The Husband was a total prince this morning – as he always is, but especially so whenever schedule and circumstance allow him to linger around home at high-baby-traffic times – and took over breakfast duty with Baby so as to allow me to steal some much-needed sleep. He brought her downstairs, changed her, played with her and then brought her back up, re-swaddled her, and put her down for her mid-morning nap. Then he went to work, late.

Some time later, after she wakes up, I go to unpeel her from her swaddle and I find her dressed very nattily – tho’ suprisingly – in a dressy blouse-style onesie (the kind with puffy sleeves and a scalloped princess collar), purple pants with satin trim, and ducky rattle socks. All dressed up, she was, with nowhere to go. The swaddling blanket, needless to say, did not go with the outfit.

So why do I love my husband?

1) Because he let me get more sleep. Duh.

2) Because he dressed his daughter up in what amounts to baby party clothes (excepting the socks, although I grant that there would be something wrong with him if he’d swaddled her in shoes) at 8am on a Wednesday morning, and then put her to bed in those clothes.

3) Because I know, without having to ask, that it took him at least two attempts to get those clothes on. That blouse would have gone on backward the first time.

4) Because I know that he was pleased to be letting me rest, and that he was happy to be changing and dressing his daughter, and that he thought to himself that his daughter looked pretty ridiculous but goddamned CUTE in that outfit.

5) Because he’s a prince among men. No, really.

Originally posted at Her Bad Mother, 2006. Copyright Catherine Connors 2006 – 2009.