He's doing something right.

Madeleine has shown the normal (I think) girl preoccupation with weddings, her parents' in particular. Just this evening after bath she was asking Dale and I individually why we had married the other. I cribbed his answer: they were the most wonderful person in the world and we'd have been a fool not to.

After prayers and lights out, I was futilely trying to rock Rachel to sleep and Madeleine asked if I wanted to know who she's going to marry. She's told me her brother on occasion, but this seemed different.

"Do you really want to know? Are you sure?" she whispered in the dark. "Because it's a secret. It's a really secret secret." She had the glow of a girl with her first crush, and I was touched that she was willing to share it with me. And, I was quite curious whom she'd name. Matthew, the little boy three days older than she? Vinnie, across the street? Chip Skylark, who was on her birthday cake? An anonymous boy from preschool?

"I'm going to tell you in your ear," she said, crawling across her bed to me. She leaned in close enough for me to smell her hair, still damp from the bath.
"Daddy."