urbansuburban (a Gillefond adventure): not the nanny

I started this post in Spring 2012, and I think I am finally ready to actually edit and publish. Only 25 more posts in the drafts folder to get through!

Some months (now years!) back, NPR's Tell Me More did a great piece on dads of kids who don't look like their parents. You can listen to the story here. It is worth the 15 minutes. The story was inspired by an article in the LA Times by Kurt Streeter (one of the panelists).
Also, the passage about multi-racial children drawing pictures of their multi-racial families in this article in salon.com brought tears to my eyes.

"Racially ambiguous" is one of the terms used to describe one of the children in the story. I don't know "what" Mathilda looks like. To be completely honest, I have been surprised by my own non-recognition of how she looks. She looks like Mathilda.

"Where did she get those eyes/that hair?" is the typical response that I get. The first time she was less than 24 hours old. Reggie was collecting our things from L&D to move to post-partum after an unexpected kink in our "birth plan." A nurse exclaimed to me, as I sat in a wheelchair, exhausted, sweaty, and holding my tiny, sleeping Mathilda, "Oh my gosh where does all of that dark hair come from? Definitely not from you!" I have no idea what I answered.

As she grows it is amazing to watch Reggie and I come out in her. She gets her worried, nervous looks from her dad. We both had equal contribution to those smiley cheeks. While her chattiness, love of singing, and finding fun in organizing and planning (yes, this is true) definitely come from me, I am often reminded (often by strangers and strange family members) of how much she looks like her father and how little she looks like me.

Spring 2012, chatting on the stairs

Tilly knows we are all different colors, as we are different genders (she is still confused by that one and often asks her parents if we are "boys"). And she talks easily about what people look like when describing them (Brian is brown like Daddy, Sofia is brown like me, and a less-loving: the cow has white skin like mommy)

This past week, we saw a photo of Tilly that stopped me in my tracks- oh my gosh! That's my photo face! Ah Ha!