Guilty pleasure…a little pregnant…amicable divorce…mostly proud…the list of oxymorons is endless.

Take the guilty pleasure. Supposedly, it’s indulging in something we know isn’t a good thing, but we do it anyway because the pleasure of the moment outweighs the guilt we feel about having indulged.

But I have discovered that the “guilty” part lingers far past any entertainment value. Especially when my indulging impacts Lexi. This past weekend was a special one for her. She and my husband were attending their first “Daddy/Daughter Dance” together, and she prepared as though she were a teenage girl getting ready for her first date. She asked me to help her pick out a special dress for this special night, but that she wanted it to be a surprise from her daddy until she put it on. She allowed me to curl her hair, which is monumental for Lexi since she has a tender head and barely allows me to put it up most days. She was nervous, and asked me multiple times whether I thought her daddy would think she was pretty.

I thought it was precious. I never had a moment like that with my father growing up, and so I cherished this opportunity to see the love and hope in the eyes of my little girl, who at that moment only needed one thing-her daddy’s acknowledgement that she was loved. And my husband supplied it ten times over. When little Lexi extended her arm out to let her daddy escort her to the door, I just about melted into a puddle on the floor.

Fast forward three hours later…they came home to my watching “Toddlers and Tiaras” on Netflix. Remember the guilty pleasure part that packs more guilt than pleasure? You have no idea how much I regret having watched that because as Lexi was sharing her favorite moments from her magical evening, she hears a father on the show say of his two-year-old daughter who did not win the pageant, “I don’t understand what happened… She should have won... She walked away with nothing… I’m mostly proud of her.”

And Lexi said, “I don’t understand. How can a daddy be mostly proud of his little girl? Why isn’t he all the way proud of her?”

I was sure of two things in that moment. I knew right then that I wanted Lexi to say at the end of her life that her parents loved her and were proud of her. Period. Not that we were mostly proud of her. Not that we loved her the majority of the time. But that we loved her and were proud of her.

And I knew that I had lost the desire to watch that show ever again!