The Evolution of a Daddy.....

One night a few weeks ago, I woke up, rolled over in bed and realized my husband wasn't there.  My first thought was that he must have fallen asleep in front of the TV or that maybe he was sitting in front of his computer doing work.  I wandered from room to room in the house and then through them all again trying to find him until I realized there was one room I had missed - my daughter's.  I carefully opened the door and there he was wrapped up in a blanket on the floor next to her bed.  She had been sick for several days and had woken up crying and coughing many times in the middle of the night.  I had taken this shift several nights in a row and had wound up walking around at work like a zombie never quite sure if I was coming or going.  I don't know if I had slept through her crying or if he just beat me to it, but I was incredibly grateful.

As I closed the door and returned to bed, I found myself reflecting on the past two years of my daughter's life and all of the little daddy-daughter moments that have tugged at my heartstrings:  him holding her just moments after she was born in the hospital, him walking the floors with her and night quietly whispering in her ear, him walking around with her on his shoulders so she feels like she's queen of the world, the two of them sharing ice cream on the couch.  I tried to pinpoint that moment when he stepped from one world into another and became a daddy, but I wasn't quite sure when it happened.  Was it the day I called him on the way home from the doctor's office to tell him I was pregnant?  Was it the first time we heard her heartbeat or when we saw her moving around when we had our ultrasound?  Was it on one of those nights when we sat reading nursery rhymes and Dr. Seuss books to my pregnant belly because we heard that it was good for the baby or one of the other nights when he sat there talking to my belly and rubbing his hand across it trying to get her to kick?

I'm not sure when it happened, but it has been truly amazing to watch the way that a baby (and a little girl at that) can transform a big tough man into a great big teddy bear!  I am very grateful for all these "little moments."