Video: The Giggle One

I love so many things about this video.

The first and most obvious is that by chance we caught Rafaella's first real giggle on camera. How often does that happen? And I mean a real giggle. I am not trying to be that parent who says, "Did you hear that? Did you hear my 4 month old baby say 'supercilious'?" And just to prove that we even played it for Matty G., a two time parent, and he agreed.

We told him what happened and he said, "Let's hear it. I've got two. I'll tell you if that's a real giggle."

And so we played it.

And with a nod of agreement he said, "Oh yeah, that's a good one."

The next thing I adore about the video is Mike's face. A full-on daddy moment, his face turns from a smile to a "DID THAT JUST HAPPEN?!" face of amazement. With surprise and awe that his little baby Rafa is giggling for the first time it warms my very soul to have one other person on the whole planet feel the same exact way as I did at that very moment. Maybe that's why raising a baby is a two person job (besides the obvious physicality of it), so that you'll have another person to witness the miracle in front of you and revel in it;sharing the feelings in the same way you do at the same time you do because one of you feeling all of that emotion might implode.

Then, I love that in almost a split second Mike 's emotions change so quickly. One moment he is elated, the next deflated when he sees Olive (our fatty McGee dog) eating what was probably a student's discarded chicken finger. I would assume this is what happens with children. One moment you stare at them and marvel at how you could have made such a perfect little being and the next they are drawing on your walls... with poop. Having dogs is similar. Watching Jersey and Olive be outside and know that their transformation as dogs (especially Jersey) is completely due to our taking them in gives me a feeling of profound joy . I could watch them run all day and wonder at how great their metamorphosis is...and the next second they're eating their own poop.

In the scheme of things, as "home movies" go, this one fits the mold. And like all good home videos, it happened when we weren't expecting it to. We weren't trying to make her laugh, she just did. Organic & Natural.

I am positive that in life's many moments we won't be able to catch even a fraction of them on camera. And then there are the moments you didn't even realize were moments until after they happen. And this is what memories are, right? Moments that we remember. Camera or no camera.

Although for this memory, I'm glad there was involvement of fortuitous camera..