The longest shortest month of the year

Well that first birthday came and went and a cherubic baby tilted precariously on the cliff's edge of the Valley of Girlhood and zwing! Off she soared into becoming a little girl. She landed in a sweet spot where she totally stands by herself now and splashes like Animal the Muppet in the bath tub and because she is so amazed with her new skillz, she is so over napping. Coincidence that she has not napped more than 45 minutes since becoming one? Yes, I think it has gone to her head. And now it is going to mine because I am about to pull a nutty from having a napless child in the house while the weather outside is ch-ch-ch-chillayyy. It occurred to me yesterday that I've been so distracted by the impending birthday, I had barely noticed that this is the most insufferable time of year for me. This stretch of time where January offers no hope of the imposing snowpiles melting, and February with its shiny red boxes of waxy chocolates offers only sugar and carbs to get through this long shortest month of the year. I'm completely demotivated and spend my days wondering which of my friends I can hypnotize into making them surrender the keys to their beach house on Marco Island.

I got a card from my granny yesterday, though, and it sobered me right up. She's basically homebound since she gave up driving a couple of years ago and depends on her kids to drive her to church and grocery shopping, the like, but she's still so content to read her books and eat her eggs and call her sisters on the phone. I know she misses my grandfather so deeply, and I am sure days like these must seem like a cruel and undeserved punishment. So I'm just going to enjoy the blessing of my daughter today, to try to read a bit, maybe eat some eggs and think fondly of my husband.

How 'bout you? How do you get through the wintery malaise?

MARY KAY

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Becoming a Daddy

How does one become a daddy? I know anyone can lend his special sauce and father a child. But how does one evolve to become someone that a pixie in pajamas looks up to call "Daddy"?

When I was pregnant, I used to make Loverpants set out my snack each morning, reminding him that it was for his child, like this was some home ec project that he needed to keep up with or the potato would warp and grow strange ears if left to neglect. I wasn't training him to be a daddy. I was just trying to share some of the burden of having to hold this living unnamed creature in my consciousness. It only seemed fair.

I can tell you what becoming a mommy has meant to me, and that is basically summed up by a constant feeling of awe and fear that there is a life in the world that I am responsible for loving so much it makes my entire being quake, and thankfully that love is not hard to come by, at least not right now.

But becoming a daddy is a phenomenon I don't completely comprehend. Daddies don't carry children (unless you are this guy), they don't birth children, they don't boobfeed children, they can certainly adopt children and assist in the rapid dismissal of a child from the womb to the world.

So I am amazed, truly dumbfounded by the love that follows from one daddy that I know. How did he become like this? I don't completely know. But I know this. He is always keeping an eye out for changes in his baby girl. He loves to shop online for her clothes, loves to sing to her, loves to invent new voices to capture her interest while reading books. He looks with eager anticipation at the future and all of the frisbee games and bike rides it holds on some fiery sky horizon, their two shadows so discernible, Father and Daughter, Daddy and Baby Girl.