“Newborn babies are really kind of ugly,” my husband, Tim, asserted more than once before we had children.

Then our daughter was born.

After Heather was delivered by C-section, Tim began making calls to relatives from the hospital room while I was still sedated. My mother-in-law told me later how he’d declared our daughter the most beautiful baby in the world. Yes, those other babies were still ugly, but this one was special. This one was perfect.

So began the daddy-daughter dance at our house, a waltz so lovely at times I wanted to freeze that particular frame of our lives.

When daughter No. 2, Deanna, came along two and a half years later, his joy and love came in equal proportions to our first daughter. This girl, too, was perfect in his eyes.

Raising girls wasn’t always easy, of course. There were ups and downs, time to discipline and time to love.

One of the most special times my husband shared with our two daughters was on Tuesday nights during our first four years in the Flathead. I was working at the Hungry Horse News at that time and always had to work until 2 or 3 in the morning to get the weekly paper “put to bed.”

That meant Tim took care of the girls.

Sometimes he’d take them out for pizza, and he tried real hard to make them love fishing. He had picked out the perfect spot on the Whitefish River, and while they loved spending time there, they weren’t as thrilled about the worms or touching those slimy fish. The thing is, they both still remember those outings with much fondness.

One winter Tim and the girls watched boxing matches on TV on Tuesday nights, unbeknownst to me. Imagine my surprise and my chagrin when our oldest daughter, about 7 at the time, could rattle off the names of the top middleweight boxers.

He’d often put on his tough-guy exterior when the girls were younger; he came across as the disciplinarian no one should dare mess with. And true, sometimes my words seemed to fall on deaf ears as I asked the girls to stop squabbling or help with the housework. All it took was one word from him — “girls...” and they’d shape up on the spot.

It was always a special treat for our girls when he’d come home from work and offer them “play time.” He’d twirl them around, give them horsy-back rides, much like my own father had done with me, and they’d squeal with delight. I would spend the entire day playing with them, reading to them and seeing to their every need, but it was daddy who lit up their eyes. “More play time, more play time,” they would plead.

I’d often overhear Tim boasting about the girls’ accomplishments to his mother or siblings, always when he assumed I wasn’t listening. Perhaps he thought his tough-guy suit would tarnish if he was perceived as a proud papa.

When it came time for our younger daughter to be married five years ago, she chose Red Sovine’s “Daddy’s Girl” for the father-daughter dance. As the refrain played on that perfect July evening and he waltzed Deanna across the dance floor, the look of love on both their faces brought tears to my eyes.

“Daddy’s girl, Daddy’s girl, I’m the center of Daddy’s world...”

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.