Recently, my daughter has begun doing something that makes me so indescribably happy: she comes to me and demands to be held by daddy. 

Since she’s begun crawling, we’ve given her occasional freedom to roam around supervised, obviously so she doesn’t eat dust bunnies or dog fur, and to make sure she doesn’t hurt herself when she inevitably wants to brace against everything, pull herself up and stand, on wobbly feet.  But when there are two adults in the room, be it mythical wife or our nanny, I can go do things and let them be the eyes for me while I try to catch up, or grab a quick bite to eat if I’m in the middle of my workday.

Lately though, my daughter has begun tracking me down to where I stand, and with determination, she military crawls over to me, and pulls herself on my legs and makes whining sounds until I acquiesce and pick her up.  She clearly is wanting to be acknowledged and held by dad.

I’ve stood in the kitchen while she stood in the room adjacent, and she crawled her way to me which has to be a tremendous amount of effort for one who hasn’t really gotten the hang of proper crawling yet.  I’ll spend some time with her in her room, and usually this is where I can kind of relax, dick around on my phone and let her crawl around and play with toys without much concern, because it’s a fairly safe space, but the toys get old really fast, and she’d rather crawl to me and want to play with me instead.

Earlier today, I went into the sunroom to get a run session in during my lunch break, and closed the door behind me since I sound like stampeding elephants when I run on the treadmill.  I could see out of the corner of my eye while tying my shoes that she was crawling to the door, and fussed when our nanny gathered her up because she obviously can’t come in while I’m running, but it was clear where she was wanting to go.

And my heart melts every single time.

Obviously, there’s not a day that goes by where my child doesn’t make me happy, but this is the first time she’s shown a modicum of choice and action, and it just so happens to be choosing to seek out dad.  I love my kid more than anything in the world.