Hi I just had to share these tags because !!! They are so sweet, but also really accurate to what my stepdad is like-- like yes, you so succinctly interpreted the love in these joking messages. Suddenly a day in July of 1997 when he was a young cafe-working 26 year old becomes special, even though he wouldn't know it for almost 20 years. He really stepped up (pun-intended) as a dad, too. He and my mom started dating when I was eighteen, and since I was an adult, its not like he had any obligation to parent me. But he looked at me and my three younger siblings, (all traumatized and troubled and distrusting because of our biological father) and said "yep, these are my kids now". I remember him calling us that long before he and my mom were even married, striking up conversations with strangers, and if they asked him about kids, he'd laugh and say "I've got four!" He always seems so happy that he went from a family of one to a family of six, basically overnight.
When he proposed to my mom, he bought matching necklaces for us (and a watch for my brother), because he felt he was marrying into the family, not just my mom, and our blessing was really important to him. He's helped me move, helped me with car trouble, talked me down from panic attacks, bought me a laptop for college, drove across LA at 6 in the morning to drop off my hearing aid because I left it at my mom's house and he knew I didn't like going to work without it: just doing a bunch of nice things that I had never experienced from a father-figure before. I wish everyone who has a bad or absent parent would get a loving step-parent replacement!!