I often feel like I'm repeating myself. This is no great stretch of the imagination, because it's often true.

I often feel like I'm repeating myself. Here, in this blog, I mean. So maybe I've said this before. I could search back through over 3,500 old blog entries and find out, but I won't.

That would be too hard, and stuff.

That's what she said.

Anyway. I didn't want to ramble too much. I only wanted to maybe repeat myself. Maybe.

I never thought much about kids. Not any more than normal. Some people might know that I used to have kids, sort of. They were their mother's kids; I was just a stepfather for a while. They were great kids, and I loved them, but then their mother and I went our separate ways, and after a while I stopped thinking about them. I dunno, maybe it was too painful. Whatever.

My sisters have kids, and I'm not the Uncle Dave I would like to be with them. I was off to a good start, I think, when Dina's first two kids were little. But then they grew up and we grew apart. And Neisha's kids always lived on Mars with their parents. At least, that's the excuse that I use. For not being a better Uncle Dave. Same excuse I use regarding Dina's youngest son.

Things are how they are. Kids exist and I tolerate them and sometimes I like them and I'm almost always at least nice to them.

I never thought much about kids. Until...

Wow, I don't think that I'm really allowed to say. That sucks.

So what I wanted to write about now is that, now, I think about kids. All the time.

I think about a baby girl. A daughter, just like her mother. Full of laughter and sparkles and oh so very beautiful and sweet.

Just like her mother.

Whoever that might be.

It's breaking the unwritten rule, I know. Men are supposed to want a son, especially for their first born. It's been a cliché forever; men want a son first.

Not me.

Maybe it's because I'm old enough to feel that even having one child is a pipe dream. Maybe I realize that one child is, at most, all I could ever have. And, the thing is, if one child is all I can father, I want that child to be a daughter.

Just like her mother.

Whoever that might be. She will be so wonderful, though.

I want that to be my gift, someday, somehow. A beautiful baby girl. The greatest gift that any man could ever give to the woman he loves. And it would never have to be repaid, because we would share the gift with each other.

She will be so wonderful.

Just like her mother.

Often, I feel like I'm repeating myself.