When my oldest daughter was born, the questions from friends and family started coming immediately: 

"Do you feel like everything has changed?" 
"Does it feel like she's always been there?" 
"You must really feel like a Dad, right?" 

I would look at my little pink baby with her popsickle stick arms and her ridiculously huge diaper and think, "I don't know what I'm feeling except tired and scared."  

Something had definitely changed, but I wasn't sure what to call it.  My wife and I were exhausted from the 36-hour rollercoaster ride of her labor.  We were overwhelmed with planning the Baby Naming ceremony.   Our little girl wasn't latching on (we didn't know yet that her jaw was dislocated) so she was hungry and irritable. 

I didn't even know how to dress the little thing.  But I vowed that if I ever had a son, I would buy him a baby-sized doll and make him play with it until he could dress a tiny thrashing human in the dark.  (By the way, people who design newborn clothes have obviously never dressed a newborn.)

No one had ever called me "Daddy" except for my dog, Sammy (and I had a strong suspicion that Nishima was doing the voice.) 

Even once the exhaustion and initial fear had dissipated, I told myself that nothing had really changed.  Yes, our lives were dramatically different.  Our days of staying up until midnight to watch movies and then sleeping in late were temporarily on hold (seven years and counting).  And there was this little being in our life who smiled when I entered the room, who found colored wooden blocks endlessly fascinating, and who treated the arrival of each new tooth as an opportunity to further enhance our sleep deprivation.

But still, when people asked those questions, I couldn't truthfully give them the answers they expected.

No, I didn't feel like everything had changed.
Yes, I did remember a time before her arrival.
No, I didn't know what being a Dad meant.

It wasn't until my little girl and I began going out into the world together, one-on-one, that the whole "Daddy Feeling" began to crystalize. 

And when it happened, what a magical, "this feels right" sensation that was.

The feeling would sneak up on me like my little girl throwing her tiny hands over my eyes, shouting "guess who, Daddy?"

I'd be at the Library during song and story time, bouncing my little girl on my lap to the sound of "Wheels on the Bus", when a soft, still voice would whisper inside me "You're her Daddy."

Or playing at the park on the beach, watching her delicate face completely absorbed in the process of pouring sand into the mouth of a plastic bottle.  Or exploring a new town together while her Mommy took classes at the Aleph Kallah.  Learning about her likes (choo choo trains) and dislikes (noisy chickens) and learning to be In the Moment in a way that I must have unlearned somewhere along the way.

I learned that the Air & Space museum in San Diego can be scary to a two-year old daughter.  But the morning we spent playing outside the Air & Space museum with some toy cars from the gift shop became one of the founding moments of our relationship.

Nobody told me that the Daddy Feeling doesn't arrive as a complete package, neatly wrapped and tied up in a bow, but rather accrues moment by moment like a pond being filled by raindrops.

Nobody told me that the Daddy Feeling doesn't arrive home with you from the hospital in that bag they give you with the generic diapers, yellow pacifiers and scary brochures.

Over the years, I've learned to recognize this feeling and to luxuriate in those moments.  So now when I'm sitting with other Moms and Dads on a golden afternoon watching my daughter practice ballet, I say out loud "I really feel like a Dad" and the other parents nod and smile. 

I've learned not to expect an immediate attachment to my babies from Day One, but to let the relationship grow as any normal relationship does.  Because that Daddy Feeling will roll over me as surely as my children go from sitting to crawling to walking. 

It's funny.  Now that no one ever asks me those three questions, I have an emphatic (and 180 degree different) answer for each one.

Yes, I am a completely different person than I was 7 and a half years ago. 
No, I cannot remember what it was like before I had children.
And yes, I am a Daddy.