Project 52 | Week 38

Lila likes Tock better than me.  I’m totally fine with it. (yeah, right)

This is what happens almost every time Tock tries to leave the house– Lila flips out and  screams her pretty little head off, begging him to stay home.  This girl LOVES her dad.  I mean, like crazy loves him.  She’s obsessed.   And there isn’t even a small part of me that is jealous, even though when I leave the house she barely waves to me.  Nope.  I’m not jealous at all.

Fine.  I’m jealous.  It’s just that it’s so obvious that she prefers him over me, and as the one who carried her for 47  months (I know it was really only 9 months, but it certainly felt longer) it kind of stings.  But, as a daughter who loves her own dad incredible amounts, I can also appreciate the relationship they have.  So I try not to think about it in terms of her NOT liking me, but instead about how much she simply adores her daddy.  Though sometimes Tock likes to rub it in, which always leads me to spit out, “yeah, well the other two like me better than you, so there.”  Not cool, Danielle.  Not cool at all.

The best part of Lila’s day is when Tock comes home from work.  She will either hide and wait for him to find her (and he is so good about making a big deal about trying to find her) or she will run to the door to greet him and fly immediately into his arms.  And even I will admit that it’s really sweet.  Who knows how long our kids will love us the way they do now.  The years go by so quickly and I know that one day down the road we won’t be invited to lay with them at night, or to sit on their beds to talk about their day.  We’ll be slapped in the face with ‘Do Not Enter’ signs on their closed bedroom doors and shrugs and grunts instead of words.  So, in our hearts we know to embrace this time now; these crazy and loud days where everyone is fighting for a chance to be heard at the dinner table, and they still want us to walk them to the bus stop.  And while we may fight over who loves who best, each of us knows deep down that we’re really just lucky to be loved like this at all.

Here’s Lila earlier this week trying to stop Tock from going to work, by blocking the basement door….