im complicated. ill just say that right now.

hey girl


im pretty sure you have conflicted feelings about me lately.

i tickle you all the time and make you laugh. i tell you that cookies can talk and that gingerbread men poot cinnamon...i let you know that you have the power to question monsters who come into your room without asking first and then eating them if they dont leave when you tell them to.

but i also make you clean your room and leave mommy alone. i make sure that you always say please and thank you. i dont let you eat lollipops whenever you think you
deserve one.

i fight a hard battle when i interact with you and it's hard to express sometimes, to your mommy, just how hard it is. but you need to know how much i love you.

your granpa dawson and abuelita werent the most emotionally invested people in the world and your daddy grew up in a house of strict and unreasonable rules. your daddy got pops all the time and was never allowed to eat lollipops...even if i cleaned up my messy room all by myself.

to this day, your granpa has never told me the ins-and-outs of how to raise a little girl and all your abuelita wants to do is tell me that i am the man i am because of her. its a bizarre and un-fixable relationship. even now, they dislike how little they see you but even when they are here they really dont know what to do with you.

i work really hard to not repeat the same mistakes that i think my parents made. especially my dad. my dad was never there for me emotionally. i heard "i dont know" out of his mouth as much as i heard "what the hell?". i do my very best to say "i dont know". ...which is why you are able to eat monsters and gingerbread men poop gumdrops.

when i make you clean your room or tell you that you cant have a lollipop, its not beacuse i want to be mean and make you unhappy. its not because i dont love you. the truth is that i am fighting my programming. my parents programmed me to be a certain way. your mommy has done a lot to fix me as a man but i have a long way to go before i am a really good dad.

so i just want you to know that you are the light of my life, even though sometimes it's hard for me to see it when im half-awake. i love you more than i love your mommy sometimes but thats only because you arent moody yet. but the truth is that without you i would have never enjoyed playing with legos again or discovered spongebob.

there is no one in this world who will jump out and protect you faster than me and there will be no force on this earth capable of laying a finger on you without my permission....your future boyfriends (and you) will have a rough go of it, indeed. and, despite what i tell your mommy, it is hard to hear you crying. which is why i try to make you laugh as much as i do by being silly or telling you silly things.

next to your mommy, you are the most beautiful and cherished girl on this planet and even though i want to be able to give you all the damned lollipops the world has to offer, i simply cant. it wouldnt be right for me to do that anymore than it would be right for me to never let you have one. i already know what that does to a child.

looking forward to hugs and kisses later.

love your daddy.