Thank you for listening and for helping me keep things in perspective when I’m freaking out. Thank you for working your ass off so we can have security and health insurance and so we can buy organic milk and eggs and nonorganic minivans. Thank you for impregnating my whiney, infertile ass and for being so excited and supportive and awesome throughout this pregnancy. Really, throughout the last year. It’s been a strange year, hasn’t it? I feel like I’ve had to lean on you a lot, but you’ve never made me feel like a burden.
Thank you again for moving back to Texas so we could be closer to all our crazy family. Ooh and thank you for speaking up in my defense when your parents talked shit about me at dinner that time. In my head, the crowd went wild cheering for you. Not many men will speak up for their wives like that… it was a small thing but one of those things that you do that makes me realize how lucky I am. I don’t remember for sure, but you probably scored that night.
Thank you for putting what’s best for our kids above everything and for putting whatever makes me feel safe and happy right after that. It seems like you do it so naturally, without a second thought.
But more than anything, thank you for being such an incredible father. Watching you interact with Nicolaus has never stopped amazing me. He shines when you show him how to do something, and the pride in his voice when he talks about redoing the bathroom or fixing your truck is the coolest thing ever. Thank you for taking him fishing, for flying kites and for pushing him around and around on that spinaround thing that makes me carsick. For teasing Nicolaus in a way that isn’t mean, for making us both laugh every single day, for spending as much time with us as you possibly can.
At night Nicolaus sits on the side of his bed and kicks his shoes off, using one foot to push the other shoe off so it flies dramatically across the floor. He tells me, “That’s what Daddy does when he has mud on his shoes.”
He doesn’t have a room, he has a workshop… like Daddy does, and when we eat spaghetti, he carefully curls his spaghetti around on his fork. It takes him forever to eat it that way, but that’s how Daddy eats it. He’s watching you. He’s imitating you constantly, and not in the stomping on you sense of the word. It’s so cute and so gorgeous to watch him walk and talk and try to be exactly like you.
So if you could stop burping in front of him, that’d be great.
I can’t wait for this new baby to meet you. Right now he mainly knows me… grumpy, worried, constantly sick old me… I think he’ll be very pleasantly surprised to learn that there’s another one of us who is generally a lot more fun. I can’t wait to see you out in our back yard with your two little sons pulling your hands toward the garden so they can go pick grape tomatoes in the hot summer sun.
We love you so much, Kevin. Happy father’s day.
