Adopting Fatherhood

These aren't Ema the Great's but they are  Zenith Allegro 3000's just like we had at the farm. I was giving The Kid a bath tonight because the combination of sand and sidewalk chalk was just too much grit for me to take. As is our bath-time routine, I grabbed her, my phone and my Bluetooth Jambox , and headed for her bathroom. As she was splishing and splashing, I started streaming a classical relaxation channel and something from Johannes Brahms began playing. I don't know what it was about the song but Ema the Great immediately came to mind. She loved listening to WKAR because they were Lansing's classical music station, and she took great pleasure in listening to the station at a ridiculously loud volume whenever she was home alone. I then chuckled at the memory of taking baths at her house as a kid.  She refused to give us more than an inch of lukewarm water to bathe in, and I could hear her scolding me for being wasteful in the amount of water I used ...

As The Kid gets older, our bedtime routine has obviously changed. She brushes and flosses her own teeth. She puts on her own pajamas. Since she's potty trained, we don't need to put on nighttime pullups. She picks out her own books, and insists on turning the pages for me. About once a week, she lets me sing my song to her , although she insists that she's getting too big for it. One thing hasn't changed. I still cuddle her until she falls asleep.  I don't have the heart to be a cry-it-out parent. This causes some late nights, especially if I have work to do after she goes to bed. But I can't shake the feeling that I still have a lot of work to do to strengthen our bond and our bedtime routine is part of strengthening it. The Kid didn't meet us until she was seven months old, and didn't start living with us until she was nine months old. She had an incredibly loving and supportive foster family , so I am confident that she has known what love feels ...