he's a great daddy.

no doubt about it, the girls adore their daddy.

the moment he pulls in the driveway, they drop whatever it is they are doing and make a mad dash to the front door seeing who can get to him fastest to capture his love and attention. poor emma is usually the one trailing behind clinging to his leg as he tries to get inside to start the negiotions of what they will do first.

"daddy can we wrestle?" (ashlyn) "go bye-bye daddy? emma go park too!" (emma) "go outside!" (emma) "i have an idea daddy. we can go to the park and practice riding my bike! isn't that a good plan daddy?" (ashlyn)


the usual choice is to pretend they are professional wrestlers and the girls tag team daddy using emma's dresser as their "ropes" to jump off of and clobber daddy making him fall onto emma's bed. the match usually ends in emma giggling so hard she can barely breathe and ashlyn tapping out or crying mercy through her almost breathless giggles.

something we do every year is leave a tray of goodies for santa's reindeer. we leave it up to ash (since emma has been too young to understand) to decide exactly what the reindeer need. if you know ashlyn at all, you know that she dares to be different in every sense of the word. milk and cookies is just too ordinary for her taste, so here is how we left the tray before we all tucked in for the night this past Christmas:


and this is what we saw when we were greeted by the dawn:


there was also period of time when you could say that ashlyn adored the cartoon, Dragon Tales. so doug sat down with her and wrote one of the characters a letter and mailed it (to himself, i think). then a few days later he came in from getting the mail and ashlyn had a return letter from Ord.

the picture is only a mere glimpse of the joy she radiated that evening as he read the letter from Ord to her.




and it even included coloring pages for her to color.


and he's really good at manipulating them into good behavior, hahaaaaa. like the times he shut himself into my studio and called the house phone from his cell phone proclaiming he was the Easter bunny or santa and wanted to talk to ashlyn. she could barely talk through her giddyness. makes me laugh everytime i think about it.



he always knows just how to make the sparkle in their eyes a little brighter.

i'd be a liar if i said it didn't make me a tidge jealous that they think daddy's the "fun" one. but i understand. i'm mommy. mommies aren't the same as daddies. i'm meant to clean their messes, and cook their meals, fix their boo-boos, the one to say "no, do this" or "no, don't do that". the one to do the expected and ordinary.

but daddy, daddy is meant to make their dreams come true. the one who will teach them how a man should treat a lady. the one who they will use as a guide to measure up the young man they choose to marry someday.

parenting is such an overwhelmingly, awesome responsibility. how did we get so lucky to be parents, yet we fail so miserably every.single.day?