Our daughter wanted a mommy, so she picked one of her dads

Sometime last fall, our oldest daughter, then 3½ years old, began telling us she wanted a mom. My husband and I, two men, had known this moment might come. We had done everything we could to lay the groundwork for her and her little sister to feel pride in our nontraditional family: We’d stocked up on two-dad children’s books and recounted many times the story of how they’d come into the world with the help of a generous egg donor and an amazing surrogate. But, at least for our older daughter, none of these preventive measures had seemed to soften the blow of realizing that every other kid she knew had a mom.