Daddy is Miss Heather

It seems that recently, my soon to be 4 year old daughter has finally connected "Miss Heather" and "Daddy". She now tells us that "Daddy is Miss Heather". Of course this has led to several talks with her about the fact that we don't blurt this fact out to everyone that we meet, but that it is OK to talk about it to Mommy & Daddy. The way I explained it to her is that Daddy likes to pretend to be "Miss Heather" in the same way that she likes to dress as "Cinderella" or "Tinker Bell". Our daughter is doing pretty good with this concept, and will even repeat this back to us. We are trying to make it very clear to our daughter that this is just Daddy playing dress-up. We have had a few incidents in public (thankfully nobody was in earshot) where she stated "You are Miss Heather", and we remind her that not everyone wants to know that Daddy is Miss Heather. SO far she is very good with this and it is not an issue at this stage.

Of course, I am prepared for the day that she tells Grandma or Grandpa, etc. about it. The one thing that I keep telling my wife is that when the day comes, I will not deny who I am or what I do, but rather will educate whoever figures it out as to what it is that I do and why I do it. I may lose a friend or 2 (not likely, since most of my friends already know to some level). My parents will have a cow, I am sure, but they will get over it and eventually accept it to some level simply because no parent can hate their child for what they do. I expect my parents to not like it very much, but they will learn to deal with it.

From the beginning we have brought our daughter up to know that Daddy likes to cross dress, and as such she doesn't think too much of it. There have been a few times where she saw me in a skirt and said "you can't wear that, skirts are for girls", to which I reply "Boys can wear skirts too, but most choose not to". I get the same thing about me having long hair and I give a similar explanation. When I get dressed up, many times our daughter will dig out her play clothes and dress up with Daddy, we'll even do our makeup together sometimes.

Life should get interesting soon as she makes more of the connection, but we will take that day by day.