My wife Rochelle has been attempting to get our daughter Vivienne to say Mama from just about the first minute we brought her home from the hospital. (Okay, maybe that is an exageration, but it sure seems that long). Vivienne is now 13 months old and, believe me; my wife’s efforts have not eased up.
I, on the other hand, have not spent even one moment encouraging our daughter to speak. My attitude is this: once the girl starts talking she may never shut up, so why encourage the process?
Now, after all of my wife’s fervent urging, and my benign neglect, guess the only word my daughter says?
Yep, Dada.
And they say there’s no justice in the world.
This morning my wife was sitting at the foot of our bed, bouncing Vivienne on her knee and in a very animated (well, actually, fairly irritating) fashion, singing out joyfully, “Mama, Mama, Mama!!”
(And with a French accent (God knows why), which didn’t appreciably lessen the irritability quotient in my opinion. But that’s just me; I’m sort of glum in the mornings. Well, actually more like clinically depressed.)
So anyway, you get the picture; I’ve got the merriment equivalent of the Flying Nun singing gaily in faux French and bouncing the poor bobble headed baby up and down like a demented puppet and practically pleading with the kid to say “Mama”.
And so I’m climbing into my clothes while trying to avoid the usual abyss of despair which gapes at my feet every morning, and the increasingly grating singing is really making my internal voice ask with the sort of heightened jollity of a demented game show host; “Gee, Jeff, which of these two attractive alternatives would likely be the less painful manner in which to exit this essentially purposeless existence; a valium and whisky highball, or, opening your veins in a hot bath, Roman emperor style?”
(Minor Digression -- you oughta hear my internal dialogue when my wife sings “Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old” for the forty ninth time while preparing our daughter’s – you guessed it – porridge for dinner. )
My wife is doing everything but begging – well, yes, she is essentially begging – to get Viv to say “Mama”. And I’m pulling the same shirt over my head for like the fifth day in a row – it smells reassuringly of me, no sweet baby smells in here, brother – and then gazing out the window as the sun lights up the golden hills on the other side of Bennett Valley and the accumulated dew drops from the oak tree branches onto the redwood deck below, and I’m thinking, “Vivienne, at this point I will pay you to say ‘Mama’. Only, please, please, shut your mother up.”
And Vivienne, as if hearing my thoughts, swings her gorgeous head around, espies me, breaks out in a radiant smile and sings out; “Dada!!!! Dada!!! Dada!!!” All in a tone to suggest that I am not only her very favorite person on this earth, but the very reason for her existence.
And my wife weeps.
Conversely, I feel a little better about the world as the gloom starts to lift from my internal gearbox. Not exactly chipper, mind you, but what the hell, I’ll take any stray ray of sunshine I can gather.
Just to complete Rochelle’s perfect morning, as I walk from the bedroom I rub my knuckles on her scalp in a way that really irritates her, and say, “Good job, Honey.”

And thus begins another day for the Dirty Diaper Dad.