Debut

I wish I had a picture to go with this post, but I don't. (It's been one of those two weeks.)

On Saturday, we learned that Zoë may have an acting career ahead of her. That is, she can cry on cue. How cool is that?

At the last minute, the director of the movie Josh was working on decided he wanted a baby blessing scene. So Saturday morning, after finishing up some work for a big deadline and getting me and Zoë ready--all with the help of Grandma Jane--I trucked up to Wallsburg (near Heber) to the former LDS chapel where all LDS chapel scenes are filmed. The craziness of the day meant that Zoë never did go down for her morning nap and was way too distracted to do that or eat once we got there.

So, during the scene itself she was okay while I held her toward the glass door and she could see outside. However, once camera was set, sound was rolling, and they yelled "baby in!" she would lose it. You would too if you were hungry, tired, and staring up at 6 men while thinking haven't I already done this but with a bunch of guys I know? She didn't scream, but she cried. It didn't stop the lady sitting next to me in the pew from blurting out (while the scene was still going) "She's so cute!" when the pseudo-dad held her up Lion King-style at the end, whimpering and all.

So, we'll see if they use it . . . I mean, babies do cry during blessings. I think it could add an air of authenticity to the film. Plus, the family blessing the baby in the movie is experiencing hardship elsewhere in their lives, so it sort of fits that their baby cries at her blessing.

See what's happening? I'm lobbying the director through my blog, which he'll never read, to keep my child's "performance" in the movie. Oh help me if I ever become a stage mother. It would really be awful because it would be so easy to get caught up in the pressure of a film set (think of the voice of an AD--assistant director--urgently crackling over a walkie we need to place the baby, is the baby ready . . . responded to by the baby is being prepped . . .) while I'm struggling to button her long blessing gown. In fact, I took the AD's command of Quiet on set! so literally that I had Zoë down the hall in case she started squawking while they were rehearsing the blessing scene--when they decided to roll the rehearsal it took everyone a minute to realize they were sans baby. (In my defense, I thought they had figured out a way to shoot the circle so that the about-to-be-crying Zoë wouldn't have to make an apperance until the Lion King moment to cut down on potential crying, but no such luck.)

In any case, it's hard not to think in that moment that the most important thing in the universe right now is that my child does the right thing--whatever that right thing seems to be. And though no one was complaining about her crying, it was hard not to feel that she had failed at her task and by extension that I had. (To be fair, I had in a way by not ensuring she had slept and eaten sufficiently.) Suddenly, it's easy to start seeing your child as the "it" the camera guys were calling her that needs to be placed higher or lower by the "baby wrangler" (me) instead of my sweet little girl who is scared and sleepy and needs a cuddle from her mama.

I may be making myself sound more heartless than I felt and I'm surely exaggerating the importance of Zoë's performance, but my point is this: I hope this is the end of Zoë's acting career. Josh once drove McCully Culkin to the airport discussing, among other things (like the Utah Jazz--McCully's a huge fan) his parents. He may be an extreme case, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that the movie business does ugly things to parents. In the end, I'm glad my baby acted like, well, a baby rather than the cooing smiling machine I temporarily thought I wanted her to be.