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The joke started early on, whenever Larkin would go through a phase of total mommy attachment. "What am I," I'd say to her, "chopped liver?"

It's silly, how wounded you can feel when your toddler starts giving you the cold shoulder, the turn-away, the contemptuous diss, the wailing look of horror.

That's the treatment I was receiving last week. Usually in the morning Molly gets Larkin from her crib and dresses her while I scrounge a last few minutes of sleep. Then the two of them come in, Larkin waving and smiling sweetly, "Hi, Dada!" as Molly lowers her to give me a kiss.

But last week all the sweetness and kisses evaporated. "Shall we go wake Dada up?" I'd hear Molly ask. "Unh-uh," Larkin whined. By the time she got to the side of the bed, she'd be shrieking "No! Nooooooo!" and flinging her head back and forth. Remember the priest played by Max von Sydow in The Exorcist? That was me, and Larkin was Linda Blair. As if even making eye contact with me might kill her.

Why? I wondered. What did I do?

Of course, that's the thing -- I didn't do anything. Who knows what spurs a toddler's capricious affections? Maybe it was the end of daylight savings and the change of the clock, enough to make anyone cranky in the morning. Maybe it was diaper rash. Maybe I suddenly looked like a monster to her.

Or maybe it was ... something else. Much as you love your child, you can't really know what's going on in her mind at 21 months. She makes mysterious connections. Something strikes her a certain way, and she can't explain it to you. These gusts of preference and aversion are just that, random breezes.

But still, it's hard not to feel rejected. We'll all be sitting on the living room couch, and Molly gets up to go to the bathroom, and Larkin stares frantically after her, calling out a piteous and desperate "Mama, Maaamaaaa!!!" That despairing cry: it's enough to make even a stay-at-home dad envy a mother's primal importance.

Molly, on the other hand, envies my ability to make Larkin laugh. It's interesting to see how conventionally our roles are shaping up: "Mom" is the assuager of panic and fear; "Dad" is the bringer of fun. It sets up an interesting dichotomy for parents: Would you rather be needed, or wanted? The reassurer, or the entertainer? "I don't think you'd like to be me, really," Molly says. "I'm the person whose name she says when she's miserable." Another time, when I was complaining, she rolled her eyes. "Grow two breasts and you'll be just fine!" she said.

As it turned out, I didn't have to do that. Just when the constant diss from Larkin was beginning to get me really down, the weather shifted and the sun started shining on me. Now I was inexplicably in demand, the hero, the flavor of the day. I'd go into the bathroom to shower, and Larkin would come barging after me, calling my name. In the morning we'd hear her first rustle and thump in her crib, and then over the static of the monitor, "Dada?"

Suddenly, it's Molly who's chopped liver. Today is Saturday morning, and as I sit here at my computer, Larkin keeps escaping from her room, where Molly is playing with her, and trying to get into my office. "Dada, Dada!" she cries, rattling the doorknob until I finally cave in and go out to the hall. Molly, meanwhile, is feeling rejected and annoyed. "I'll deal with it," she says, tersely.

The chopped-liver dynamic -- the whimsical turnarounds in our little girl's allegiance -- can set Molly and me against one another in an absurd competition. Sometimes it's funny. Recently I prevailed upon Molly to let me put Larkin to bed on alternate nights (she had been handling it herself), and a few days later, after one of Larkin's sprees of Dada-preference, Molly turned to me and said, "Well, your plan is working."

What plan? I asked.

"You know. Your plan to win her over from me."

"Oh ... you mean, my sinister plot to get involved in putting my daughter to bed?"

Even she had to laugh. But other times it's not so funny. Yesterday morning, as we walked out to the car to see Molly off to work, Larkin started wailing and reaching out for me with such desperate insistence that Molly finally handed her over. I could see she was near tears.

"It's hard," she said. "Today I'm only going to get one hour with her -- one hour."

I try to keep in mind how difficult it is to balance work and being a mom. But I don't always succeed. In the day-to-day grind of parenting, nerves fray, petty stratagems get played out. Sitting here at my desk, I'm annoyed because though Molly said she was going to take Larkin out for a walk, she hasn't done it yet -- and as long as they're both up here and Larkin is yelling my name, I can't work. So I keep going out to the hall. Each time I do, Larkin runs at me, arms outstretched in joy, her crying instantly ceasing. And in spite of myself, I add an extra little dollop of soothing reassurance. "Dada's right here," I say, patting her head. "Everything's OK."

That was uncalled for. Molly was already feeling unhappy enough without me piling it on. There's going to be plenty of Larkin playing us off one another in the years to come. It's called, Being a kid. Better start getting used to dealing with it.