so_out_of_ideas

(Which, honestly, is about 98% of folks on my flist, but anyway...)

All right. This is some story-related research I'm doing. You can give me answers that pertain to yourself, your daughters, nieces, or any other little girl you know well enough.

I have a character with four young children ranging in age from 8 to 18 months when the story starts. Her husband died shortly after she found out about the last pregnancy. All of them are girls, and I think that only the 8-year-old will have any real clear memories of the dad. So, at some point in the story, Mom runs into an old boyfriend of hers who is divorced and also has a daughter--possibly two, I haven't made up my mind yet about *just* how out-numbered I want this poor fellow to be. So, some of the kids are around the same age, and they become friends, which means Mom and Dad have to start interacting a lot.

I'm thinking that most of Mom's kids would start latching onto Dad because they haven't had the experience of a "father-figure" sort of presence in the family. The reverse may also be true for Dad's kid(s), but I'm still working that out.

Anyway, what I am looking for at the moment are examples of things little girls might do specifically with their dads (or in this case dad-figure, since there would need to be an emotional progression involved). It doesn't have to be complicated or an "annual tradition" kind of thing, although I'm fine with those too. What I have in mind is more the kind of every-day stuff that would just start happening naturally over the course of a story. (Without mentioning names, one person recently told me that she used to make her father pretend to be Snow White while she was the witch and killed him with the apple, for example.) As long as it's something that the kid is doing specifically because it's a dad thing as opposed to something she just does with people in general.

Thanks in advance!