Abigail has compiled a list of things her dad loves: work. baseball. coffee. mints. bananas. cereal with honey. the green ones in multi-colored pasta. She’s wrong about the green pasta, but right about the rest. Whenever she sees any of these items, she wants to save it for daddy. When she eats pasta, she will make a little pile of the green ones to keep for him. Any time she spots a shelf of Altoids in a store, she wants to buy them for him. Ditto the bulk beans in the coffee aisle. If she happens to catch a glimpse of a ball game on a TV screen, she sits to watch it on her dad’s behalf because “Daddy loves this!” It is her job to choose the bananas for daddy at the grocery store, too.

Abigail is also determined to love the things her dad loves. She sits at the computer desk and types her “work.” She wears his baseball hat and shouts “Go, Miguel!” during games, though the Diamondbacks are now out of the running. She dips her finger in his coffee and sits on his lap when he eats his morning cereal, intercepting as many bites as possible. She crunches mints with passion. Her total devotion* is the cutest thing in the world. I’m glad her dad is such a good man; surely she emulates him not just in a preference for mints and honey, but other, less obvious ways as well. And she will be a better girl because of it.

*Except when it comes to music. Her dad loves music, both playing and listening, and she will have none of it. She mutes the strings on his guitar and yells for him to stop. She covers her ears when he puts on a song he thinks she will like. He keeps trying, though! Someday Abigail will be a music lover in spite of herself.