong>Moving on was, in my opinion, the key to her longevity. She lived into her nineties. She never had a career. She didn’t have many hobbies, although when she was younger, she had knit each of her daughters a blanket (same pattern, different colors). Ours was brown, yellow, and orange. For some reason, it always surprised me to see its red, white, and blue twin at my aunt’s house. </strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><br />
</strong> </div><div align="justify"><strong>She wasn’t a particularly effervescent person, but she wasn’t a morose person either. She was consistent and steady. She liked what she liked: round tables at restaurants so she could see everybody; hair pulled back from the faces of her granddaughters; lipstick, both on herself and on all other women; butterscotch candies; really hot tea. </strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><br />
</strong> </div><div align="justify"><strong>Last week I removed by grandmother’s earrings from my ears and put them back in the cloth-covered red box in which they were given to me. I replaced them with little silver circles, also studs. They were a Mothers’ Day present, and I think I’ll wear them almost every day for the next year, maybe longer. They’re more “me” than the diamonds were, really. But I’m glad I was wearing my grandmother’s diamonds when my son came into the world. He would have been her sixteenth great-grandchild (she called them her “grands”). She softened in her older age and to her grands, she was kinder and more accessible. They even called her “Grammy,” which always struck me as odd since she was really more of a “Grandma,” or even “Grandmother.” I think if she had lived to see number sixteen’s heart-melting smile, it would have melted her heart, even just a little. </strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><br />
</strong> </div><div align="justify"><strong>My son is just about to turn one year old, and I hope as he grows I can weave some of my grandmother’s fortitude into my own parenting style. I don’t think I’ll ever make him give away his beloved stuffed dog Woof Woof, but I want to be strong for him. Unbreakable. </strong></div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-37693606709408518202011-04-30T23:04:00.004-04:002011-05-02T10:54:37.498-04:00Talking Q-Talk<div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>A couple of Saturdays ago, my friend Frank, who is trying to have a baby via surrogacy, told me that he was going to <a href="http://metropolitanroom.com/show.cfm?id=75737&cart">Q-Talk</a>. It’s a monthly late-night gay-centered talk show at <a href="http://metropolitanroom.com/index.cfm">The Metropolitan Room</a>, a small cabaret spot on West 22nd Street in Manhattan. This month’s topic was perfect for Frank: LGBT Parenting through surrogacy. Of course it was also of interest for me, but to be honest, my main motivation in wanting to go was simply getting out of the house Stewart worked that Saturday, and after being with Max all day I was ready for a change of pace. Before Frank could even extend me an offer, I invited myself to join him!</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong></strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>I was new to Q-Talk and didn’t know what to expect. It turns out I was in the minority about that. A good-sized crowd of 40 to 50 people showed up, and when they were asked if they had attended Q-Talk before, an overwhelming majority raised their hands. The crowd seemed to be made up of mostly gay men and a sprinkling of women. The other thing I immediately noticed is that there didn’t seem to be many parents in the audience. This should be quite interesting, I thought! </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>The show’s guests were <a href="http://www.circlesurrogacy.com/en/about-circle-surrogacy">John Weltman</a>, a gay dad and president and founder of <a href="http://www.circlesurrogacy.com/">Circle Surrogacy</a> (an agency that helps infertile and gay couples have kids via gestational surrogacy), and Tony Brown, a gay dad featured in the CNN documentary <a href="http://www.afterelton.com/TV/2010/06/gary-tony-have-baby">Gary And Tony Have A Baby</a>, about the journey he and his husband Gary took towards having their baby via gestational surrogacy. Since Frank and I are both fairly educated on the topic of surrogacy, and have met John and Tony before, their ensuing discussion that night wasn’t very illuminating for us, at least as far as surrogacy is concerned. We did, however, both find it amusing when John mentioned how, while he enjoyed very much the documentary and how it portrayed Tony and Gary’s journey to parenthood, he did have one serious beef with it. The show mentions at least ten times throughout that Tony and Gary used an agency to help them with the surrogacy process, but never once mentions the name of the agency. Why did John care? Of course because the agency Tony and Gary used was none other than John’s own agency, Circle Surrogacy! </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>While we didn’t learn much new about surrogacy that night, the show was hardly a disappointment, in large part due to a surprise guest. John brought his 15 year old son with him to the show. I don’t know many gay parents to begin with, but none of the ones that I do know has teenagers already. Because we all know that those can be difficult years for any parents, I am very interested in hearing what teens of gay parents have to say about their experiences growing up in that household, and also in seeing how they interact with their parents. John’s son spoke to the Q-Talk audience that night, and I was very impressed with how articulate and open he was about his family life. Just as I had hoped and expected, he was a typical 15 year old – a kid who liked to give his dad a hard time, but in a fun-loving way. He seemed content and comfortable in his own skin, which can’t be easy for someone his age in a room full of strangers who are prying into his family life. Most importantly, I could tell that he was proud of his dad and that they enjoyed a strong, loving bond. Oh, and to top it off, the kid was funny too. When an audience member asked him what it was like having two dads, he replied that it was pretty awesome. Why? Because he can leave the toilet seat up without anyone in the household getting mad at him! </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Thankfully Max is a long way away from being a teenager, and since the country is continually improving in how it treats its gay citizens, hopefully by the time Max hits those years the environment for gay-lead families will be more welcoming than it is today. But it was certainly nice to see from John’s son at Q-Talk that even now, what there is still a lot of work to be done in this area, there are teenagers out there being raised by gay parents who are just what any parents would wish their children to be: happy, loving and well-adjusted, with just enough back-talk and humor thrown in to keep things interesting! </strong></div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-16380414349757876772011-04-22T16:59:00.000-04:002011-04-22T16:59:49.315-04:00Spring Break<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>I have never yearned for spring more than this one. As all of you reading this in the Northeast know, it was a rough winter. And long. I thought that Day Light Savings Time signified that spring was just around the corner, but only now, over a month later, is the weather finally coinciding with the time of year. Of course it doesn’t help that I am simply not a winter person, and it seems that every year I complain about the cold weather more and more. I can be overheard to say on more than one occasion each winter that one day we need to move somewhere warmer; but, besides having most of our family and friends here, we love New York and couldn’t imagine raising Max anywhere else. I guess that means I’m resigned to bitch about winter for many years to come!</strong></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: justify;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong></strong></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong>What made this winter tough wasn’t just it being frigid and long, but that it meant more often than not being cooped up in the apartment with Max. You see, before Max I was never known to be a homebody. And, and since Max was a spring baby, I didn’t have to become a homebody after his birth. Until early November of last year, I spent most of my days with him out of house, and much of that time we stayed outdoors. I strolled Max on long walks, pushed him in the bucket swing at the play ground (after he was 3 or 4 months old), and chilled with him at one of the numerous community gardens in my neighborhood. </strong></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWfCVRmZiSQVg79V9dnuSdjAe33b8VmTkVriMdV5AZQuYt7vaT-zbPSo6_7kNJyyjzg5h-oRGcjyiLcRfWThxkGH086S1zNXQnjEEq2C8QrNqsNWzeWW34j9q4bCMb-iYyp0v9_c_s_y_g/s1600/IMG_3561.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320px" i8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWfCVRmZiSQVg79V9dnuSdjAe33b8VmTkVriMdV5AZQuYt7vaT-zbPSo6_7kNJyyjzg5h-oRGcjyiLcRfWThxkGH086S1zNXQnjEEq2C8QrNqsNWzeWW34j9q4bCMb-iYyp0v9_c_s_y_g/s320/IMG_3561.JPG" width="213px" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Max happy to be back at the playground</td></tr>
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Obviously during the winter months these activities are limited, so I really had to challenge myself to still get out of the house with Max and have at least one activity for us to do each day -- such as: attending story time at the local library, meeting up with other new parents for a play group, or entertaining Max at music and movement classes. But even with these different activities, there was still a lot of idle time at home, and this idle time became increasingly challenging as the winter months crept by. Max was growing before our eyes and becoming increasingly mobile. He quickly learned to entertain himself by finding and frequenting all of the danger spots in our apartment and playing with all the possible harmful objects in our place. Even after baby-proofing, it seemed like most of the time we spent together in the apartment was occupied by me either chasing him away from those places or distracting him from going to those places with more appropriate playthings, such as toys and books. I now understand why parents of little ones need so many! </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Max fights the winter blues at Chelsea Piers</td></tr>
</tbody></table></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><span id="goog_44201200"></span><span id="goog_44201201"></span></strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong>So for me, the arrival of this particular spring season is exciting, beyond the general pleasantness of warmer weather, because I can once again spend a lot of time with Max out of the apartment and into the great outdoors. And just in the nick of time, because these days I desperately need to get out with him between 5 and 7 pm, which can be the most difficult hours of the day. In the late afternoon, Max can grow cranky and fussy just at the time that I get wiped out from having ran around taking care of him all day, and Stewart hasn’t gotten home from work yet. It is too late in the day for Max to take a nap, but too early for him to go down for the night. Plus, during this time there aren’t any planned activities for infants or toddlers. Most parents are instead winding down their day, having dinner with their families or getting their kids ready for bed. Thankfully, now that the weather has improved, I can spend that time strolling Max around the neighborhood, letting him roam at the playground, or pushing him in a swing, until Stewart gets home. Everyone’s mood brightens at that point, because I am happy to get the break I need, Max is happy to see Papa, and Papa is happy to play with Max for the hour or so before his bedtime.</strong></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our family is thrilled that spring is back!</td></tr>
</tbody></table></strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>So welcome back spring, you were missed!!! </strong></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
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</div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-81853474429936333602011-04-14T13:32:00.005-04:002011-04-15T09:41:34.187-04:00How Mothers Are Made<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><em>This is a guest post from Laurie, an amazing woman, mother and friend who, with her husband, is raising their bright and gorgeous three year old daughter, Georgia. Like her half-brother Max, Georgia was conceived and brought into this world by our selfless hero, Christie, through the incredible gift of traditional surrogacy. Thank you so much Laurie for sharing your story with my readers! </em></strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>For the first nine years of my marriage, I insisted that becoming a mother was as much about the journey as the destination. In other words, I thought that unless my body was involved in the process, I could not be a mother. When telling our story, I often say we tried everything but voodoo, and that was next on the list. The list of acronyms for the various medical procedures I endured is a long one.</strong><strong><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Four pregnancies, along with four miscarriages, made me think I'd never experience motherhood. After my final miscarriage, I was ready to try voodoo! When I was grieving over the loss of another baby, I was still making plans to continue treatment. I wanted to try a controversial medical procedure to try to increase my chance of carrying a baby to term. My family, my husband, and finally, my doctor, told me “enough.” My doctor was totally against me trying the procedure, called <a href="http://sharedjourney.com/articles/ivig.html">IVIg</a>.</strong><strong><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>I was gently, but firmly, told it was time to make a decision: stop treatment and accept living my life without becoming a mother; adopt; or find a surrogate mother.</strong><strong><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>After many long talks, lots of research and soul-searching, my husband and I decided to continue our quest to become parents through surrogacy. A few missteps in the beginning eventually led us to Christie, the woman who changed our lives forever just four years ago. She said, “trust me” and I did. She showed me that being a mother is about so much more than carrying a baby in your body. With her help, I did get to experience both the journey and the destination.</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Laurie, her husband, and Christie pregnant with Georgia </td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>This month, we celebrate our daughter's third birthday. A very girly, very pink, party was held in her honor a few days ago. I've been reflecting a lot lately about how much my life has changed. There are days when I long for the old days, when I could come and go as I pleased, when I could go to the bathroom without an audience, when I didn't have to be “on duty” all the time. But only for a moment. I wouldn't trade the reality of my life now for what it was approximately three years and nine months ago, give or take a day.</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Georgia turns 3!</td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>My life these days begins with a lively little girl saying “Good morning, Mommy! I had a great nap!” as she crawls into the bed with me, warm and smelling of sleep and wet diaper. Then we watch cartoons for a while, usually <a href="http://www.nickjr.com/dora-the-explorer/">Dora The Explorer</a>. We snuggle and talk during these mornings together, time I treasure. Next, we get up and begin our day. Our days involve staying at home and reading, coloring, playing dress up, dancing, singing, making crafts with lots of glue and glitter. Some days we have play dates with a local group we found online at <a href="http://www.meetup.com/">http://www.meetup.com/</a>, or we shop for groceries, or run other errands. Sounds pretty boring, right? Not to me. Every day is an adventure and an opportunity for me to learn more about this amazing child. We end our days by reading books, snuggling with Daddy, and gathering up the six or more stuffed animals (the babies) that our little one insists she has to sleep with, and saying goodnight. Before I go to bed myself, I will tiptoe into her room several times just to look at her.</strong><strong><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>When people hear our story, about using a surrogate mother to help us become parents, most will begin to regale us with a horror story of “The Surrogate Who Kept The Baby.” They always want to know if we ever worried about that. The short answer is “NO.” Sure, it has happened to some couples, but it happens far less often than the horror stories everyone seems to know would indicate. Most surrogacy stories are really boring and wonderful. Like ours.</strong><strong><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Another funny question we are often asked is “So, how does that work?” I guess what they want to know is the mechanics of “how” our surrogate mother got pregnant. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_insemination">Artificial Insemination</a>. Google it.</strong><strong><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>People also want to know if my eggs were used. No. They want to know if we used donor eggs. No. We decided to combine the egg donor and gestational carrier into one neat (and attractive, I might add) package. This is called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrogacy">Traditional Surrogacy</a>. They want to know if we used my husband's sperm. Yes.</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Certainly these are nosy questions and sometimes somewhat inappropriate, but I feel that in order to educate people about surrogacy, you have to be prepared to be asked these kinds of questions. I don't mind; I'm proud of the fact that four adults (my husband and I, Christie and her husband) and two children (Christie's boys were an important part of this journey, too) came together to create a child.</strong><strong><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Laurie keeping a watchful eye on her newborn</td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>This child that I love so very, very much, has absolutely zero biological connection to me. And guess what? I'm okay with it. More than okay with it. She and I have a connection that goes beyond biology and always will. She will always know the story of how she came to be. She will always know that she has two handsome and loving half-brothers who are older than she (our surrogate mother's children), and an adorable half-brother who is younger. That would be Max, son of Jacob and Stewart. We have created not only a child through surrogacy, but a large extended family.</strong><strong><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Laurie and Georgia meet newborn Max</td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>These days, my relationship with Christie is exactly what she and I had both hoped it would become...two friends who are also moms. The only thing I'd like to change about it is to live closer so that we can spend more time together. And my husband and I are working on doing just that. We want to live closer not only to our own families, but to our extended families as well.</strong><strong><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>There is one other thing I'd like from Christie: that she honor the part of the surrogacy contract that states that she will potty train my child. She insists that she never saw that part of the contract. It is there, in very small print.</strong><strong><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Is motherhood everything I thought it would be? Absolutely not. It is more. So much more. Happy Birthday, Georgia Grace. You are everything I wished for. Thank you, Christie, for making my dream come true. And, finally, thank you, Jacob, Stewart and Max, for being a part of our wonderful, extended surrogate family.</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><em>We love our new extended family too, Laurie!</em></strong></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-63217350699526802822011-04-04T18:26:00.000-04:002011-04-04T18:26:02.072-04:00Storytelling<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>In my previous post I mentioned that we recently attended my Aunt Beth’s funeral. As we walked to our car to drive back to Manhattan after that long and emotional day, Stewart told me that he found it touching and sweet that my family had gathered at my Uncle Jack’s house after the funeral to spontaneously tell stories about my Aunt Beth’ life. Stewart was glad that Max would grow up in a family that bonded over the enjoyment of sharing stories together about the more colorful moments in everybody’s lives. I was very glad to hear that sentiment from Stewart, as I too love our family’s tradition of storytelling.</strong><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>That love originates from my mother’s father, Noah Finkelstein. Although he passed away when I was only eleven years old, I have fond memories of him telling me stories while I sat on his lap. Some of these stories were make-believe, but the ones that resonate with me to this day were stories mostly true (though all good stories involve a little exaggeration!) about my family, including many about his brothers. </strong><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Any big family occasion is the natural setting for people to sit around and tell stories. This doesn’t happen at every event, but you can usually count on at least some old family classics being told when an event brings somebody new to the party. When that happens, the unsuspecting newcomer is bound to hear about the time that, as a teenager, my brother David threw-up all over my sister Rebecca’s date on a ferris wheel at the town fair; or, about the time when my sister Rebecca as a kid so frustrated my mom in the car that my mom grabbed her ice-cream cone and tried to throw it out the car window . . . not realizing that the window was closed!; or the time that my sister Esther, at age 8, cracked-up the family’s newly purchased used car by putting it in reverse so that it rolled right out of the driveway (and then insisting that she didn’t do it!) </strong><br />
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<strong>Since I am the youngest of my siblings, many of these stories were before time. I think I have an extra appreciation for them because these stories give me a glimpse into what my family was like before I was around, and when my parents were still together. Now that I’ve heard many of them a million times, what I really enjoy about them is seeing the reactions on the faces of the people who are hearing the stories for the first time. For example, I get such a kick out of how much my nieces and nephews love hearing these stories and how they beg for more. I can’t wait until Max is old enough to enjoy them so that I can cherish his reaction when he hears these stories for the first time. I have no doubt that, like all of his cousins, Max will beg us to repeat those he has already heard and beg us to tell him new ones.</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: justify;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong>Of course, he’s going to be particularly interested in stories about his Abba, and just like there are favorite stories about my siblings, there are some family favorites about me too. My personal favorite story involving me is actually the earliest one that I remember. When I was three years old I decided that I wanted to go on a trip by myself. So I did what any logical three year old would do – I packed my little suitcase full of underwear . . . just underwear! Family members differ on who was supposed to be watching me at the time, but I somehow managed to leave the house for my big trip with my suitcase of underwear without anybody seeing me. </strong></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
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<strong>As the story goes, once outside I heard live music, which was coming from the West Orange High School marching band a few blocks away, who were working through a pre-game rehearsal. I followed the music all the way to the high school, where I spotted a big yellow school bus. I was delighted to find the perfect means of transportation for my big trip, and proceeded to climb aboard! But unfortunately, that’s as far as my adventure went. My sister’s friend, who was part of the marching band, recognized me and said, “Oh my god, that’s Jacob Drill!” Next thing I knew, I was hauled into the principal’s office, a phone call was made, and my dad came to pick me up. I knew he was very angry because when I saw him, his bald head was as red as the Gremlin that he was driving at the time!</strong><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1Ya-T49A4DTzb91EWfTx3M-SfXbfoY1gu_BqJ3hH4otqL-8A6ZAtIfVSeL0yR4jJSyCEqqaB7ni8YXDfOlETAnHrBYnknZnMIVLEZUg8SfYpHyMsGEq97vu_w_kHo-P1bc6EnWOsvzFpz/s1600/RED_GREMLIN.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" r6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1Ya-T49A4DTzb91EWfTx3M-SfXbfoY1gu_BqJ3hH4otqL-8A6ZAtIfVSeL0yR4jJSyCEqqaB7ni8YXDfOlETAnHrBYnknZnMIVLEZUg8SfYpHyMsGEq97vu_w_kHo-P1bc6EnWOsvzFpz/s1600/RED_GREMLIN.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">red gremlin</td></tr>
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<strong>With tales like this to hear, I’m sure Max will acquire the same passion for family storytelling as the rest of us. I look forward to having some fun ones starring Max to share too, and in a way this blog is an early effort to do just that!</strong></div></div></div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-41910922453249993302011-03-30T16:27:00.000-04:002011-03-30T18:22:59.191-04:00Pulp Fiction<div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><em>This is a guest post by Stewart, aka "Papa":</em></strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>As a willful 10 month old, Max has taken over our lives, and our apartment, in many ways – not the least of which is our bookshelves. The living room bookcase used to feature nothing but award-winning hard-cover tomes. Never mind if we had actually read any of them, the bookcase advertised to all of our visitors that we possess exquisite literary taste. Updike? Austen? Murakami? Check, check and check!</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong></strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>But that was then. Now our bookcase contains no less than 57 baby books for Max. Goodbye “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” hello “Cat in the Hat”! 57 books for a 47 week old may sound a tad extreme, but it’s not entirely our doing. Presents, hand-me-downs and gift-cards generated the majority of his collection. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigOHzTFcB3z2Zee7VIm_zBe6z-P_jV2n_U-S-FKTFGTHVWfBSMeyhntRp4iBsSEbjpZQ0pPwabWjd_es40qSJhfIhPj5H3P71jzyxDzuBlnMGNQXLviA5ohhiSlFSsdwXuYCs1VoEWPPvF/s1600/IMG_0313.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" r6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigOHzTFcB3z2Zee7VIm_zBe6z-P_jV2n_U-S-FKTFGTHVWfBSMeyhntRp4iBsSEbjpZQ0pPwabWjd_es40qSJhfIhPj5H3P71jzyxDzuBlnMGNQXLviA5ohhiSlFSsdwXuYCs1VoEWPPvF/s320/IMG_0313.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Left side of baby bookshelf</td></tr>
</tbody></table> <div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong>And I’m very glad to have all 57, for a reason that might surprise you: their construction. Books published for Max’s age come in the form of “board books.” That means they are comprised not of leaves of paper, but of thick cardboard slabs. Most of you probably know this, but I didn’t until a couple of years ago, when our nephew Luke (the son of my sister-in-law, Esther) was perhaps a year old. He was very into animals at the time, and Jacob and I had excitedly bought him a huge hard-backed book full of animal photos that we planned to present to him during our next babysitting gig. Esther, however, rained on our parade by correctly pointing out that the glossy animal photos were laid out on thin sheets of paper that Luke would instantly tear up in his enthusiasm over their content. He simply wasn’t ready for paper books. </strong></div></div><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFYunI_sMxxMUPLk2tFgcEJK4v_I2C2FKkMjlKVEpzIozSC_1loHOE6Z7VALcHtfs8K8YFvikSI9Nk3In4ZT0BTvnBSQ6kYVxAhdIKgc798an4CbKx1ahbVKVZq1DW-qG2XnmSgGPpOgEd/s1600/IMG_0314.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" r6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFYunI_sMxxMUPLk2tFgcEJK4v_I2C2FKkMjlKVEpzIozSC_1loHOE6Z7VALcHtfs8K8YFvikSI9Nk3In4ZT0BTvnBSQ6kYVxAhdIKgc798an4CbKx1ahbVKVZq1DW-qG2XnmSgGPpOgEd/s320/IMG_0314.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Right side of baby bookshelf</td></tr>
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong>Max certainly isn’t either, as he reminded me this weekend when his own babysitter came over. As I was cleaning up the apartment Sunday evening in preparation for her arrival, Max was innocently watching me as he sat by the bottom shelf of our bookcase, where we keep our DVD and music collection. When the doorbell rang announcing the babysitter’s arrival, I turned to pick up Max, only to see him cheerfully munching away on the paper cover to my Ella Fitzgerald CD box set! (A <em>cardinal</em> sin in this gaddy’s eyes). After my initial reaction that I was glad the babysitter hadn’t witnessed this abject lack of decorum on the part of my son, I shifted into what probably should have been my initial reaction, which was concern over Max’s decision to start a paper-based diet. It was then that the genius of the board book -- letting babies handle their cardboard pages without tearing them apart, and easing fear of babies’ knack for chomping on their reading materials -- truly hit home. It’s no wonder that the children’s publishing industry nicknames board books: “chewables”! </strong></div></div><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit799H9ixRKKhA_OfRB-XBrCRe-D3fzANrC8WNaQ9r1m81aqFLeucNh9sd2apmG3jmCISDckOhScUKGuDPGt_SyxKdhlHUjAfNi17CHJyVjN712rhjumTgeNUsat3diMT84Yj3kd_2ZjKU/s1600/IMG_0317.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" r6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit799H9ixRKKhA_OfRB-XBrCRe-D3fzANrC8WNaQ9r1m81aqFLeucNh9sd2apmG3jmCISDckOhScUKGuDPGt_SyxKdhlHUjAfNi17CHJyVjN712rhjumTgeNUsat3diMT84Yj3kd_2ZjKU/s320/IMG_0317.JPG" width="320" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Max does Ella wrong</td></tr>
</tbody></table> <div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong>So why am I happy to have 57 of these chewables? Because the pages of board books are so thick, and the books themselves are so tiny – so as to fit in tiny toddler hands – that these books can have as few as <em>four</em> pages to them . . . total. That’s just fine and dandy for the kids, who have the attention span of a cartoon character, but for us parents the experience does not quite satisfy at the Updike, Austen, Murakami level. Don’t get me wrong, one of my favorite parts of my day with Max is reading with him before his bedtime. But part of what makes the experience enjoyable on my end is that I have 57 books to choose from on any given night. In the 15 minutes that Max is on my lap, we tackle at least 5 or 6 books, so having that variety each night is crucial. No matter how much I genuinely enjoy many of Max’s books, if I had to read the same 10 or so night after night I might go crazy! </strong></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong>Now that I feel like I have a little experience in this genre, in my next post I will share with you my all-time favorite books from Max’s collection, and why I find them so enjoyable to read with Max. So if you are in the market for some board books, for yourself or for that special new parent in your life, be sure to check it out! </strong></div></div></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-34824342007516779272011-03-24T18:18:00.000-04:002011-03-24T18:18:59.066-04:00In Memorium, My Aunt Beth<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Last week, Stewart, Max and I drove to the suburbs of Philadelphia to attend the funeral of my Aunt Beth -- my mom’s younger and only sibling. After the service, we went back to my Uncle Jack’s house, where the family gathered to reminisce about the memories we all have of her. Driving home after that emotional day, I recalled my own relationship with Aunt Beth, that began when I was just a kid. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong></strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>As far back as I can remember, I was always fond of my aunt. I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it as a kid, but in retrospect I really liked the way she was somehow able to be direct and witty while at the same time exuding an unassuming and accepting personality that put people at ease. Let me try to give you some examples of what I am talking about. </strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>I have one particular favorite story that perfectly captures Aunt Beth’s direct and witty side. One day, when I was 11 years old or so, I was spending time with my aunt at her home looking at family photographs. I innocently asked her why my mother looked younger than she did in the photos when my mom was actually the older sibling by a couple of years. (Please understand that I hadn’t yet acquired all of the graceful tact that you all know I now possess.) My aunt replied, “That’s easy. It’s because your mother dyes her hair and your grandmother Augusta does good touch up work on her photographs!” As a little kid I was shocked that my mom dyed her hair, and absolutely delighted to be made privy to this family secret! From then on I knew that I had one cool aunt in my Aunt Beth. I have told this story to my mom repeatedly over the years to tease her, and she always responds the same way: “That’s your aunt Beth!”</strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdEaEMyml5D98qKRmV8Ra610aC0TRzPNMoAseA-_4Rt6wlNRCNRnsb5Ka5-cnxCmpqfNlPtBdUQ1hwE_AysyDWGcscC46NmXzzmijgOEdyYz5MIf-UZXIblo4jEj1wupV7ZdP6eNgJiHWc/s1600/IMG_3110.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" r6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdEaEMyml5D98qKRmV8Ra610aC0TRzPNMoAseA-_4Rt6wlNRCNRnsb5Ka5-cnxCmpqfNlPtBdUQ1hwE_AysyDWGcscC46NmXzzmijgOEdyYz5MIf-UZXIblo4jEj1wupV7ZdP6eNgJiHWc/s320/IMG_3110.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mom (l) with her sister, my Aunt Beth (r)</td></tr>
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</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>While perhaps less exciting, what I hold dear even more about my aunt are my memories of her warm, embracing side. My family photo story comes from one of the handful of times that I got to visit Aunt Beth at her house over some of my school vacations when I was a tween. As I mentioned in a prior post, since I am the youngest child in my family by a fairly wide margin, I did not have any cousins to play with growing up, unlike the rest of my siblings. So I cherished my trips to see Aunt Beth. They made me feel special because I had my very own place to go and my own family member to visit. </strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>It is weird now though to realize that I would visit her for an entire week. It doesn’t seem like it now, and I can’t remember any particular conversations we had together during those visits other than my photo story. While I doubt that our conversations ran very deep, my Aunt Beth was a very easy person to be around and I certainly know that enjoyed talking with her. At a point in my life when I didn’t always feel that I related to my peers, and felt vulnerable around them, I felt very safe with my Aunt Beth. She was very attentive, and also had the time to spend with me. When I started visiting her, her oldest kids were already out of the house, and her youngest was a senior in high school who was busy with her own life, so my aunt was free to become my companion. My favorite memories of those visits are playing game after game of scrabble with Aunt Beth, with frequent breaks for ice cream! In fact, my Aunt Beth was a Scrabble maestro. I don’t ever remember winning a game against her during those visits. So what possessed me to keep playing so many games, knowing that I would go down in defeat? I really enjoyed the game, and I was good at it for my age. My grandmother Sadie had taught me how to play, and I liked continuing that tradition with my aunt. Besides, there wasn’t anyone else at the time who would indulge me in playing back-to-back games like she did!</strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>By the time I was in ninth grade, my visits with my aunt ended. Maybe I felt that I was getting too old to be visiting my aunt over school break, I’m not sure. I am sure though that I loved those visits while they lasted, and they helped get me through those difficult middle school years. Afterwards, I still saw my aunt a couple of times a year, and made sure that we played Scrabble every Thanksgiving. </strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Traditions like these have gained new importance in my life now that I’m a parent. When Max is old enough, I look forward to teaching him how to play scrabble and to playing many family games with him and Stewart. Max will also have his Aunt Paula and Uncle David, both avid scrabble players -- plus many other family members -- to play games with, whether it be on school vacation or over family holidays. My hope for Max is that, like me, when he is an adult he will look back fondly on his childhood bonds with the adults in his family’s life who are always there to support and encourage us. </strong></div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-40762282716953633332011-03-15T16:20:00.000-04:002011-03-15T16:20:19.982-04:00"Family" Secret<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>As a gay male couple out and about town with a baby, Stewart and I hear one constant refrain from the many strangers we run into: “Do you remember the Modern Family episode where Cameron and Mitchell . . . .” If you have no idea what I’m talking about, congratulations, you’ve somehow managed to live a fulfilling life during the past two years without watching one of the most highly rated and critically acclaimed sitcoms currently airing on network television. </strong><a href="http://abc.go.com/shows/modern-family"><strong>Modern Family</strong></a><strong> is an ABC sitcom about the hilarious trials and tribulations of three related southern California couples who are each raising families. One of the couples is the aforementioned Mitchell and Cameron, who are gay partners raising a young daughter who they adopted from Vietnam. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong></strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8x0zs2t46B4h0p_W8U1mrAif0t4sfeVCuiGJN5MoDKbre3lvWe_TmYnvQB08Ng81HBh5UQHeXYxfrPl9Kc38c7U3heKz_V-Pqt46I0GPYlqTZdVJdlPUKjzaq6XZLxnsyrt_LlS2bvU0Y/s1600/modernfamily.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><strong><img border="0" height="168" q6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8x0zs2t46B4h0p_W8U1mrAif0t4sfeVCuiGJN5MoDKbre3lvWe_TmYnvQB08Ng81HBh5UQHeXYxfrPl9Kc38c7U3heKz_V-Pqt46I0GPYlqTZdVJdlPUKjzaq6XZLxnsyrt_LlS2bvU0Y/s320/modernfamily.jpg" width="320" /></strong></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Because gay parents raising a small child are such a novelty on mainstream television, many people we’ve met over the past ten months toting Max around have naturally assumed that we are fans of the show. For example, recently we were down in Florida visiting Stewart’s parents, who are staying the month at a </strong><a href="http://www.pgaresort.com/"><strong>resort in Palm Beach</strong></a><strong>. In two separate instances during our four day visit, women came up to us at the resort to dish about Modern Family, assuming, without asking, that we are regular viewers. Obviously these women (it’s almost always women . . . or gay men) are “cool” with our family dynamic, or they wouldn’t enthusiastically approach us to discuss our life with Max as it is supposedly mirrored in this popular sitcom. Because they are so well meaning, I feel the impulse to nod along with every Modern Family plot detail that they delve into with us. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>But, the time has finally come to confess that I have been living a lie. I have terribly misled all of these well-meaning people. The shameful truth is this: before last week, I had never seen an episode of the show. This prevarication is made worse by the fact that this blog has already referenced Modern Family not </strong><a href="http://gaddydaddy.blogspot.com/2010/10/raising-up-kids.html"><strong>once</strong></a><strong>, but </strong><a href="http://gaddydaddy.blogspot.com/2011/03/our-ten-year-journey-to-ten-months.html"><strong>twice</strong></a><strong>, in prior posts. Worse still, Gaddy Daddy was featured on a </strong><a href="http://www.wearegoodkin.com/family/articles/get-ready-modern-family-blogger-week-feb-21st-27th"><strong>website promoting blogs about families akin to those featured on the show</strong></a><strong>. I doubt those running the website realized that they know more about my little Gaddy Daddy website than I know about the famous sitcom they were comparing it to! </strong><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmR9T_S78da-atKtsW8_VVyIkiPJgKuCHxPaa2pJSVtoknAYpa6s3RsXjGRn3eb4L43-XTWK1YWZhb6DbYlp386cPkMGPnx3KL4BmGpo-PtNKiSfKEo6j_9p_mKIbb6Hhe_zU3U6te1u45/s1600/Modern-Family-Gay-Kiss.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><strong><img border="0" height="320" q6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmR9T_S78da-atKtsW8_VVyIkiPJgKuCHxPaa2pJSVtoknAYpa6s3RsXjGRn3eb4L43-XTWK1YWZhb6DbYlp386cPkMGPnx3KL4BmGpo-PtNKiSfKEo6j_9p_mKIbb6Hhe_zU3U6te1u45/s320/Modern-Family-Gay-Kiss.jpg" width="203" /></strong></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Cameron, Mitchell & daughter Lily</strong></td></tr>
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</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>For people who know my television habits, this actually may not come as a big surprise. I generally don’t watch sitcoms, or for that matter many shows on network TV. This isn’t to say that my taste is too highbrow for that, though. I watch plenty of dubious television programs that hopefully Stewart will allow me to keep secret from you all. (<em>Stewart: let’s just say that it’s not all that unusual to find episodes of </em></strong><a href="http://www.bravotv.com/"><strong><em>Bravo’s</em></strong></a><strong><em> “</em></strong><a href="http://www.bravotv.com/the-real-housewives-of-new-york-city"><strong><em>The Real Housewives of . . . Everywhere</em></strong></a><strong><em>” playing on our TV!</em>) My point is that I have absolutely nothing against Modern Family. Any show that beams loving same-sex led families into the living-rooms of mainstream America is all right in my book. It’s just that network sitcoms generally aren’t on my radar screen. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>But I’m tired of deceiving the many well meaning strangers who apparently believe that one of the duties of being a gay dad is being a fan of this show. So last week I decided I would go online and watch an episode of Modern Family to see what all the fuss was about, and to see just how astutely the show spoke to my life as a gay dad. The episode I watched was entitled “</strong><a href="http://abc.go.com/shows/modern-family/episode-detail/unplugged/581240"><strong>Unplugged</strong></a><strong>,” in which Mitchell and Cameron freak out about the difficulty of getting their daughter, Lily, into a prestigious preschool . . . that is, until they are told that they can play the diversity card of being an “alternative family” to guarantee them admission into the pre-school of their dreams. Naturally, given that this is a sitcom, the guys get overconfident about the admissions process after hearing this news, leading to unexpected, and very funny, complications for their chances. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibDC-t1W8BH8rVRVZiCi0GgxZQ1NAG_WhnbdXrPGk1lvFS0ZrrwYhVvqXqZBo-rsfbr7UG_az01r1JhSwP1BILGi0PmuyWyXK5LkVf0H7UwF3nmUknH4pjnSDL0hrzy4jjSw2d7BRRG-Hy/s1600/Modern-Family-01-2010-10-20.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><strong><img border="0" height="214" q6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibDC-t1W8BH8rVRVZiCi0GgxZQ1NAG_WhnbdXrPGk1lvFS0ZrrwYhVvqXqZBo-rsfbr7UG_az01r1JhSwP1BILGi0PmuyWyXK5LkVf0H7UwF3nmUknH4pjnSDL0hrzy4jjSw2d7BRRG-Hy/s320/Modern-Family-01-2010-10-20.jpg" width="320" /></strong></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Fretting over Lily's pre-school interview in "Unplugged"</strong></td></tr>
</tbody></table></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>I must admit that the episode not only had a lot of laughs, but rang true to life for me as well. It just so happens that even though Max is just 10 months old, Stewart and I have already discussed potential pre-schools for him. Those of you living in New York City will know why; for the rest of you, let’s just say that this city is notorious for being ridiculously </strong><a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/03/15/only-in-nyc-mother-v-pre-school/"><strong>cut-throat and competitive</strong></a><strong> about getting your toddler into a top city pre-school. At some schools, just getting an application is competitive, and then there are the interviews! Modern Family’s “Unplugged” episode gave Stewart and me a very humorous sneak peek into what we have in store for ourselves, and I enjoyed it. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>I still can’t say that I will watch Modern Family on a regular basis. Sitcoms still aren’t my cup of tea, and it’s not as if I have a ton of idle time to watch new shows. But I’m certainly glad that I can now say that I’ve seen it, and I’m sure I’ll catch other episodes when they’re on. It’s a smart and funny show, and if it encourages the many people that I run into with Max to say a kind and supportive word to us, consider me a big and grateful fan who hopes it enjoys a long run. </strong></div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-18312138834921119552011-03-04T18:26:00.000-05:002011-03-04T18:39:56.420-05:00Our Ten Year Journey to Ten Months<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>While in my late teens, my mom liked to tell me: “Jacob no matter how far out there or different you think you are, you have very traditional values.” She was right. Last weekend marked the ten year anniversary of my first date with my (now) husband, Stewart, on February 26, 2001. Ever since I came out as gay at age 22, I knew that my ideal future would include a life-long partner and a kid to raise with him. I was not envisioning a “husband” per se, because gay marriage was not only legally unavailable in the mid 1990s, it wasn’t even on the radar screen back then. That didn’t discourage my plans though. To the contrary, I even pinpointed the exact age I wanted to be when having a kid: age 38. I figured that gave me plenty of time to have fun as a single guy, and then get my act together through a serious relationship. Of course, life doesn’t run according to our planned timetables, and Max arrived when I was 36. But who doesn’t love an early present?! </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSZKXdtpA6jWJ6Ksv3Tf5QjTDmdCX4VpC_kIpBnucdiU_40fVPiNacRYgYCceB3CW8RF4_nGg09uLcxL8T13Xjd00n1Izn3_fXoTJnV9TeMZyCfOmH7WLKqBNFpyGbvczyfbuDbg8ZT1hR/s1600/photo%255B2%255D.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><strong><img border="0" height="320" l6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSZKXdtpA6jWJ6Ksv3Tf5QjTDmdCX4VpC_kIpBnucdiU_40fVPiNacRYgYCceB3CW8RF4_nGg09uLcxL8T13Xjd00n1Izn3_fXoTJnV9TeMZyCfOmH7WLKqBNFpyGbvczyfbuDbg8ZT1hR/s320/photo%255B2%255D.JPG" width="239" /></strong></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Summer 2001, months into our relationship</strong></td></tr>
</tbody></table></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>While I ultimately succeeded in my aspirations beyond my wildest dreams, they didn’t always seem attainable. First off, I had the small problem of actually finding a life-long partner. Before I met Stewart, my longest romantic relationship had lasted all of 2 months. I remember being 27 years old and worrying that I was never going to find Mr. Right. Secondly, even assuming I found that special person, what was to say he would want to embark with me on the journey of parenthood? The concept seemed much more far-fetched back then than it does now. I didn’t know any gay male couples that had kids, or for that matter many gay male couples at all, and there was no such thing as the sitcom </strong><a href="http://abc.go.com/shows/modern-family"><strong>Modern Family</strong></a><strong> on network TV. The only gay dads I had even heard of were men who came out as gay later in life after they already had children through a straight relationship. Most childless gay men who came out back then thought that in doing so they were necessarily sacrificing any opportunity to have kids of their own. Stewart has told me that he was one of those men. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Nor was it immediately obvious when Stewart and I met that we were destined to create the family we now have. Stewart was dating somebody else at the time, and so we were just good friends for a period of six months before he broke off his relationship and we became a couple. During those months we slowly became closer as we played </strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squash_(sport)"><strong>squash</strong></a><strong> together first weekly, and then twice weekly, and then started hanging out together after each squash match. Sometimes that entailed watching college basketball while having lunch at a sports bar, or discussing books at a cafe, or checking out art galleries in </strong><a href="http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/North_America/United_States_of_America/New_York_State/New_York_City-841252/Things_To_Do-New_York_City-Chelsea-BR-1.html"><strong>Chelsea</strong></a><strong>. I realized that I had finally found somebody who shared all of my eclectic interests in life. Therefore it hardly seemed strange at all that our first official date was attending a </strong><a href="http://devils.nhl.com/"><strong>New Jersey Devils</strong></a><strong> pro hockey game followed by a late-night visit to a gay bar back in the city to watch a favorite drag queen perform. But I’m pretty sure we were the only couple with that itinerary that evening!</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZwXKGSoNg-_anHLiOifk0cJYp5_L6QpdMcHCE_f4bHE0ocnV6949rUgHgkzlGni-U4gKVbBdhYNOuOA6pbq6AggbwPgw7r9Zq3Dn-ACcOx6KdD6eEPL_WsGrmXBbPXIcVMn5XGwe-O79U/s1600/photo%255B1%255D.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><strong><img border="0" height="320" l6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZwXKGSoNg-_anHLiOifk0cJYp5_L6QpdMcHCE_f4bHE0ocnV6949rUgHgkzlGni-U4gKVbBdhYNOuOA6pbq6AggbwPgw7r9Zq3Dn-ACcOx6KdD6eEPL_WsGrmXBbPXIcVMn5XGwe-O79U/s320/photo%255B1%255D.JPG" width="239" /></strong></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Ticket from our first date, a hockey game</strong></td></tr>
</tbody></table></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>From the very beginning I was up-front with Stewart about my serious interest in becoming a father down the road, and thankfully Stewart was receptive to the idea. As our relationship progressed, we renewed this discussion at every important step along the way -- including when we moved in together in 2003 and when we tied the knot in 2008 -- just to make sure we were still on the same page. Each time we were more and more enthusiastic about pursuing parenthood together, and finally decided to go for it in 2009. The rest is history, as they say, and our precious Max, born almost 10 months ago, is proof positive that a little dream I had in my twenties could actually become an amazing reality over a decade later.</strong></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyYjOExLo0Oa_bOgnq3ONKVL4404XpKYvJkSWmD9K6-zM3bSG_V5RgI5VqJsUJsQI3vA2pzqYW605es86M_4xtqLNWODyDKSVocG4deK9qXYe3latT16iq8m31jHjD6BRNRLIEKey9YAKU/s1600/west+palm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><strong><img border="0" height="213" l6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyYjOExLo0Oa_bOgnq3ONKVL4404XpKYvJkSWmD9K6-zM3bSG_V5RgI5VqJsUJsQI3vA2pzqYW605es86M_4xtqLNWODyDKSVocG4deK9qXYe3latT16iq8m31jHjD6BRNRLIEKey9YAKU/s320/west+palm.jpg" width="320" /></strong></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>With 10 month old Max on the 10 year anniversary of our first date</strong></td></tr>
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</strong></div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-24620096157648974162011-02-23T10:26:00.003-05:002011-02-23T21:07:55.351-05:00Just Show Up: A Love Story<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong></strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><em>The following is a guest post from my very dear friend Joy. Her son, Nathaniel, and Max are the best of buds. Her post is an incredibly brave and moving account of her struggle with, and ultimate triumph over, postpartum depression. It is a vitally important, and riveting, read and I could not be more honored to present it here at Gaddy Daddy. Thank you Joy. To the rest of you: read on, you'll be glad you did.</em></strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>I don’t remember the exact moment I fell in love with my son. It might have been when he appeared to be listening intently as I read him my favorite book from childhood, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312377509/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0385077254&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0HF0AMWWTNJSNCD8NX0A">The Velveteen Rabbit.</a> It might have been when he he nuzzled his face against mine. It might have been when he reached out and grabbed my finger when I was holding him in his baby carrier. But I know it wasn’t the first time I held him, and the shock I felt at not experiencing the rush of love I had expected was staggering. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Even though I had a C-section, I still expected to see my son right away. I imagined he’d be lifted over the curtain and placed onto my chest. He would open his eyes and look at me, and I would look at him, and the vast collective wisdom of countless generations of mothers who had come before me would beam into my heart. It did not happen that way. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Instead, my son and I had our first meeting in the recovery room at the hospital, hours after his birth. My parents and my husband were there. A nice nurse kept asking me where I was on the pain scale from one to ten. Someone must have handed the baby to me at some point, but the memory is elusive, just beyond my reach. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>The last thing I remembered clearly was being in the operating room. The baby had just been delivered but he wasn’t crying yet—the nurses were still cleaning out his mouth. I was shaking violently, either from fear or from the drugs that had been pumped into my system for hours, and my arms kept falling off the table. I begged the anesthesiologist, who was seated beside me, to do something for my nausea. Before she added another drug to my IV, I heard a nurse asking my doctor the reason for the C-section, presumably for hospital paperwork. “It’s late and I wanted to go home,” he said. I suppose he was joking, but after 36 hours of labor, I wasn’t really in the mood to laugh. I lost consciousness before I heard Nathaniel’s first cry.</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>In the blurry weeks that followed, I went over and over the events of that day in my mind, like a crime scene investigator, trying to figure out exactly when something had gone horribly wrong. Because something was clearly horribly wrong. When I held Nathaniel, I felt a pounding, all-consuming anxiety. One word thrummed through my head like a drum beat: Escape. Escape. Escape. I wanted to put Nathaniel in his crib, walk out the door, and never come back. When we took him for his first check-up, I sincerely hoped the doctor would see I was not up for the challenge of motherhood and allow us to leave the baby there, so he could be given to a real mother who could take care of him. A real mother who—let’s be honest—wanted to take care of him.</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>What kind of mother was I? What kind of person was I? You’re a monster. I told myself. A monster who doesn’t love her own child. It didn’t make sense. I had always thought of myself as having a stronger-than-average capacity for compassion. I had often patted myself on the back for being the kind of woman who was just born to be a mother. But here I was, desperately plotting my escape from the role I had craved most in life. Was I truly the most selfish woman in New York City? Was I as evil and broken as I felt? </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>People had been so happy for me when I was pregnant, and now I wondered if they all secretly hated me and wanted me to suffer. Had they known all along that I would fail at this? It seemed unlikely, but I couldn’t come up with any other way to explain why someone who truly cared about me hadn't warned me that I was just not mother material. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>When my husband took pictures of me with the baby, I tried to force my face into a smile, but my eyes told the truth. They were flat and empty. My voice sounded like it was coming from down a long tunnel. I had no appetite. Food tasted wrong. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>A few friends suggested that I might have <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0004481">postpartum depression</a>, but I didn’t think that could be it. That felt like a crutch, an excuse. Besides, I wasn’t crying all the time. I wasn’t crying at all. I was just sitting there, either numb or panicking, incapable of doing anything right. I wasn’t sick. I was useless. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>The irony was that I had wanted a baby desperately for years. When I announced my pregnancy, a cousin told me, “We didn’t know if you’d ever get married, but we always knew you’d be a mother.” I knew it, too. But now that it had happened, all I could think about was how badly I was screwing it up. I can’t do this. I won’t do it. I can’t do this. I won’t do it. These words ran through my mind day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute. Every time the phone rang, I hoped it was someone calling to rescue me. I wanted to be taken away, to be fixed. Friends came and visited, but they always left. “Take me with you,” I remember begging one of them. I tried to pretend I was joking, but I wasn’t.</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>When I was feeling worse, not better, after a few weeks, I called a psychopharmacologist I had seen a few years back. She was German and straightforward, and she assured me that with the right medication, I would feel just like my old self. I didn’t believe her. My old self was gone—I was sure of that. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>I went back to a therapist I had seen before my marriage, but she had become, over time, more of a friend than a counselor. I was too ashamed for her to see me in my current state, and I sensed she didn’t know what to do to help me. She sat beside me on the couch and cried for me because I couldn’t cry for myself. I didn’t go back to see her again.</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Next I ended up with a Freudian psychoanalyst who was recommended by my father’s cousin, a psychiatrist. Dr. Freud, as my husband called him, was kind and reassuring, but he wanted to talk about my childhood, and I wanted to focus on what was happening in the moment. I saw him several times, and he did have some astute insights, but I needed more. By this point Nathaniel was over two months old. I feared that if I didn’t find the right help, I would never bond with him, and I would never be able to look into his eyes with sincere, selfless devotion. Also, my maternity leave was ending and I had to return to work. I needed to take a more aggressive approach. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>A good friend had given me the phone number of the <a href="http://www.postpartumny.org/">postpartum depression hotline in New York City</a>, and I carried it with me for weeks before I got up the nerve to call. When I finally did, I left a message and the kindest woman called me back. She assured me that I did have postpartum depression, and that it was surmountable. The other doctors I had seen told me that, too, but she was the first one I really believed. She told me she heard women say exactly what I was saying all the time, and that was a tremendous comfort. I had felt so alone in my dark, ugly thoughts and feelings, and here was someone telling me that she had personally talked to other women who had gone through exactly what I was going through. They had gotten better, and I would get better, too.</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>The woman from the hotline suggested a therapist specializing in postpartum depression. When I called the therapist, she took the time to speak with me on the phone and to reassure me. She told me that the fact that I experienced guilt for my negative feelings about motherhood was a good sign. It meant I didn’t want to feel that way. And she told me she had had postpartum depression, too, and she had gotten over it and had gone on to have a second child. On my first visit to see her, she gave me her own personal copy of Brooke Shields’ book about postpartum depression, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Down-Came-Rain-Postpartum-Depression/dp/B000FDFWB4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298428470&sr=8-1">Down Came the Rain</a>. It was marked with the therapist’s notes she had written to herself during her own depression. I read the book immediately and found it heartening and reassuring. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>With this therapist’s help, and with the help of the right medication prescribed for me by the psychiatrist she recommended, I started to feel better. It didn’t happen all at once. But it happened.</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>And something else helped me, too: A line from an <a href="http://nymag.com/arts/music/profiles/67380/">article I read in New York Magazine about Rosanne Cash</a>. When describing her work ethic, she said, “Just show up, just do it. Even if you feel like shit and you think you’re terrible and you’ll never get better and it will never go anywhere, just show up and do it. And, eventually, something happens.” That spoke to me. I felt like a terrible mother and I didn’t know what I was doing. I couldn’t figure out which cry meant, “I’m hungry” and which cry meant “I’m tired.” I couldn’t get the expensive Moby baby wrap to work. I didn’t know how often to bathe the baby, or when to put him down for a nap, or whether to put him in pajamas or to let him sleep in a diaper. I was sure that if left alone in my care, he would die. But when my mind started with its refrain of I can’t do it. I won’t do it. I can’t do it. I won’t do it, I thought of that quote from Rosanne Cash. Just show up, I told myself instead. Just do it. So I did. And she was right: something happened. I started to get the hang of it. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>By the time my son was born, I had read countless interviews with both mothers and fathers who, when asked what surprised them most about parenthood, answered that it was the tremendous amount of love they felt the moment they first saw their babies. Idiots! I thought. Of course you felt what way. How else could you possibly feel? I imagined that when I first held my baby, I would be flooded with a love so massive and pure that it would render me completely selfless. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>I was certain I would gaze into his eyes for the first time and recognize him as I recognized my own mother. But I didn’t recognize him. He was a little stranger. Thinking back on it now, I don’t remember how he felt in my arms when he was tiny. Sometimes I find myself thinking, I wish I had known Nathaniel when he was first born. And of course that’s foolish, because I was right there. But also, I wasn’t. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>He’s just nine months old now, and I’m still coming to terms with what happened during the earliest days of his life. To see us together these days, you’d never know. When he smiles, my heart bursts, fireworks-style, into a thousand tiny stars. I love nothing more than snuggling with him or crawling behind him on the floor or reading to him. And I guess I’ll never know what exactly went wrong, whether I was traumatized by the C-section or if I experienced some sort of hormonal crash or if people with my Type-A personality—those of us who like to do things perfectly on the first try, those of us who like to be in control—are just destined for a certain degree of panic when we become mothers and lose control of absolutely everything. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>I thought I would fall in love with my baby the first time he lay in my arms. But that didn’t happen. It couldn’t happen until the thing that broke in me when he came into the world was fixed. But I love him now, boundlessly and without reservation. And maybe what matters most isn’t the moment we fall in love, but what we do with that love once it takes hold. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifWhLqgDMg5jNs1J1GzsmqVMPl3ZU2fJVHmhed9FjhT4CH16LJIm1bw-e5g418HAJybJ9qEn739ekXjLM8Ow7yzP15JDMfcL5ZjlSYvvSIpVkQbj1M2V9WOL9EysHW7joDxBXVP-o_EnQD/s1600/Nathaniel_and_Mom_December_2010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" j6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifWhLqgDMg5jNs1J1GzsmqVMPl3ZU2fJVHmhed9FjhT4CH16LJIm1bw-e5g418HAJybJ9qEn739ekXjLM8Ow7yzP15JDMfcL5ZjlSYvvSIpVkQbj1M2V9WOL9EysHW7joDxBXVP-o_EnQD/s1600/Nathaniel_and_Mom_December_2010.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Joy and Nathaniel</td></tr>
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<em><strong>If you, or someone who know, suffers from postpartum depression, help is available. The New York hotline is: 631-422-2255. The national hotline is: 800-PPD-MOMS. Please call.</strong></em>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-10813046773225001202011-02-19T16:13:00.000-05:002011-02-19T16:20:10.284-05:00Super Dad Versus Sleep Training -- The Showdown<div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Like any problem you have, admitting that you have it is the first step towards solving it! My most recent pressing problem – I was finally forced to admit to myself – was that 9 month old Max could not fall asleep on his own.</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong></strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>In the months before Max was born, I was newly laid off from work, and therefore I had plenty of time to prepare to become Super Dad, including reading one parenting book after another. All of them devote considerable content to sleep training, which was my first warning of what was to come by becoming a new parent: many disjointed, sleep-deprived nights with my crying baby! But donning my imaginary Super Dad suit, I vowed to have Max sleep trained at 6 months old. </strong></div><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik_L9-RaI4M55MchwgMTgKatQGPNFgEVE8prjchc9U9xbi1kdgeRMIs1VfWw8XWEKTVtbRCsl5RWo8BFvHAQN9aGdkaId_sBFDb8Cv6JnHfuMgXno8ek8mC7gCIk8v98s5cEVdXPkw0Uh7/s1600/40_sleep.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" j6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik_L9-RaI4M55MchwgMTgKatQGPNFgEVE8prjchc9U9xbi1kdgeRMIs1VfWw8XWEKTVtbRCsl5RWo8BFvHAQN9aGdkaId_sBFDb8Cv6JnHfuMgXno8ek8mC7gCIk8v98s5cEVdXPkw0Uh7/s1600/40_sleep.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<strong></strong><strong> </strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Why by then? Pediatrician <a href="http://www.draribrown.com/">Dr. Ari Brown</a> declares in her book, <a href="http://www.windsorpeak.com/baby411/default.html">Baby 411</a>, that “100 percent” of healthy 6 month old babies are perfectly capable of falling asleep on their own. Indeed, she notes that even “your four-month old baby is aware of his surroundings.” Therefore, if you allow him to “fall asleep in your arms and you sneak him into bed, he will awaken at the end of his sleep cycle (every 90 minutes) looking for comfort” – i.e. will wake up crying until you comfort him asleep again. But, “if your child is put into his crib at bedtime still awake and you leave the room,” he will eventually learn to “fall asleep alone and content.” Boy did I like the sound of that! Hence, my Super Dad pledge to get Max to this nirvana by 6 months old. Most of my parent peers hadn’t accomplished this feat before 7 months at the earliest, and I was determined to beat them by a month (not that I’m competitive or anything!) </strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Then . . . Max was actually born. </strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>In Max’s initial months, I was no longer thinking about sleep training – it simply wasn’t an option. The Baby 411 book states that at this age babies are defenseless, and therefore need to be comforted whenever they exhibit distress. Fortunately, by 3 months old Max was beginning to sleep through the night. First thing we did at his bedtime was swaddle him like there was no tomorrow (which Stewart blogged about <a href="http://gaddydaddy.blogspot.com/2010/09/swaddle-me.html">here</a>). That done, Stewart and I then diverged in our methods of getting Max asleep. Stewart rocked and bounced Max to sleep in his arms, and I bounced Max in his <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fisher-Price-K2564-Rainforest-Bouncer/dp/B000I2WB6G">Fisher Price bouncy seat</a>. In the beginning these were painless processes. Max was light weight, and it would take us ten minutes at the most to get Max asleep and smoothly transferred into his co-sleeper or, later, his crib. I was feeling pretty proud, and I knew my parenting peers were pretty envious (to whom, of course, I had bragged about our magical methods).</strong><strong><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjva9_BNFgQG0GOtfSfJDMOkigz-bgx9tt0kz31QmYXop4aMS5j8-_ct0wE14UBB5CwrsT8Ztiam8CsTVKXzXR-PjVb-hfhMiYCQ6Ox2hZbJMjosjkYNjXk-k1P0BAfkh5b4iLmMiiWIsw2/s1600/Max+%25282463%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" j6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjva9_BNFgQG0GOtfSfJDMOkigz-bgx9tt0kz31QmYXop4aMS5j8-_ct0wE14UBB5CwrsT8Ztiam8CsTVKXzXR-PjVb-hfhMiYCQ6Ox2hZbJMjosjkYNjXk-k1P0BAfkh5b4iLmMiiWIsw2/s320/Max+%25282463%2529.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bouncy seat sleep . . . ahhh!</td></tr>
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Unfortunately, over time, as Max became more and more cognitively alert, putting Max down for the night became more and more of an ordeal, so much so that Stewart and I would negotiate on which one of us was due to put Max down that evening! Stewart, who once was able to get the job done by easily gliding around the apartment with Max swaddled in his arms, now had to frantically pace about for what seemed liked hours with a 22 pound, 6 month old Max weighing down his arms. By the time Max finally fell asleep, Stewart’s back killed and he wasn’t in the best mood. My method had also broken down. Max had grown quite a bit vertically and was much more mobile, which made bouncing him in his bouncy seat much more difficult. His feet were now hanging out of the bouncy seat and he was constantly turning over and trying to climb out of the chair. Hopelessly bouncing Max in a dark lonely room for what sometimes felt like eons to get him asleep certainly did not feel like a Super Dad moment! </strong><strong></strong><strong>And if all of this were not bad enough, getting Max to fall asleep was just one bedtime issue. Once he was asleep, in the seat or Stewart’s arms, we could no longer easily transfer Max into his crib without risking him waking up, which would require us to have to start the process all over again. Yikes! Max was also waking up at least once, if not multiple times, during the middle of the night, crying to be fed. Getting up and feeding him was not so bad. But starting the whole demanding process of getting him back to sleep – now in the dead of night – was nothing short of brutal. </strong></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwno-xRH68I5inu2WpwHHLV-nN45Sbcrw6jgGvoLELajG6zO1OPNdcYYwBsOhWeQbOVpmpJMwbD5-bmxapErAY7Z7HLLs213MuPWXNbJtH7bFp3Bgpw-KbS4P2nktrjMUGtEbHg-QJP41g/s1600/Max+%25282551%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" j6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwno-xRH68I5inu2WpwHHLV-nN45Sbcrw6jgGvoLELajG6zO1OPNdcYYwBsOhWeQbOVpmpJMwbD5-bmxapErAY7Z7HLLs213MuPWXNbJtH7bFp3Bgpw-KbS4P2nktrjMUGtEbHg-QJP41g/s320/Max+%25282551%2529.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sleep in the crib? Who me?</td></tr>
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</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Many mornings after these rough nights with Max, Stewart and I would have the same familiar conversation:</strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Me: "Hun, this is no joke, it is seriously time to start sleep training."</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Stewart: "Okay, let’s read up on it to refresh ourselves about the process, and make a plan." </strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>There are many books and theories out there on sleep training. We decided to go with the <a href="http://www.babycenter.com/0_the-ferber-method-demystified_7755.bc">“Ferber method”</a> which is explained in Dr. Ferber’s bestselling book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Solve-Your-Childs-Sleep-Problems/dp/0743201639/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1298145887&sr=8-1-catcorr">Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems</a>. Ferber states that you should have the same nightly ritual to prepare your baby for sleep (such as reading, cuddling, and singing to him). But, directly opposite to what we were doing, Dr. Ferber declares that you should not let your baby fall asleep during this routine, i.e. by feeding, rocking, or being rubbed by you. Instead, once he is relaxed and sleepy – but importantly, NOT asleep, you should put your baby down in his crib to fall asleep on his own, while you leave the room. Ferber believes in “progressive waiting” which is once you have put your baby down, when he starts howling (and, believe me, it is a “when” and not an “if”) you should briefly return to the baby’s crib at increasingly extended intervals to reassure him (and make yourself feel better) that you have not abandoned him. Eventually, after a couple of crying jags by the baby and visits by you, Ferber assures that he will fall asleep on his own. This “sleep training” is supposed to last a few nights, after which the baby learns that crib-time at night-time means sleep, and will fall asleep on his own with minimal fuss.</strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>So we knew how to sleep train Max, but we kept finding different reasons to put it off, as Max at 6 months old turned into 7 months old, turned into 8 months old. Max was sick for portions of those months, and we didn’t want to start when Max was feeling vulnerable. My being sick for the month of January was another excuse. And Stewart also had one: if he had to get to work early in the mornings, or on the weekends, we didn’t want to disrupt Stewart’s sleep, as we knew sleep training Max would do for at least the first few nights. We also feared the very process of sleep training. Stewart couldn’t bear to hear Max cry out for us in the dark when Max was used to being rocked to sleep. I feared sleep training, not because I hated to hear Max cry (though that’s certainly no fun), but because I worried we would fail at it and then have no options left to get Max sleeping through the night in a sane way. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRrqTehmpE4Lwnx5db47xKAg3-NJvG6w-TKcJxUyNFvypntM01a4XtKYF-Gen2uxm8qAKR1FPvtkGlw1IUXX8318JyLlRv4CUw2ycULJkJT_q9g1G-xU1Kg9k4_xsb302vi-f9NQ6khI6b/s1600/sleep+training.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="285" j6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRrqTehmpE4Lwnx5db47xKAg3-NJvG6w-TKcJxUyNFvypntM01a4XtKYF-Gen2uxm8qAKR1FPvtkGlw1IUXX8318JyLlRv4CUw2ycULJkJT_q9g1G-xU1Kg9k4_xsb302vi-f9NQ6khI6b/s400/sleep+training.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Last Friday we finally bit the bullet and started sleep training Max. We had run out of excuses, and even Max’s very mellow pediatrician informed us at Max’s 9 month check-up that it was time to begin. So far, the process has gone much smoother than expected. The first night was by far the worst. Max cried for 20 minutes before he went down, which was tough to sit through, no matter how often we checked on him. But miraculously, once he fell asleep, he didn’t wake up even once during the middle of the night. A full night’s rest for us? We had forgotten what that felt like! The second night Max only cried for 5 minutes before he fell asleep; but, life not being perfect, he did wake up during the night. After feeding him though, he amazingly went back to sleep for good within minutes. Yes! Okay, so Dr. Ferber and others declare that you shouldn’t feed your child when he wakes up in the middle of night, because it gives him an excuse to do so. But hey, one step at a time for us! </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Now a full week into sleep training, both Max and his parents are getting better sleep, making for happier mornings (and noons, and nights) for everyone. Max has been as cheerful as ever, which I take to mean he doesn’t hold his first night 20-minute cry-a-thon against us. Frankly, we are kicking ourselves that we didn’t do this earlier. While Max does not always fall asleep in 5 minutes, getting him down for the night has gotten relatively painless, and certainly nothing like the grueling procedure it was before. For you parents out there who are skeptical or afraid of sleep training, give it a chance -- it may just drastically improve the quality of your family’s life. </strong></div><strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>The Winner, by TKO: Super Dad!</strong></div><br />
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</div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-91703157930957953452011-02-06T18:20:00.000-05:002011-02-06T18:20:42.427-05:00Gay Dads & New Moms Over 40 -- the Interview<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>I am thrilled to announce that yours truly was featured this weekend on the wonderful blog "<a href="http://flowerpowermom.com/">Flower Power Mom</a>". Flower Power Mom is a blog for and about the growing number of women who have children after age 40, and the unique challenges that they face as mothers. It is written by the estimable Angel La Liberte, a published author and media commentator widely sought to provide her experience and expertise on this fascinating subject. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYvPi8PoJSv0d6FCDpDxnAZRUeovCgtuZv9r0CNp-bwto43ZtOYvnuiHgQdmxF6eglcwEDgmgzD1C8HgIdFelxsRy8vSntC4SU2eobhMENadf-lwRHx-50gwE6nw0yIteF4bgGOl5vUzOR/s1600/FB-FPM-Logo-250x250.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" h5="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYvPi8PoJSv0d6FCDpDxnAZRUeovCgtuZv9r0CNp-bwto43ZtOYvnuiHgQdmxF6eglcwEDgmgzD1C8HgIdFelxsRy8vSntC4SU2eobhMENadf-lwRHx-50gwE6nw0yIteF4bgGOl5vUzOR/s1600/FB-FPM-Logo-250x250.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>After seeing the Gaddy Daddy website, Angel came up with the insightful realization that gay men having kids and women over 40 having kids actually have a lot in common. After giving it some thought, I completely agreed, and Angel asked me if she could interview me for a post on her site about this unexpected connection. Of course I agreed, and the result is a post she created that is now up on her site, provocatively entitled: "<a href="http://flowerpowermom.com/gay-dad-defends-moms-over-40/">Gay Dad Defends Moms Over 40</a>." I think she did an amazing job synthesising my rambling thoughts into a coherent narrative that I think you all will enjoy. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Please <a href="http://flowerpowermom.com/gay-dad-defends-moms-over-40/">check it out</a>. If you are as happy with the results as I am, be sure to leave a comment on Angel's site letting her know! I'm also adding Flower Power Mom to my blogroll because her site is chock full of great, informative posts that I plan to keep following, and encourage you all to do the same.</strong></div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-10203009519233634672011-02-03T15:50:00.000-05:002011-02-03T16:51:48.251-05:00Please Stop Mothering Me!<div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><em>This is a guest post from Stewart, aka "Papa":</em></strong><br />
<br />
<strong>More than once, parents in the workforce have told me that they bet I am secretly happy to have an office to go to that allows me to escape “dealing” with my baby all day. Apparently they feel that way, and I must admit that on some tough parenting days the thought has certainly crossed my mind. </strong><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Sa5oK4HLf2XgqQZL3YI5b-rQ7D9J5bZNEsq6iwpvwAnQWPRxnHBIo39Z0YOLBoke8TzHpWIVrxoM9rZ56mO9bhDzleCmC-0vwPFi7s1Rqw_t4iyxr-z16In7cinqzbwe4pAqk4NeP662/s1600/20020925.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" s5="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Sa5oK4HLf2XgqQZL3YI5b-rQ7D9J5bZNEsq6iwpvwAnQWPRxnHBIo39Z0YOLBoke8TzHpWIVrxoM9rZ56mO9bhDzleCmC-0vwPFi7s1Rqw_t4iyxr-z16In7cinqzbwe4pAqk4NeP662/s320/20020925.jpg" width="217" /></a></div><br />
<strong>But generally speaking, nothing could be further from the truth. As we gay dads like to say, we can’t have kids by accident, but only through what is usually a long, involved process that is not for the faint of heart. So if we have kids, it is likely because we ardently wanted to become parents. It would make no sense to then look to “escape” that role once our dream finally comes true. Instead, I take parenting Max very seriously, both by maximizing the quality of the time that I get to spend with him each day – playtime, chowtime, bathtime, bedtime -- and by continuing to provide for him even when we aren’t together – by buying him food, diapers, wipes, toys, books and clothing. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>So it is a little frustrating that the billion-dollar baby product industry likes to pretend that actively parenting dads don’t exist. Here are some examples of what I am talking about:</strong> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><ul><li><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>When Max was a newborn and I was on paternity leave, I found myself running out to <a href="http://www.babiesrus.com/">Babies R Us</a> and back multiple times a day as we learned just how rapidly an infant can blaze through diapers, burp clothes, bips, onesies and a whole host of other baby products. I decided to save some money by signing up for the Babies R Us rewards card. Lo and behold, less than a week later our mailbox became deluged with coupons, flyers and catalogues from every baby product company on the planet. One of the items was the May 2010 issue of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babytalk_(magazine)">BabyTalk magazine</a>. I was very happy to see it, being eager, especially in those early, insecure days, to absorb as much information about babies and parenting as I could. Then I noticed the cover. The tagline for BabyTalk magazine is “Straight Talk for New Moms.” The articles inside, as described on the cover, included: “Oh, Sweet Sleep, Moms Dish on What Really Works”; “Moms Who Rock!”; and “Help for Moms with Multiples.” I also received a letter from “<a href="http://www.parenting.com/">Parenting Magazine</a>” that purported to offer a special subscription to “Mr. W. Stewart Wallace only.” Forgive me for casting a skeptical eye at that claim, because in that same letter the magazine described itself as “The Resource for Moms with Young Kids!” </strong><strong><br />
</strong></div></li>
</ul></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOlQTCtPnf2lBNVi5TMeBE_m0LmGhB4LMIQcIsIALIBXzHad4sBdW0KstlDwCYBoU8Gb32HTCT0QSCHDAYFgNouWQ8ZJrXDVA4Kh_-0zFM1R-P2dXJ0call_Dc2iLUoqyDeGAYoIflUthb/s1600/2010042214544419.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" s5="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOlQTCtPnf2lBNVi5TMeBE_m0LmGhB4LMIQcIsIALIBXzHad4sBdW0KstlDwCYBoU8Gb32HTCT0QSCHDAYFgNouWQ8ZJrXDVA4Kh_-0zFM1R-P2dXJ0call_Dc2iLUoqyDeGAYoIflUthb/s320/2010042214544419.jpg" width="238" /></a></div><ul><li style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>A few months later, I spent untold hours researching the perfect jumperoo (out of seemingly thousands) for Max: what the important safety features were, which ones folded easily for storage, whether the different bells and whistles they came with were worth the cost, etc. I finally chose a jumperoo, and ordered it online. When it arrived at our apartment, the box touted that I had made a wise choice, because <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fisher-Price-K6070-Rainforest-Jumperoo/dp/B000I2UJ0Q">this jumperoo</a> was not only “Better for Baby” but also “Better for Mom.”</strong><strong><br />
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</ul><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlBRNFeGknyahkejE4ofHtStEF65RFBvFt1GtrmANenK6vCBq_Bn5xqn4_fm7IaTFqjKo9fI5AEsvMW-LjukSHmXSlZDkfNlgmHvtze_dJAxcdSicGW5rj7PBSmIO9QzJVDIcbGsGtD5Uz/s1600/Max+%25282458%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" s5="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlBRNFeGknyahkejE4ofHtStEF65RFBvFt1GtrmANenK6vCBq_Bn5xqn4_fm7IaTFqjKo9fI5AEsvMW-LjukSHmXSlZDkfNlgmHvtze_dJAxcdSicGW5rj7PBSmIO9QzJVDIcbGsGtD5Uz/s320/Max+%25282458%2529.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><ul><li><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: justify;"><strong>You may have heard of the online store where I bought this jumperoo: a little e-retailer named <a href="http://www.amazon.com/">Amazon</a>. In September, Amazon rolled out a new promotion for parents – if you agree to buy a certain amount of your baby products from Amazon, they will give you additional discounts off of the retail price for those products. The promotion is called “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/mom/signup/info">Amazon Mom</a>.” </strong><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpW1YE14o-cIjnQ6AvQMVLJqwVUDzAJnDdhF2j7y9_vL8-Na723Rc3tFLy4nnZmKSOL-nXiHrxEB9lP_YpNNnsoY462C6uhvv-jGHkebd2Vdn_KqA_DZWugLsX4yWgWyWMGdHiY3YfkAvE/s1600/amazon-mom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" s5="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpW1YE14o-cIjnQ6AvQMVLJqwVUDzAJnDdhF2j7y9_vL8-Na723Rc3tFLy4nnZmKSOL-nXiHrxEB9lP_YpNNnsoY462C6uhvv-jGHkebd2Vdn_KqA_DZWugLsX4yWgWyWMGdHiY3YfkAvE/s320/amazon-mom.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></div></li>
<li><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: justify;"><strong>And finally, multiple times a day, every day, for the past 8 months, I have found myself face to face with a huge tub of <a href="http://www.enfamil.com/app/iwp/enfamil/enfHome10.do?dm=enf&ls=0&csred=1&r=3474218607">Enfamil powder formula</a> on the kitchen counter that Jacob and I scoop into baby bottles full of water to make Max’s feedings. Sometimes these encounters occur at 3 a.m. with Max bawling in my sluggish arms. And while I am muttering under my breath, what does the annoyingly perky yellow tub of Enfamil tell me? Why, of course, that it is not only “Trusted by Pediatricians”, but it is also “Trusted by Moms.”</strong><strong><br />
</strong> </div></li>
</ul><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-jSd_29eW2aaKh3kntIhN8wa6Ns27GJdoLiKG6WU3Y1iUJ0sh3UCdCbtWClmKQ56SBGKVELoSA2PbUKOkehcDSLP4PkiXbJylb_3FVWrOrnkua2HwpzhB-SZqcp5NV5KHTq1fxKyfnxVF/s1600/enfamil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" s5="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-jSd_29eW2aaKh3kntIhN8wa6Ns27GJdoLiKG6WU3Y1iUJ0sh3UCdCbtWClmKQ56SBGKVELoSA2PbUKOkehcDSLP4PkiXbJylb_3FVWrOrnkua2HwpzhB-SZqcp5NV5KHTq1fxKyfnxVF/s1600/enfamil.jpg" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: justify;"></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong>Hmmm, notice a trend? A certain 3 letter palindrome beginning with “M”? </strong></div></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: justify;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
<strong>I’m not trying to make a federal case out of the fact that baby product manufacturers cater to moms – they are entitled, and I’m man enough to read BabyTalk on the subway no matter who the cover stories claim to be directed towards. But that doesn’t mean I think it’s right, or that I have to like it. Let’s face it: these campaigns are disrespectful to the many actively engaged dads out there. Are parenting magazines really only a “resource for moms”? Is the jumperoo not “better” for dads too? Am I really the only “Amazon Dad”? And would I feed Max Enfamil all day, every day, if I didn’t trust it as much as moms do? I worked hard to join this club called parenthood, and I’ve worked hard to be a good parent. And yet many of the products, magazines and websites that I associate with in an attempt to be a good parent essentially tell me: “You’ve made a mistake.” “You aren’t for us.” “Look elsewhere.” “Why are you spending time looking at me when should be escaping to the office?” “Send your wife over instead, she’s the one we want to talk to.” Frankly, it’s discouraging. </strong></div></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong>Is this really the message we want to send to dads? To boys growing up around these products who will become dads one day? Not only do dads have every right to make the mundane everyday parenting decisions for their children, but as a society we should be encouraging them – not discouraging them -- to do so. </strong></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW2Hd1TH_WA_nKANBzsxvhvL9bo4fRWfOusnVjvN7Fblihg4N3BGO1hGbilvCPMt4mvIoBa2Ki2U_0FP0AaVUOaXD0cOM3eoEySiSaZ39fvfBAsJEXNl3EJ39pCHPqtt7y2oM3HlEWaXTX/s1600/20090225.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" s5="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW2Hd1TH_WA_nKANBzsxvhvL9bo4fRWfOusnVjvN7Fblihg4N3BGO1hGbilvCPMt4mvIoBa2Ki2U_0FP0AaVUOaXD0cOM3eoEySiSaZ39fvfBAsJEXNl3EJ39pCHPqtt7y2oM3HlEWaXTX/s320/20090225.jpg" width="273" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><strong>Heaven knows that a lot of moms would welcome such input and relief from their other half about these decisions. Instead, these companies are essentially giving fathers a free pass to abdicate responsibility for all of the little decisions that help add up to being a parent. “ You see,” these guys can tell their wives, pointing to the way these products are advertised, “not my job.” </strong><strong><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>And what is particularly frustrating is the seeming purposelessness behind the marketing of these products expressly to moms. Would it kill Amazon to name their promotion “Amazon Baby” instead of “Amazon Mom”? If a mom read that Enfamil formula is trusted by “Parents” instead of just “Moms” would she sniff and walk by, reaching for the Similac instead? Of course not. No mom is going to refrain from buying a baby product just because it is marketed towards parents or caregivers generally, instead of to moms specifically. Moms deserve a lot more credit than that. And I’m not even going to dwell on the fact that not all families even have a mom. </strong><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Raising kids is still a female-centric endeavor, I get that, but alienating half of the parenting population for no apparent reason seems to me to be both bad business and bad mores. Agree? Disagree? I’d love to know your thoughts.</strong></div></div><br />
</div></div></div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-42373592070786443512011-01-27T15:47:00.000-05:002011-01-27T15:47:28.385-05:00Tennis, Anyone?<div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>One of the annual bright spots during the typically dreary month of January is the start of the professional tennis season. While it is bitter cold and snowing outside here in New York, I get the pleasure of watching the first grand slam tennis tournament, The Australian Open, on television and listening to the announcers talk about how the on-court temperature has risen to 100 degrees and that the players need to be on the lookout for heat stroke. Is it crazy to feel a tinge of jealousy in hearing that? </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-0GvknUwrlYJfTH6KDtdd1SujINErO-MZfirR3fHuJjrJFyq7dLnDxSgpB9EPxRjS-In8uoIqeCLsTjp8dQO5f6MnIwVd2J1w0Wv1gQVpnRP1fRW4-Vls83iBJTtQ3-BVTMqCelGFydRx/s1600/Picture+002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" s5="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-0GvknUwrlYJfTH6KDtdd1SujINErO-MZfirR3fHuJjrJFyq7dLnDxSgpB9EPxRjS-In8uoIqeCLsTjp8dQO5f6MnIwVd2J1w0Wv1gQVpnRP1fRW4-Vls83iBJTtQ3-BVTMqCelGFydRx/s320/Picture+002.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Stewart and I are huge tennis fans, both as players and as avid followers of the professional game. As players, it has given us yet one more thing to be competitive with one another about – in addition to ping pong, backgammon, squash, Ms. Pac Man and who can get Max down at night the quickest (just to name a few!) Ironically, as competitive as we are when matched against each other, tennis has also literally brought Stewart and me together as a team unit. Before Max was born, we regularly played doubles together in a few tennis leagues in the city and have a few trophies to show for it. Everyone at the time worried for the state of our marriage when they heard that we played together. Would a pivotal missed shot by one mean that the other had to sleep on the couch that night? Fortunately not! We really enjoyed playing together. </strong></div><strong></strong><br />
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<strong>We are also such fans of professional tennis that, perhaps sad to say, I can actually mark significant events within the parenthood journey to the four grand slam tournaments: Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, the Australian Open and the French Open. </strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRykT_Vo85idT8aMMYllOSrLUcN3qVkcdIXbewPNwFMsjbcWkU2Qhhkyqoz_IBCYO50HN4ut7vvbtpEX7jRU06YLF0alDiECjV0MhTtui4OV1ZfygkL_zkiWlCswihuDD0GgLiVZeRTiLZ/s1600/wimbledon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" s5="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRykT_Vo85idT8aMMYllOSrLUcN3qVkcdIXbewPNwFMsjbcWkU2Qhhkyqoz_IBCYO50HN4ut7vvbtpEX7jRU06YLF0alDiECjV0MhTtui4OV1ZfygkL_zkiWlCswihuDD0GgLiVZeRTiLZ/s1600/wimbledon.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Wimbledon marks a momentous moment in our path to parenthood because the tournament was taking place while Stewart and I tried to conceive a child with Christie for the first time in July 2009. Christie and her family are not big professional tennis fans, and I remember how tentative I was in asking them to turn the television to the tournament while we were hanging out in their living room trying to escape the intense summer heat of Georgia. When we tuned in, it was to the now-epic men’s tournament final between top seed Roger Federer and American Andy Roddick. Federer squeaked out the match 16 games to 14 games in the 5th set in the longest Wimbledon final ever. Christie’s husband Bill later told me that because I had us tune into the match he was actually able to join in on the water cooler conversation his colleagues were having the next day at work about the historic final. </strong></div><strong></strong><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmpZofs0_EKMz_U5CMmvdt59nxqv_C71A8wilvxOGfQwEWZ-MJSASraoTk2zNGgKQauNavZAGbgkWhndKUciPAQoQdZUc8YdP8OhINcvBb56yN6kjbAPVVvhyphenhyphen94Mp5WbRShTt1kiWJXIiI/s1600/us+open.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" s5="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmpZofs0_EKMz_U5CMmvdt59nxqv_C71A8wilvxOGfQwEWZ-MJSASraoTk2zNGgKQauNavZAGbgkWhndKUciPAQoQdZUc8YdP8OhINcvBb56yN6kjbAPVVvhyphenhyphen94Mp5WbRShTt1kiWJXIiI/s1600/us+open.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Our first attempt at conceiving a baby that July did not take, and nor did our second try that August. Our third try was scheduled for early September, which happens to be when the United States’ tennis grand slam, the U.S. Open, takes place right here in New York City. Since Stewart and I started dating in 2001 we have gone to the US Open each of the three days that mark Labor Day weekend to watch the pros in action during the middle rounds of the tournament. We were crossing our fingers that we would not have to be in Georgia that weekend in 2009, because we knew it would be our last chance to attend the tournament with complete freedom and abandonment before the responsibilities of parenthood set in. Fortunately our fertility doctor in Georgia did not need to see us until the following week, and we had a wonderful time as always at “the Open.” However, that U.S. Open still marks a Max milestone because he was actually conceived the next weekend, which was the date of – you guessed it – the men’s tournament final. While we had other things on our mind and on our plate that day, we later learned that Roger Federer lost that final to up and coming Argentine Juan Martin del Potro in another epic showdown that lasted over 4 hours. </strong></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-zbMjjWjSp-CkHQrgoWOwKJEy_M1Mr-yIVrQI3qEuAcULArJADzZ8Tc2bS-7xXwWdZEn4sPutnpsPd1W0C1m22C8YDtBGWOTzOR49C1vuejVhqBdYRRBBaldlwtyw-e44aCbP_PnC7ppR/s1600/austalian+open.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" s5="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-zbMjjWjSp-CkHQrgoWOwKJEy_M1Mr-yIVrQI3qEuAcULArJADzZ8Tc2bS-7xXwWdZEn4sPutnpsPd1W0C1m22C8YDtBGWOTzOR49C1vuejVhqBdYRRBBaldlwtyw-e44aCbP_PnC7ppR/s1600/austalian+open.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>By the time the Australian Open rolled around in January of last year, Max was busy growing inside Christie and Stewart and I were feeling some measure of relief that he had made it through the nerve-wracking first trimester. But that didn’t mean that my life had become smooth sailing. I had recently been laid off from my job. While the Australian Open was broadcast live on television during the wee hours of the morning, Stewart and I made the big decision that instead of looking for work, I would devote myself full-time to preparing for Max’s arrival, and become a stay-at-home dad once Max entered the world. The rest, as they say, is history. Federer beat Scotsman Andy Murray in the tournament final in straight sets. </strong><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfjaVb8x2QOPie5Ht5CSD105ztxGzYLdx_7qMdk4YFLeYEFCRLAXHe5nl89ZybyWwHn09FbggKphpSJ_lpSM3PahNawAvDO0Bim9MDEL7qycuR3vi4buOm_0WLkMBbQyi_LXeazmKA8oIy/s1600/french+open.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" s5="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfjaVb8x2QOPie5Ht5CSD105ztxGzYLdx_7qMdk4YFLeYEFCRLAXHe5nl89ZybyWwHn09FbggKphpSJ_lpSM3PahNawAvDO0Bim9MDEL7qycuR3vi4buOm_0WLkMBbQyi_LXeazmKA8oIy/s1600/french+open.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>When the French Open rolled around in late May, Max was a couple of weeks old and Stewart was just returning to work. The tournament was broadcast live in the early morning New York time, and Max acted as my failsafe alarm clock. I would groggily get up and lay a blanket down in front of the television in the living room for Max and me to lay down on side by side to watch the early rounds together. Having my favorite sport to watch helped to distract me from the reality that I had the whole day ahead of me with just me and this brand new, fragile child who I was just getting to know. My one saving grace was a duela that we had hired to visit for a few hours at a time in the early-going to help answer some of our questions about how to take care of a newborn. One morning during the tournament she arrived and looked on in surprise at my set up in front of the TV. She laughingly told me that only a man would hang out with a newborn side by side on a blanket on the floor. She was used to seeing new moms clutching their babies tight against their bodies. She didn’t seem to get it that I had my space on the blanket and Max had his! Oh for the days that Max would just chill on his side of the blanket -- long gone now! The Spaniard Rafael Nadal beat Swede Robin Soderling in straight sets to take the men’s title.</strong><strong></strong><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGqbiOKZzaFJh88gfohIKMUHz580_cD1u8qzynmc8j8KCqEzp_4sljt6pP1M9TiYTVDrRp-pzTqmDuZwbb7FeYqgaQK5o3M9hQc_ccPEH_S-7ZtV8wZK1DytgvQZGJISMA8dDCl6EQV7A4/s1600/Max+%2528493%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" s5="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGqbiOKZzaFJh88gfohIKMUHz580_cD1u8qzynmc8j8KCqEzp_4sljt6pP1M9TiYTVDrRp-pzTqmDuZwbb7FeYqgaQK5o3M9hQc_ccPEH_S-7ZtV8wZK1DytgvQZGJISMA8dDCl6EQV7A4/s320/Max+%2528493%2529.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
<strong>We can't wait to raise Max as a tennis player and as a fan of professional tennis. After all, as you can see that his tennis roots already run deep!</strong></div></div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5717570063476912614.post-31838323165662441022011-01-21T08:22:00.000-05:002011-01-21T08:22:55.943-05:00Exciting News About . . . Passport Applications?!<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>In one of my <a href="http://gaddydaddy.blogspot.com/2010/08/mr-mom.html">earlier posts</a>, I wrote about how my husband (Stewart) and I believe that we made legal history in Georgia when we obtained a pre-birth order from a state court judge there stating that, even though we are two men and only one of us is a biological parent of Max, both of our names may be listed on Max’s birth certificate. I went on to write that while the Georgia Vital Records Department fulfilled that order, we were disappointed to discover that they would not alter their form to reflect our family structure and insisted instead on listing Stewart as Max’s “Mother”! While Georgia may have a ways to go in this area, I am pleased to report that the U.S. State Department is finally starting to catch on that its forms wrongly assume that all families are structured the same way – i.e. the “straight” way. </strong><strong><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton <a href="http://releasedorothy.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/u-s-passport-application-adds-parent-1-and-2/">recently ordered</a> the State Department to change the wording on all applications for U.S. passports issued to children. The designations “mother” and “father” will be replaced with "mother or parent 1" and "father or parent 2". (Interestingly, the government originally intended to eliminate the terms “mother” and “father” altogether and just use “parent 1” and “parent 2”; however, <a href="http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2011/01/10/passport-lgbt/">backlash from conservative groups caused the government to retreat</a> slightly and compromise with the “or” formulation that I mention above). The State Department <a href="http://www.state.gov/">website</a> explains the purpose behind the new terminology: "These improvements are being made to provide a gender neutral description of a child’s parents and in recognition of different types of families.” The gender-neutral passport applications will be rolled out next month.</strong><br />
<strong></strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZpfEoRuz9PqEHxDetkNe5T7TPaB5yt0yyWdkCJNFlN3v8KbEDesOQxlD6vzh6cB2YaNGn6xzgehye0UcSFaAA-0f3PNuftt5T1nNpcynebt2mwRdb6pk5xNkRudctlSiUl-JBM6e6OuDP/s1600/baby_holding_passport.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" s5="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZpfEoRuz9PqEHxDetkNe5T7TPaB5yt0yyWdkCJNFlN3v8KbEDesOQxlD6vzh6cB2YaNGn6xzgehye0UcSFaAA-0f3PNuftt5T1nNpcynebt2mwRdb6pk5xNkRudctlSiUl-JBM6e6OuDP/s320/baby_holding_passport.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Why is this important? Because while for most families applying for and receiving a passport is what it should be -- a forgettable bureaucratic chore -- when that process serves as an official reminder to you and your child that your government does not recognize your existence, and instead turns your “papa” into your “mama,” those documented lies aren’t so easy to pass off and ignore. Childhood for everyone is full of uncertainty and anxiety. There is no reason the government has to encourage our family structure to be an added basis for that. So any time that the government removes an official imprint of “otherness” stamped onto our family, that is a big positive in and of itself -- even if there isn’t also an immediate and concrete benefit resulting from the change, since we are not planning to go anywhere outside of the country with Max anytime soon. </strong><br />
<strong></strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYGIXJLBHf84faSxSk3YaKvQOaV9XtfHQ7U9VNlOlI3ZETiQfzZjJg37LemhdXx-f-F-Y64kM7BrRFrIfHK4PJrFYEf4VEjPGRPBB0BvkBF7u_psVigc6dsbMwOGtIB7H3QuUtBKc5vkF5/s1600/passport_records_106695.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="306" s5="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYGIXJLBHf84faSxSk3YaKvQOaV9XtfHQ7U9VNlOlI3ZETiQfzZjJg37LemhdXx-f-F-Y64kM7BrRFrIfHK4PJrFYEf4VEjPGRPBB0BvkBF7u_psVigc6dsbMwOGtIB7H3QuUtBKc5vkF5/s400/passport_records_106695.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>And of course many more than just our family will benefit from the government's thoughtful announcement. “The updates remove significant challenges for the two million children being parented by lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) parents,” <a href="http://www.familyequality.org/site/MessageViewer?dlv_id=6222&em_id=2201.0">said Jennifer Chrisler</a>, executive director of Family Equality Council, which led the effort to change the forms. So </strong><strong>I applaud them, and the State Department, for this small but important step in making passport applications as boring for us as they are for most of you.</strong></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><br />
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</div></div>Jacobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663788173244621239noreply@blogger.com1