A Girl Named Gilly

Meet Gilly. With furrowed brow and fisticuff hands, it’s plain to see that she’s no shrinking violet. I know this is going to sound strange, but when Gilly was first placed on my chest at her delivery, all matted and covered with blood, I took one look at her and thought, “Well, aren’t you a little broad?”

Instead of the bow-lips-and-button-nose look of many baby girls, she had these fierce little flared nostrils and the loudest cry in the nursery. She was breathtakingly beautiful, but not nearly as vulnerable as I'd expected her to be. She was already her own little person.

A month or so after Gilly was born, we received a note from the wife of my husband’s boss, a New York sophisticate. Someone at the office had sent her Gilly’s picture, and this was her reaction: “This child faces the world with a direct and assessing gaze that you really want to be on the right end of. Or, should you fail her test, at least you know she is too young to blab your failures around town.” That’s our Gilly. Yet she's also quite sweet and shy and decidedly girly...a well-rounded little lady, to be sure.

Shortly before we were discharged from the hospital, I started peppering our nurse with rapid-fire, neurotic questions while my husband Jar made awkward jokes in Gilly's "voice." The nursed looked at our daughter with a sympathetic smile while shaking her head. "Oh, Miss Gilly," she said. "You're going to have fun with these two." I hope you will, too. This will be a simple place to record our adventures while helping me make sense of mommyhood. As a full-time working mom with a pretty full plate, I'm sure I won't post as often as I'd like to, but you know what? That's OK. The Internet is already saturated with mommy blogs, but maybe you’ll make room for one more.

*That’s Gilly with a hard “G,” like “Good.” And no, it’s not her real name.