I love you in a way I’ve never loved anyone before. You have completely added to my quality of life over these first 6 months of your life.
It reminds me of a song called “Everything” by Lifehouse, which is actually a song about God. However, there is a line that I feel completely describes the effect you have on me:
“How can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?”
It is beyond my comprehension that throughout the history of the world, including now, there have been and still are fathers who don’t feel the same way about their daughters as the way I feel about you.
I cannot relate to the concept of a father brining a daughter into this world, only to ultimately abandon her, neglect her, or simply not completely adore her.
Before you and your brother were born, it was quite normal for me to consider what the meaning of life was.
However, this is the first time since 2010, when your brother was born, that I’ve thought about “the meaning of life.”
Because since becoming a parent, I haven’t needed to think about that.
God has given me great blessings and great responsibilities: You and your brother.
I don’t take my role as your Daddy lightly. I’m a big deal to you both, whether I want to be or not.
The outcome of your life is largely based on how I express my love to you and your brother.
And while I love your brother just as much as I love you, there is undeniably a specifically different role in being a father to a daughter, as opposed to a son.
I simply must adore you and nurture you and guide you and protect you and lead you.
One of my exclusive daily responsibilities as your Daddy is to make sure you’re being physically challenged in your exercises. So when I’m home, I do exercise time with you after each feeding.
You curiously love to stand up while I hold your hands. This seems peculiar to me, in that you’re only 2 months old. But yes, you stand on your feet for several minutes at a time before you need a break.
It’s funny because you always stand with your feet perfectly together; never in a regular stance.
Sometimes I pretend we are having a father-daughter dance, jokingly signing “Cinderella” by Steven Curtis Chapman. You totally go along with it, not knowing any better.
But while it is a joke, I look forward a lifetime of dancing you with as your father.
After you get tired of that, I turn you over on your stomach, which forces you to attempt to crawl. You have every reason to cry within in a few seconds, yet you never do.
Instead, you are always inspired to keep trying to crawl until I finally flip you back over due to your puddle of drool.
In addition to you having an obsession with maintaining mobility, you also are getting very serious about learning to talk.
During our exercise training, you also will smile at me and starting talking:
“Grrrr-ooowww-ahhh…”
I’ve learned that as I make random sounds back, you try to imitate them.
You’re also fixated on trying to roll all the way over from your back to your stomach.
Rolling over from your back to your side is easy for you at this point. My favorite time was last weekend when you were laying down on your play mat, smiled at me real big, then just threw your whole body into immediately rolling over.
It was as if to say, “Hi Daddy, bye Daddy!”
We have fun together! I am your fitness instructor and speech pathologist.
For years, I was convinced I was perfectly happy having only a little boy. But now that you’ve been in my life for a week, I realize I was wrong. I needed a baby girl in my life.
I love everything about your brother; he’s the perfect little boy. With you here now though, I see that you provide the proper balance to our family.
With your brother, I get to be rough and crude and adventurous, as I should be with an all American boy. I get to drive through the mud with him and take him to PG-13 rated super hero movies that some say are inappropriate for him. I love that I get to feel sort of rebellious in parenting your brother.
With you, I get to make sweet cooing sounds directly into your face as I stare at you for no less than an hour at a time as I hold you. I am so in love with you.
I have never got to experience this before. Despite being a parent for 5 and a half years, having you here is completely different. You are such a sweet, adorable, and mesmerizing little girl.
You’re so easy to stare at. I love your amazing little smile. I love your uniquely folded ears. I love your tiny little cry.
Had you born a boy, I would have been just as happy; because I couldn’t have known what I was missing. I already knew how much I loved having a son, so I knew things would have been great.
But instead, you were meant to be Holly Joy. I was meant to have a daughter.
I’m not saying there’s no possibility of you never having a younger brother or sister… but I do know that our family has never felt so complete- like the way it does now that you are here.
Yesterday as I drove home from work, I was listening to what I believe is one of the best musical recordings of all time, released 20 years ago in 1995; Oasis’s (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?
While I was listening to “Wonderwall”, a song that never gets old to me, I thought about you, as certain lines from the song played over the speakers of my Honda Element:
“I don’t believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now…
There are many things that I would like to say to you but I don’t know how…
And after all, you’re my wonderwall”
Perhaps to some people, the term “wonderwall” never really made much sense in that now classic Oasis song.
But to me, it always made sense- and it especially makes sense in regards to how I perceive you:
I write to you as if you are a real, living person, here with me right here and right now.
But the thing is, you are.
There’s simply a technically in that you are still in Mommy’s tummy, where you’ll be until around April 21, 2015.
So until then, you are my wonderwall.
You are this mysterious wall I can’t climb or get over to the other side; yet you are right there in front of me.
While I can’t yet look you in the eyes, you are just as real and familiar as if you are already here with me in the outside world.
You are my daughter. Man, that seems weird to say.
But seriously, how can anybody else in this entire world feel the way I do about you now?
This morning as my wife and I were getting ready for work, we were talking about the concept of how parents can influence their kids, even without trying to.
For example, no matter how much you praise your child on their abilities, talents, and looks, they can be just as influenced by the way you, the parent, see yourself.
As Bekah on The Wally Show explained yesterday morning, a mother who picks herself apart in front of the mirror will often, by default, teach her daughter to do the same; no matter how much the mother compliments the daughter.
We learn so much from our parents.
Today is my dad’s 59th birthday. So naturally, having just had this conversation, I’ve been thinking all day about the ways my dad made me who I am; whether he meant to or not.
I easily thought of 5 ways:
1) Diet:
The first story that comes to mind was back in the late 80s one time when my dad stopped to get gas for his Ford Ranchero.
I asked him if I could get a candy bar inside the gas station. He reluctantly said yes, but went on to explain how unhealthy candy bars were, because of “all that sugar”. He told me how little boys my age needed to be eating healthier foods.
That made me curious. I then asked him when the last time he had eaten he candy bar. He replied, “Years… I probably was a boy. But I shouldn’t have, because those things aren’t healthy.”
Similarly, I can also specifically remember, around the same time, we were watching 20/20 on TV and there was a special about how kids were having heart attacks because of their diets.
My dad warned me if I didn’t start eating healthier foods, I could end up like those kids on TV who had heart attacks.
In our house, we never had white bread; only wheat. I felt deprived.
Granted, those elementary school years passed, then my teens, then my college years, and I ate horribly the whole time; whenever it was up to me. I didn’t heed his advice.
But by the time I reached my late 20s, I started seeing my processed food diet catch up with me…
Now, look at me. I am the strictest vegan anyone personally knows. If it weren’t for my dad, though, I wouldn’t currently be the healthy man I am.
If it weren’t for my dad, these days I would be a highly medicated guy: I would take something daily for severe allergy and sinus issues; and I would still constantly be suffering eczema, paying for prescription medicine to attempt to alleviate it, but not cure it.
That all went away when I became a vegan 2 and a half years ago; not to mention I’ve effortlessly remained in the perfect weight range for my height and weight since then.
I am confident that my dad’s “you better stop eating candy cars or you’re going to be a kid who has a heart attack” comments greatly influenced me for the good; even if I couldn’t appreciate it at the time.
It was ingrained in me from my dad that it’s important to prevent cancer and disease; not simply focus on the cure.
Here’s a webisode that he and I made with my son; which hints on the fact we don’t trust microwaves:
2) Being active:
Plus, my dad was always physically active. During my entire childhood, he participated in martial arts; he was a black belt. Back in 1992, he even won 1st place in the sparring competition, for his division in northern Alabama.
(As for me in modern day, I regularly run and go mountain biking; plus I take at least two 10 minute walks outside during my breaks.)
Quite regularly, I when I was a kid, I would go with my dad to his Tuesday night practices and workouts. I knew that he would let me get a cheeseburger at Hardee’s on the way home if I went with him.
Here’s another webisode that my dad and I made with my son; which features my dad in one of his classic karate uniforms:
3) Letting me make my own decisions
And perhaps that’s another way he influenced me: He let me make my own decisions, even sometimes when he knew there was a better way.
I’m not sure I’ll be as hands off with my own son. I don’t know that I can be as Libertarian with my son as my dad was with me.
But had my dad not been so laissez-faire with me (a policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering), there’s a good chance I would rebelled and acted out as a kid, teenager, and even a young adult.
So twenty years ago, during the reign of grunge, I had the long hair and the baggy jeans; and my dad never once revealed he was concerned about it.
Of course, my dad also taught me, by default, to be calm-assertive.
These qualities are only the tip of the iceberg. In all this, it was not only his words, but more importantly, his actions that inspired me how to live my life.
4) Faith
Going deeper, I grew up with my dad reading me stories from the Bible for my bedtime stories, teaching my Sunday School classes at our church, and leading the youth group at church.
Therefore, I do my best to lead my own family in the teachings of Christianity; not out of tradition, but as a way of life- serving others, not judging them.
I seriously doubt my blog would be called Family Friendly Daddy Blog if it weren’t for him. He never cussed, so neither do I. Curse words never seemed necessary in order to communicate something worth saying.
5) Politics
And when it comes to politics, I see that I have become my dad as well:
“Vote for the lesser of the two evils; whether that happens to be a Democrat or a Republican.” I remember he told me that a couple elections ago and it’s stuck with me.
A mindset like that requires an individual to use critical thinking beyond what they are taught by either the left wing or the right wing.
After all, they are both wings of the same bird.
Ultimately, he taught me to question the norm. And I do. That is a huge part of who I am.
It’s even one of the main reasons my wife started dating me, as she has told me before, “You always seem so confident in what you believe, even if it not what most other people believe.”
So really, the way I see it, it’s undeniable that my dad greatly influenced who I am. Today he turns 59 years old. Despite whatever gift card my wife and I mailed him for his birthday, these words today are my gift to him more than anything else.
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