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.