My daughter, Amy, is five, and she has always called me Dad.
\nWe do almost everything together. I take her to the park, help with bedtime, make pancakes on Sundays, and sit through endless cartoons because she insists I watch with her.
\nSo when she suddenly said, \u201cI want to go with Daddy,\u201d I laughed.
\n\u201cI am Daddy,\u201d I told her.
\nShe shook her head.
\n\u201cNo, you\u2019re not. Daddy told me.\u201d
\nI felt my chest tighten.
\nI asked who had said that, but before she answered, my wife walked into the room.
\nShe heard the last part of the conversation and immediately went pale.
\nThen Amy pointed toward a framed photo on the shelf.
\n\u201cThat\u2019s my real daddy.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at the picture.
\nIt was my wife\u2019s older brother, who had died before Amy was born.
\nFor a second, I was completely confused.
\nThen my wife started laughing nervously.
\nShe explained that the night before, Amy had been looking through old family photos with her grandmother. Grandma had pointed to her son and jokingly said, \u201cThat was your mommy\u2019s first favorite man.\u201d
\nSomehow, Amy had mixed up the story and decided he was her \u201creal daddy.\u201d
\nI just stood there staring at my wife.
\nThen we both started laughing.
\nFor ten terrifying seconds, I had imagined every possible explanation.
\nThankfully, the truth was much simpler than my brain had made it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My daughter, Amy, is five, and she has always called me Dad. We do almost everything together. I take her to the park, help with bedtime, make pancakes on Sundays, and sit through endless cartoons because she insists I watch with her. So when she suddenly said, \u201cI want to go with Daddy,\u201d I laughed. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10248,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10246\/revisions\/10248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}