The Daddy Daughter Distinction

Our baby girl is 9-months-old now and one thing I can say for sure is that time goes faster when you have a daughter. I know this logically can’t be true, but dads with daughters know what I mean.

I don’t recall ever wanting the boys to stay babies. I was eager for them to grow up and be able to play and wrestle and do fun stuff. It’s not that I’m not looking forward to doing fun stuff with Baby Girl too, it’s just that I’m dreading losing the hold-you-in-my-arms stage. And dreading it is making it come along a whole lot faster.

I mean, all of a sudden we’re at the stage where she’s pulling herself up and standing next to a water table and splashing in the backyard. You know what happens after that stage? She learns to ride a bike, she wants to paint her nails, she gets married.

I’m not ready for this.

It’s just different with a girl. I want it to stay like this forever. Or more accurately, knowing that it won’t, I’m at least 100% less eager for her to grow up than her brothers. Right now, she breaks into a huge smile when I walk into the room. Right now, she’ll cuddle right up against my chest and fall asleep like an amiable woodland creature hibernating in a tree. Right now, her eyes light up when I talk to her.

Right now, she has a few teeth and is in what I call the prairie dog smile phase. I defy you to find a cuter image than Baby Girl squinting her eyes, puffing out her chubby cheeks, and grinning with those little front teeth. How could you not want things to slow down? 

They won’t though. I’ve never heard anyone say, “You know, things really slow down when you hit your 40s.” Or your 50s, or 60s… She’ll be 21 when the next total solar eclipse rolls around in the US. I think that’s going to get here much faster than it sounds.

If you’ve read these columns even semi-regularly I’m sure you’ve seen the theme of time come up before. So I can’t tell you how much of this time speeding up thing is from having a daughter and how much is just more musings on time. But I don’t think the two are unrelated.

Before we had a girl, I observed there was a special relationship between dad and daughter. I saw it with my brother and brother-in-law and my nieces with friends and their daughters. But I only “got it” to the extent that I could see something was there that I didn’t understand. It’s kind of like getting married or becoming a dad for the first time. You truly and really can’t understand it until you are it.

Having a daughter is the same. It calls forth a protectiveness you didn’t know you had in you and brings out a facet of fatherhood that your sons don’t. And boy does it make time fly.