Father's Day 2007

A little over 7 years ago (7 years and 5 days to be exact), I met the man who would become the father of my children. Did I know it on the day? No, but something about this man drew me in. I could tell by the way he talked about his brothers and sister, that he was dedicated to family. This was such an important factor to me given the close knit family that I grew up in.

While I didn't know on June 12, 2000 that Chris would become my husband and the father of 3 (so far) phenomenal boys, it didn't take me a real long time to figure it out. By about August, I was pretty sure that this was the guy for me. A couple of months later, he figured the same thing out as well - women tend to get these things quicker, don't we?

Chris and I were only married a year before we decided to start a family. He was the greatest daddy right from the start. He went to every single OB appointment with me - even the staff in the doctor's office was impressed. He read books on fatherhood. He went to the birthing classes with me even though they were all the way at Georgetown because I wanted to go to the class that my former nurse practitioner was teaching. And of course he was there for the birth of our first child, Brian. It was a pretty scary time in the L&D room. Brian's heart rate dropped, they were doing all kinds of manipulations to get him to a safe level, and through it all, there was Chris, praying that our child and I were going to be fine. When Brian was born, Chris cried; tears of joy at becoming a dad. You see, Chris wasn't so sure he would ever get to be a dad. He had almost given up on finding the right person (me) and getting married. And being the good Catholic man that he is, if he wasn't married, he wasn't having a child.

Chris has continued to amaze me at the kind of father he is to our boys. He's not afraid of getting in there and changing a poopy diaper. He's also been the one in charge of umbilical cord stumps and circumcision care (yuck!). He will sit with a baby on his lap and read him a story, and he will rock a child for an hour trying to get him to go to sleep. He wants to be the first one to give a baby "real" food, and will always choose doing holding a child over anything else. He will swing the boys in the air, and let them have a "daddy - take - down" - his own special game with them. He loves to play with the boys and be silly with them. When he walks in the door at the end of his work day, he gets down to their level so they can run and give him hugs. He cherishes the time he gets to spend with his boys, and I am so proud to call him the father of my children, and wouldn't want it any other way.