Over the past two years, my wife's expectations have changed. When she first used to Elijah and I home alone, the lists read something like 1) Take out all trash, 2) Bathe Elijah, 3) Feed Elijah, 4) Clean all dishes, 5) Put Elijah to bed, 6) Don't watch TV or work out until you do #4!!!
Now, the list is considerably shorter. It reads something like: 1) Try and have fun, 2) Don't let them kill each other, 3) Maybe think about dishes... ? We're really good at #1. Don't think that I've never actually gotten to the dishes --it's just that when there is an option between washing the plates and a three-man pileup under the kitchen chandelier, it seems like a no-brainer. That's the reward for being a daddy, right? But I think the real reason that I appreciate when Rachel leaves us home is how much more as a mom I appreciate her when she gets back four hours later. The appreciation shouldn't be limited to the stay-at-home crowd, either. Whether you get to spend every waking hour with your child or have a shorter and sweeter interval with them, you moms give your children something that we fathers just can't -- like patience (and breastfeeding, but I digress). I think that Gods made moms with just a little extra well of patience somewhere that I haven't found yet.
The moments where I need said patience always sneak up on me. I should know by now that we never have a quiet and sedate evening-- but it almost always starts that way. Rachel leaves, we wave goodbye, maybe even start a puzzle-- and then the madness descends. While Elijah does the puzzle, Judah crawls behind and chews on the remaining pieces. For whatever reason, this bothers LJ more than anything else in the world, and he gives Judah a 'gentle' chuck to the side to regain his piece, which turns our very physically able but emotionally fragile little man to a puddle. LJ starts yelling at ME from two feet away, "Daddy! Judah crying! Make him STOP!" (Digression part 2: Elijah is very aware of his environment but radically unaware of how he affects it-- he sent the Queen and I into convulsions one evening when he strolled into the living room, turned to let out a gaseous blast of perhaps ten seconds in length, looked around curiously and said, "Mama, what that smell?) In this scene, seeing that in the millisecond since he yelled for Judah to stop that I haven't done anything yet, he grabs Judah's pacifier and jams it into his mouth far enough to block most of the airway, and turns away satisfied while I perform an emergency tonsillectomy on a six-month-old simultaneously screaming and gasping for air. Yup-- fifteen minutes into a four-hour session, I'm wishing that I could dial Nanny 911.
Inevitably, I lose my cool and have to ask Elijah's forgiveness (which he, beautiful man, always looks at me and says, "Of course, Daddy,") or Judah's (his is more of a blank look), and the night generally winds to a close with some relative peace. I then spend the next two hours running or (more recently) unleashing a little story here in a vain attempt to find the little bits of sanity that have drifted away over the course of the night. By the time 10:00 pm rolls around and Rachel strolls royally back in, I am incredibly thankful that she is back on duty to take care of them for the next six days. "How do you do it?" I asked her one night after telling her about my night's adventures. She just smiled.
Wow--I just read this aloud to Mike and had to stop reading b/c I was laughing too hard. Thank you!! :)
ReplyDelete@ Anna Jane -- thank you and tell him he should add some of his own stories to your blog more often-- it's somewhat cathartic making others laugh at your own stresses :)
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