My husband, despite being repeatedly shown how my daughter’s dresser is organized, can never find an outfit for her without shouting to me for help at least once. He just doesn’t get my system for clothes. He also doesn’t get why I don’t like it when he puts the sippy cups on the top shelf instead of the bottom one (it’s because I can’t reach the top shelf with a kid in my arms!) or why it matters whether he thoroughly dries the dishes before he puts them away (his mother doesn’t either - ewww, water spots!).

My better half doesn’t mind if the kids silently invoke the five-second (or ten-minute) rule. “What good is an immune system if you never get to use it?” he says as I cringe in my chair. He doesn’t neatly roll up dirty diapers and stick the tabs around them like I do, and he doesn’t mix rice cereal into the baby’s food the way I do it.

Despite our differences on domestic and kiddie details, I’ve come to understand that there are some things he does that are firmly in the realm of what I can only call daddy magic.

When my 2 1/2-year-old won’t eat, Daddy invents a story about the magical properties of ham, and suddenly she’s tearing into her sandwich with gusto. If I told her the same story, she would shake her head and say, “No, mommy, it’s not like ‘dat!”

He gets her to do the bath/teeth/bed thing with nothing but smiles when she was crying in my lap moments before. He gets the Tylenol into my teething son’s irritable mouth after that pint-sized prince spit half a dose all over me earlier in the day. And he gets the best hugs.

When we go shopping for new clothes for the kids (which doesn’t happen nearly as often as I’d have it), I stare at tags and wonder if I can trust that a 3T or 12m in one brand will fit the same way their clothes in another brand do at home. I go back and forth, wondering whether I need to get bigger sizes.

Invariably, my husband comes up with the kids and peers over my shoulder, saying, “Nope, that’s not going to fit her. Get one up” or “Those pants will be just right on him.” Sometimes he makes a show of putting a shirt up to my daughter’s back, acting like he’s thinking hard about it, but he rarely actually needs to do that. I have no idea how he does it, but he’s never been wrong.

The clothing thing is neat (and useful!), but flying fairy ham in my daughter’s tummy - well that’s pure magic. Daddy magic.

Posted by Sunshine.