My Kid's Dad

Father's Day! It never seems to get quite as much love or annoying "World's Toughest Job" videos, but it's a special day in the LagLiv house as we celebrate our JP. I'm not going to say he's THE best dad ever, because there are a lot of great ones out there, my own dad included, but I really don't think there could be better. That he comes home after 8+ hours of teaching crying kids to swim in the hot sun and immediately scoops up Cora and hugs Claire and asks Landon about his day and truly wants to dive into the kids' evening routine, instead of pouring himself a drink and sequestering himself in his room like I would want to do, amazes me every day. He was so excited to spend extra time with Landon at the pool last week when our nanny never materialized, and just said "I'm going to miss him on the deck this week" when I mentioned Landon would be starting camp on Monday. He went to eat lunch with Landon almost every Friday at school and now knows all Landon's classmates and all of the teachers at his school. He frets over the kids growing up too fast and tries to think of ways to spend more time with them. He adores our family vacations and can think of nothing more fun than throwing all the kids in the car and driving somewhere awesome to hike and climb on things. He rakes leaves for hours before inviting the kids to jump in them and then re-rakes them again. He waits to run errands until the kids are home just so he can take them with him- he's taken all 3 kids alone to more places on his own than I have (x 10, at least; I enjoy a good solo errand). He's funny, playful, and adventuresome- the parenting yin to my yang, and is still the disciplinarian that molds our kids into the awesome little people they are, while always, always letting them know how much he loves being their dad.

He is Cora's absolute favorite person.

And mine too. For someone who didn't want kids when I met him, and who definitely did NOT have any sort of role model for being an involved, affectionate father, we pretty much hit the jackpot.

There's a lot out there about how hard motherhood is. I rarely agree with much of it, but I think that's because I have a husband who is ALL IN with this parenting gig. So maybe being a mom is hard (and sometimes, it certainly can be), but done right, so is being a dad, and when you're both in the weeds and the details and the discipline and the cleaning of millions of tiny clothes and food containers, the hard isn't so hard, and then fun is a hell of a lot more awesome. So today I got to honor a father who makes me love being a mother, and that's a pretty amazing deal for all five of us.

And that last line is totally what I'm writing in his Father's Day card next year. Happy Father's Day JP!