Dancing WIth My Daughter

Last November I blogged about dancing with the children. For my daughter and I it has become a nightly ritual. Most evenings you'll see us spin around the room a time or two. I am not sure that I could say it any better than I did here:

More often than not she grabs my hand so that I can pick her up. I look down and see these twinkly eyes and a mop of curly hair and I melt. Click here. If you close your eyes you can see my princess and I waltzing around the room. Just hearing the music makes me smile. I can hear her giggle as we spin. I can hear her shriek with laughter. And sometimes, just sometimes you might even catch me with a little tear in my eye.

But she has added to her repertoire. Now she likes to hold onto my hand and spin in little circles. Apparently she has been paying a lot of attention to Dancing With The Stars. Not just that, but she has grabbed onto some more tunes for us to dance to.

Martina McBride has become one of her favorites. She absolutely loves This One's For The Girls. I suspect that part of the attraction is that her brother doesn't like it. She's a butterfly is another one of her favorites.

What scares me the most is that she has already told me that we're going to dance at her wedding. She is 3.5, what is up with the wedding talk. As long as we are going to jump into the land of ridiculous comment and thought I'll add that it is hard to imagine that one day some boy is going to take her from me.

I have a whole slew of little sisters so I have more than a little experience putting the fear of G-d into boys, but this time around will be different. I won't be the physical monster I was then. Back in those days I didn't have many responsibilities. It was easy to devote a couple hours a day to the gym.

This time around I'll be the old man. I'll have to come up with something that really intimidates those boys. I have a pretty decent glare. Add that to my voice and it is a decent start. But I remember what it was like to be on hormonal overdrive and how I had no fear of the fathers of the girls I dated. I'll need to come up with something new.

So I am playing around with a couple of ideas. I was thinking that the best way to determine the intentions of the guys who come looking for my baby girl is to introduce them to Guantanamo at The Shack. I figure I'll force them into some orange jump suits, let them experience the joys of waterboarding and maybe a taser or two.

Yep, that ought to do the trick. Of course I might wind up getting arrested so that is probably not such a good idea, but this is my daughter we're talking about. I am willing to take a lump or two for her.

Ok, time to leave the land of make believe and return to reality. The girl isn't even four. But I'll tell you, it is not hard to envision the future. When she puts her hands on her hips and starts lecturing me about how she wants me to behave, I can totally imagine what she'll be like as a teenager. Maybe I ought to run now, by then she'll have figured out all of my tricks and then what am I going to do.