When people ask me how many kids I have, am I supposed to include my husband in the total?
Because we all know that husbands are absolutely just one more kid for us to manage. You can try and deny it, but have you ever said that you left your husband at home to “parent the kids”? No, you probably said “babysit the kids”. And that is no accident. It is because you know that he has the mentality of a 15 year old. And so we find ourselves raising our husbands.
Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at some of the crazy shit that husbands do. Shall we start with sharing? My husband is the *worst* at sharing toys with the kids. Thank goodness they are both girls and mostly want to play barbies or princesses. At ages two and four they have already learned that it is not safe to pull out the legos around papa. My friends with boys have it much, much worse. Fathers are bigger, meaner and willing to do whatever it takes to build their lego castle/finish their matchbox car race/etc etc. When else can you see a grown man steal a block out of the hands of a screaming child?
Next up on the list…lying. How many times has your husband attempted to cover up a large bruise on your kid’s forehead with a blatant lie. In my house, it goes like this: several minutes of high pitched giggles mixed with grunts worthy of the gym weight room. Then you hear the telltale thud, a moment of silence and a loud wail. Does your husband ask for help at this point? Oh no. I always hear him trying to bribe the kids to stop crying. When I walk into the room and ask what happened, he acts like he has no idea what I am talking about. “What, here? What are you talking about? We are just having fun!” All said with a straight face despite clear tear-tracks down the kid’s face and a growing knot on the forehead. And yet he still seems completely stupefied when the kid lies to him later. Um, DUH!
Before I get too depressed, let’s end this the way we end every day. Complaining about bedtime. After spending most or all of the day chasing kids around, moms look forward to bedtime the way crack addicts look forward to their next fix. By 7:30pm I have a serious case of the DT’s…shakes, incoherency and an inexplicable urge to chug from the wine bottle. My big kid wants to stretch the bedtime routine out as long as possible. I’m sneaking gulps of wine while he is starting a splash fight in the bathtub. Even if I manage to get them out of the tub and into pajamas, he’s back again insisting that everyone say good night and give a kissy. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get two screaming, exhausted kids to give each other a nice hug and kiss good night? It’s more likely that the republicans and democrats in the US Senate will vote unanimously on any issue.
And yet somehow we manage to not kill them or chuck them out of the house. And why is that again? Oh yeah, because then we’d have to handle the kids all by ourselves. Heaven help us!