I like you, I really like you...

Most nights at about 9 pm my husband and I convene on the couch in our living room. He watches whatever riveting science show he's recorded and I lay on the couch next to him and read. Most nights I'll fall asleep and my husband wakes me up when he goes to bed.

The other night I was laying there with my eyes closed, but was having trouble falling asleep. Then I heard the sound go off of the TV and what sounded like a giggle. I opened my eyes in time to see the back of my husband as he tossed a stuffed animal back and forth with our daughter.

It was now about 11 pm and I'm kind of a hard ass when it comes to sleeping. I really don't allow any BS at night and get mad when my daughter gets out of bed for no good reason. Bleeding, vomiting, etc... are exceptions.

My daughter knows this so if she is sick she usually comes to me, but all other excuses usually necessitate her going to Daddy and praying that I don't wake up. Mommy doesn't play when it comes to night time shenanigans.

So on this particular night I opened my mouth to tell our daughter that she needs to go back to bed, but saw my husband put his arm around our daughter and start walking her down the hallway towards her room. There he was smiling and looking down at her and she was smiling and looking up at him.

And both of them were beaming.

Tears sprang to my eyes.

I've heard the saying that to have a child is to have your heart walking out of your chest for the rest of your life and I really believe that to be true. But to truly give your heart to a man and for him to cherish it is yet another thing.

To see the two people that I love the most in the world looking at each other with such love was almost too much to bare. It was so beautiful to see the love my daughter has for her father and the love that she gets in return.

They say that the most important relationship a girl has with a man is with her father. This is the relationship that all others are compared and modeled after. My daughter may not be able to articulate it right now, but the look on my husband's face said it all.

He loves her, he will protect her, and she is the most important thing in his world. And the biggest thing that I saw as they looked at each other was that he liked her as a person.

We all love the people in our families. But we don't always like them. Love may not be a choice, but like is. My husband and I tell each other that we love each other a lot. However, we save the biggest complement for more poignant moments. When we tell the other person that we LIKE them an awful lot, we know we are doing pretty damn well.

After 10 years together and 6 as a family of three, I can honestly say that I LIKE my family.

And that night my family gave me the gift of seeing their love and like for each other. After seeing their blatant display of affection I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep so they wouldn't know I had invaded their special moment. It was hard laying still while my heart was so full. I know it is cliche, but I honestly could not think of a better way of describing it than my cup runneth over...