A Father

Sarah at  One Starry Night wrote a post requesting information regarding relationships with fathers. I began commenting, intending on writing a small amount about my relationship with my father, some about Jason's relationship with his father, and then the relationship between Jason and the girls. It got longer than I intended, so instead I'm posting my response here. Go check out her post and comment too!

My relationship with my father is complicated. Well, not really. It's actually quite simple. We used to be really close. He was my hero as a kid. He sang me Beatles and Elvis songs as lullabies, we danced while I stood on his feet, we laid around watching movies together. As a teenager we were pretty close too. We spent a lot of time together and talked about just about everything. Then he got remarried and things immediately changed. I'm 26 now and I pretty much only see my dad at holidays. I have tried to maintain regular contact with him because I would like for my girls to know the hero I knew at their age. It works for a week or two and then he becomes "too busy." It's too much effort on my part and not enough on his.

The relationship between Jason and his father is nonexistent. Jason and I have been together for almost 9 years and only at his sister's wedding last March did I meet their father. Even then it was unintentional. Because Jason grew up with an absent father, he's been afraid that he wouldn't know what to do. No one was there to show him what a good father is supposed to look like. Before we had kids, he had some pretty wild ideas about how a child should be raised - evidence that he was not yet a parent. (Haha. I'm pretty sure we ALL had some of those ideas before we had kids, did we not?) But after Gracie was born and reality set in, it became obvious that he was going to have to map his own way into becoming the awesome daddy he is today. I would like to say that I've led him a bit, but while I've given some pointers here and there, he gets all the credit.

It's so fun watching Jason interact with the girls. He will take them to the bedroom and let them roughhouse (Kairi not so much since she's so small, but she likes to watch). He'll lay on the bed and Gracie will jump on him and yell, "CANNON BALL!!!!"

He's so gentle with Kairi as well. A couple days ago I got out of bed to use the restroom and when I came back, I found the two of them snuggled up together.

I'm just glad that he's found his way as a daddy. He didn't need an example.