Day 36 - this is typically the way Lian falls asleep, in a comatose position, with her mother asleep (and snoring ;-) beside her)! 

Day 35 - with Heather at Cafe Lalo in the Upper West. Nice to be in a loud cafe to drown out your little one and to catch up with a good friend ;-) 

Day 35 - waiting for the Hampton Jitney to take us back into NYC for the week. 

Day 34 - nothing like a hammock for relaxation. 

Day 34 - relaxing at mom and dad's in Long Island...minus mom! 

Day 34 - grandpere avec sa petite a la plage.  

Day 34 - notre petit amour. 

Day 34 - she always cries loudly on exiting a bath. 

Day 34 - her first East Coast bath. 

Day 33 - a proud grandfather. 

Day 33 - grandpa meets his little granddaughter. 

Day 33 - in the plane. We got an extra seat! 

Day 33 - at the airport on the way to NY 

Early Days - how nice that genetics are offset by Darwinian evolution. Let's hope that Michelle's chunkiness is a recessive gene. 

Early Days - the source for Lian's vocal skills. Here are some interesting statistics, for the record (and yes, for those of you asking, that is my father at age 24. And I thought I wasn't ready?!):

Calculated Decibel Levels, by Noise Type
Screaming baby (e.g. our little love), 115
Race car, loud thunder, rock band, 120-130
Jack hammer from 3 feet, 125
Jet airplane takeoff from 120 feet, 120
Pain threshold, 130

No wonder our hair rises on end when she wails.
.

Early Days - Lian's overweight mother. 

A long time ago - Lian's bald father. 

The Bottle

Day 32 – I’m in my office about ready to turn into a pumpkin just before the stroke of midnight. Today marked another first: feeding from a bottle.

I had approximately 10 ounces of Michelle’s milk in the freezer, and exactly 1 ounce in a bottle in the fridge. The challenge – try to feed Lian while Michelle was at the dentist. My morning went as follows:
7.30      wake up, hold Lian while Michelle showered – she bawled nonstop, regardless of how firmly I pressed the pacifier into her mouth
7.50      shower
8.00      pack Lian’s bag with 3 extra disposable diapers, baby wipes, Vaseline, pacifier, extra Onesie in case she pooped all over the one she was wearing, extra hat
8.10      pack my things for errands: dry cleaning, post office, bank, safeway
8.15      out the door to drop Michelle off at dentist
8.30      drop off Michelle at dentist
8.40      arrive at post office – 10 minute parking spot right out front. First dilemma of the day – could I get arrested for leaving Lian in the car while I drop off letters? Will she cry and choke on her own spit?
8.50      return to car after post office. Lian is still alive, and there is no ticket citing child abuse on my windshield
9.00     take Lian in car seat into bank and order cashier’s check for Bronx real estate deal
9.20     stop into Safeway with Lian in car seat to find bottle nipple that matches her pacifier. Failed. Gerber and Avent products galore on the shelves, none of them with a curved looking nipple. I conclude that I have a high probability of failure in getting her to drink from the bottle     
9.45     drop off Michelle’s videos at Blockbuster: Meet the Fokkers and Layer Cake. Guilt once again leaving Lian in car, despite her being unable to protest through her snoring
10.00     home to try bottle feeding
10.05     heat up milk on gas stove by placing bottle in pan in which I’m boiling water
10.08     quickly turn off gas stove after discovering water is boiling and bottle is hot to the touch
10.10     take bottle out from cold water in sink, suck it myself – tasteless by the way – temperature feels good
10.11     squeeze out 1 drop of milk onto nipple head and tickle Lian’s mouth
10.12      Lian sucks eagerly from bottle
10.12:45 Lian finishes 1 oz of milk
10.13     Lian is asleep
10.15     pack Lian back into car to fetch Michelle
10.25     pick up Michelle, telling her she’s out of a job – “I can replace you now, sweetie” I tell her
10.26     Michelle congratulates me and wishes me luck in my new role

Day 32 - babies will often daydream or have nightmares that they are falling, and clutch instinctively in the air. This is one of those moments.  

Day 32 - a close-up of Lian - her expressions are increasingly peaceful and gently curious. 

Day 32 - she's beginning to recognize dark colors, apparently, and will stare for long periods of time at tables, desks and walls. 

The Evolution of a Pupa

Day 31 – back home with Michelle and Lian. I was moved by a message from a friend of old today. Without revealing who she is, I thought I would share her words with you below so that you get the flavor of someone else’s thoughts and heart. From the messages that I receive from the few who read these thoughts of mine, it is clear that the ties that bind us together can often be the simple, honest words of struggle and self-doubt. These are the ever-present and sometimes overwhelming challenges of identity, of responsibility…or simply, of life.

My father spoke with me today and shared with me that he also had struggled with the identity of hunter and nurturer in our family. Who should bring home the bacon between a man and a woman? Who should be there for the children? And what sacrifices are made when the twain meet somewhere in between?

A colleague at work today shared with me that his wife went from uber-professional management consultant to pilates instructor and mother, and has yet to fully emerge from the transformational cocoon she built for herself. It seems that she is a butterfly struggling to shed her own chrysalis.

Looking at Lian tonight, and holding her tightly in my arms while singing what sounded to both Michelle and I like a native American rain chant (I don’t know how the tune popped into my head – that’s jet lag for you), I felt a similar struggle in this warm pupa of mine. It’s no stretch of the imagination to imagine that your child, swaddled tightly, is a fragile chrysalis of her own (chrysalis – from the Greek “khrusos”, meaning gold).

Arms and legs tightly tucked against the body in a form of cotton cocoon, Lian’s gurgles, squeaks and moans in half-sleep, and her first-hesitant, then wailing, cries seem to be a clarion call for her changing body and mind.

But let me dawdle no longer. She is sleeping now, fed only 30 minutes ago by her doting mother, and if the last two days are any indicator of the transformation that she will endure tonight, then I have only 1 hour of sleep before this little pupa sounds the wails of change.


A letter from a friend in Africa ….

Deano
As I sit in my small office in Benin working since the small hours thismorning...your blog fills me with such a mixture of feelings...It isrefreshing....really.

I spent the day considering the latest aspects of a collaboration with theDanish Agency for development and I stopped to pause to read the lastchapters in your life back in New York as a single man caught in his trinityof roles and identities I smoked a cigarette and I feel that you arebringing me back to another level of life and that makes such a difference..Since you send me the web site contact, I have entered it in my specials andlate in the evening before I go back home. I read and read...your latestmoods and reflections...You are a beautiful writer and you share yourfeelings and enquiry in this new becoming....in such a special way...

You are touching of so many vital issues...and I want to say that it isspecial.

The single life, the getting to find a balance between career fulfillmentand all these choices that are always on one side of the line....Thanks again for these contributions I feel that I know you better through all of this ..and I am proud to call you a friend...

I will close my computer now ,will fill myself up with another level ofhumanity… much food for thoughts in your share...wish you good evening andwill go back reading later on this week...

All my love and friendship with you and thanks for the beautiful message toMimi ....it is about your special story together but also such a universalquest that is about something universal for all of us in the end to work outand work on.

Je t'embrasse

Day 31 - the little pupa. Just before the wailing stage.

Day 31 - Jillian wondering how she ended up with such a white baby ;-)

Day 31 - a visit from Mark and Jillian. Their smiles are a window to their souls. Beautiful people. 

Day 31 - a close-up of my wonderful wife with an orange flower in her hair. 

Learning the meaning of family

Day 30 – once again, I’m sitting in Room 1439. On the one hand it is my salvation from little Lian, and on the other it is my 253sq foot prison. It is my salvation because within these walls I am able to sleep undisturbed for hours at a time. [In fact, over a 3 day period, I’ve calculated, I will have slept the equivalent of 5 of Michelle’s nights with Lian – last night, for example, Lian woke her up every 2 hours, and Michelle was only able to steal 1 hour’s sleep every 2.]

This room is also my prison, though. I’m alone but for my imagination and my conscience. The former tells me that Lian is growing larger, eating well, and … part of me desperately hopes that she is sleeping for long stretches at a time. The latter tells me that by being here, I’m creating a growing rift in my and Michelle’s relationship. It’s not even conscious on my part, but it’s inevitable as I spend time away from my wife and daughter.

One of the hardest things in life is to achieve balance – another term for what I simply call happiness. With balance – or equilibrium between the various needs and activities of one’s heart and mind – comes a comfort and a relaxation, neither of which I am feeling in my 253 sq ft of hotel room. In fact, my fingernails are about as raw as I’ve seen in recent years. There is little balance right now.

Despite my 6 hour nights of sleep since Monday, I’ve fallen asleep at my laptop, chin hitting my chest…4 times. My eyes are heavy, my heart is heavy for being here alone and not supporting Mchelle. Tomorrow, I fly home to see my family.

[More photos then as I share with you all my parents-in-law 40th anniversary banquet.]

On Identity

Day 29 – I spoke to Michelle twice today. This morning, she spoke in hushed tones after having just fed Lian who was stretching in her lap. This evening, at dinner with Heather and Mallory in an outdoor patio garden, she spoke in a much louder voice to drown out little Lian’s screams. I put her briefly on speakerphone to give everyone a sense of a 4 week old’s lung capacity. Their jaws dropped when they heard her. “She can yell,” Heather said slightly shocked.

Yes, my little daughter can yell, and I’m not there to help Michelle. I feel guilty, conflicted and completely free all at the same time.

Guilty - of course - since I can’t be there to give Michelle a break from Lian, and to be able to hold her wailing little body against mine to try to lull her to sleep or into a calmer state.

Conflicted because a part of me doesn’t want to be identified solely as a father – the first question I field from everyone is “so how’s the new father?” Somehow, I take that to mean that I’m less than I once was, rather than – as I’m sure it’s mostly intended – that I’m more than merely a professional and now also a father. There’s something about having your identity change when you suddenly have a new addition to your family. And now, finally I’m getting it here – now I can understand a bit of what Michelle is probably going through. She is – much more so than I – the provider of a child, the giver of life, the succor of a baby. First and foremost, she is “a mobile heifer” as she likes to call herself.

It is an identity imposed upon her by little Lian –unwillingly and unwittingly – of a milk-producing, baby-toting, diaper-changing automaton, that Michelle has had to struggle with since well before Lian was born. And I have just recognized that, and am just beginning to feel what it is like to suddenly have become – first and foremost – a man who is related to someone else who will be the center of my universe for many years to come, rather than as the individual I know that I am – or even as the husband of my own wife.

These sea-changes in identity are unsettling and require some getting used to. This is the third one in two years – first from bachelor to fiance, then to husband, and now to father. The odd thing is that I somehow feel the need to separate myself from Lian and from my life as a father, in order to assert to others that I remain my own individual. Odd that I would feel the need to assert my “manhood” or individualism at a time when my life has been filled with this beautiful little being whom I adore when I’m with her, and yet whom I can so easily put aside when I’m here in NY. I can more easily dissociate myself from my daughter than I can from my wife. Understandable I suppose since I’ve spent so many more moments with Michelle than I have with Lian. Yet strangely cruel-sounding as I read these words.

I can’t imagine any father consciously wanting to admit that his child means nothing to him and that he can act as if that very child doesn’t exist, but in some ways, that is exactly what I’m saying. When I am here in NY, focusing on taking my next step professionally into a new profession and out of banking, and at the same time completing the project I am currently working on at Chase, I’m emptying my mind of my family and of my duties and responsibilities back at home, and focusing on me. That, by the way, is something Michelle complains that I do all-too-well. “You’re always just focused on you,” she chides me, sometimes with bitterness in her voice. And yet I don’t see it that way. Maybe it’s just the way we males are programmed: if we’re not focused on our career and on building our capacities of providing for our families, we’ll fail and suffer even harsher judgment by our spouses than if we maintain our inexorable focus on bringing home the bacon. Then again, maybe this is all self-indulgence to salve my conscience.

Whatever the program that I’m following as one of the 3.05 billion males on this earth, I need to find the delicate balance between individual, husband and father. If I were to guess at how that balance looks, it is probably a maze of blurred lines in between the 3 points that mark this trinity of roles. And as I reflect on Michelle’s trinity – I can only imagine that her balance is more jagged and blurred than even mine. Hers is even more challenging only because she doesn’t have the same choice that I do in assuming her role as mother. Mine can be a role-in-absentia, as it is right now as I sit here in room 1439 of a New York city skyscraper hotel.

Mimi, I understand a little bit better right now what you are going through. We will prevail. You will be – you are – a wonderful mother. And you will always be a remarkable and loving partner and wife to me. I know that you need to nurture your own individual self. I’m sorry I’m not there now to provide you the space and time you need to do so. But I will be. And we will be wonderful parents. Je t’adore.

The Mustard Stain

Day 28 – I’m in a plane, heading East and somewhere over South Dakota looking down over the sparse lights of the eastern part of the State. Earlier, we passed 18 miles south of a lightning storm at play in the middle of a cumulo-nimbus cloud – the classic anvil shape rising high above us, and almost seeming to touch the darkened landscape below. Since June I have flown 9 times round trip from San Francisco to Newark, but on none have I ever been entertained with such a wonderful spectacle of natural force. Bolts shot out like cracks in a windshield in all directions, most were caught up in the anvil itself, as if playing with themselves and not even caring about the landscape below.

This weekend was a celebration of Michelle’s parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. The family was together –the three sisters and the four grandchildren, and two of the sons-in-law. In celebration, we convened upon the Hong Kong East Restaurant in Emeryville, the site of Michelle and my wedding banquet almost 2 years ago. This time, we only had 6 tables of 10 people each. But one of those tables, instead of having just Michelle and I, had our little Lian. We never really saw much of her – she must have been doted on by at least 5 different members of Michelle’s family, including one magical aunt who had the patience of a saint and a magic touch that quieted her most obnoxious of wails that she entertained us all with for quite some time!

What with family, children and celebrations, we had no time actually at home. In the short 38 hours that Michelle and I had together back in San Francisco, not once did I even remember opening the refrigerator (life as newborn father has meant that all our meals have been spent at home for the past 4 weeks), nor even turning on the morning radio. It was a whirlwind of family gathering, a cup of tea and a croissant picked up on the run at Le Café du Soleil, and a brisk walk on the beach with a 20 minute treat of flying a kite that I’d just purchased last weekend.

It was wonderful seeing Lian. She can be so peaceful, and her presence is a soothing influence on both of us. Michelle turned to me last night at 11pm as we were watching Lian stretch after feeding, and said: “you know how everyone told us that our time together would be different.” She paused. “This is that time.” We both gazed at the little girl propped on a pillow on her lap. Her eyes were closed, her arms extended above her head, her little mouth puckered in a little “o” and making her traditional bevy of wheezing, clicking and grunting noises. (Interesting side-note about babies and sounds…why do they make such noises –what is it about their respiratory systems that is so primitive or imperfect?)

One funny moment over the weekend: we sat for a family photo with Michelle’s family and the 4 grandchildren. After a long series of photos, we all got up from our seats on a drop cloth. Lian was placed on a beanbag that was covered by the drop cloth. As I picked her up, I noticed a large mustard-yellow colored spot where she had been sitting. Oh no…she pooped!

Yes, Michelle confirmed to me: she had pooped. I looked at her to chide her for having made a mess. “Petite caca-wet” I nuzzled my nose against her cheek. Then Michelle tapped my arm. “Sweetie,” she said, “you might want to check your shirt.”

Lian was in my arms, and I was wearing one of my best double-cuff English shirts for the family photo. I held Lian away from my chest, and there, I saw an even larger mustard-yellow colored stain that had turned my shirt from blue to a slightly pale green. “This won’t be the last time,” Mimi winked at me with a smile. “This is to make up for the time that she pooped all over me as I was changing her diaper!”

Lian      - 2
Dean      - 0
Mimi      - 0

Away from Home - 1st Time

Day 23 - today is my first day away from Michelle and Lian. I'm sitting in my 46th floor hotel room in NY - a city blitzed by Fashion Week and a UN General Assembly meeting attracting thousands of visitors and participants. It seemed strangely quiet, however, though perhaps that was just the effect of lack of sleep, a bit of jet lag, and a twisted sense of what is quiet after the last week with my baby daughter.

It feels odd and yet refreshing being alone, without wife and daughter. In fact, it feels strangely as if I'm no longer a father, and have reverted back to the months of travel I did before Lian arrived, and I would sleep in this same Sheraton hotel up in midtown, and talk to Michelle into the wee hours of the morning. The only difference now is that either a) I don't call her for fear of waking her during one of her 2.5 hour "naps" while Lian sleeps, or b) she hangs up on me because she is holding a screaming Lian in one arm and the phone in the other.

Anyway, it's 11pm SF time, and 2AM NY time. I'm off to bed with a present from a really good friend of mine - a onesie for Lian - on the pillow next to me. Good night, Mimi. Je pense a toi. Et une bise a mon amour.

Day 23 - This is the second time that we've seen Lian with a bit of an older face. It was strange but Michelle and I woke up this morning and were amazed at the changes we saw in her face. It was as if she had grown up overnight! She's lost some of her Asian features, and looks like she's gaining some weight. Her lungs are gaining in strength too ;-)