Bride ideas

Anaya wants to get married. (That seems to be a common hope here at Southern.) She decided this at age 2 1/2, when she went to Justin and Stephanie McNeilus's wedding. After all, Stephanie come down the aisle in a beautiful snowy white dress, with everyone watching, and then everyone got cake afterward. This seemed like a great arrangement. Anaya commented as we pulled out of the parking lot after the reception. "I want to get mawwied!" This has been her fairly consistent view ever since.

We try to encourage Anaya not to narrow down her list of prospective mates quite yet. (Not that it matters, since she has already agreed that Daddy will choose her future husband.) Though she has occasionally declared her undying allegiance to Skyler, and pleaded with me to marry her, most of the time her plans center on Daddy. At the very least, she insists she is going to marry someone "nice like Daddy." But other times she is more bold about declaring her designs: she wants to marry Daddy. My feeble, illogical protests that I married him first, he promised not to marry anyone but me, etc. make no difference. No one else will do. A few nights ago I came into our bedroom to discover an exhausted Daddy lying in bed while three boisterous children bounded around him. Then Anaya snuggled down beside him. "I'm so glad I can sleep with my HUSBAND," she declared gleefully, then condescendingly addressed me. "Good night, little girl! You need to go sleep in your bed now."

I'm sure Freud would smile triumphantly and declare that he was right. Well, I don't care; I think his theories are stupid. I'm just glad that my little girl loves her daddy so much.

She does briefly change her mind now and then about the whole marriage thing, by the way. "I don't want to get married," she announced last week. "Children are too much work!"