REUNION

Daddy isn't just a picture sewn on a teddy bear anymore. He's not just a videotape singing the same songs and playing the same patty-cake games over and over for more than a year while his son and daughter turn 4 and 2.

Daddy finally became real for his family again on Tuesday as Spc. Christopher Fultz of Mesa, a Maricopa County sheriff's deputy, came home from Iraq with 138 other Arizona Army National Guard soldiers...

Before going to Iraq, Fultz's biggest worry was that Chance, then 3, and Leah, only 1, would forget him, his wife, Michaelle, said.

"We had only a week before they moved out, and I did anything I could think of to help them remember him," she said.

"They had their 'daddy bears,' and we made a video. Whenever they wanted, they could play the tape and sing and play with him."

Fultz, who was slightly wounded in a mortar attack, said the ploy not only kept him fresh in the children's minds, but confirmed that "I married the perfect woman."