Every day at five-thirty not so sharp, I anticipate the rescuing words, “Hey Girls.” At last my Reliever (AKA my husband) is home. He steps over the line of Little People animals marching onto Noah’s Ark, tip-toes through the obstacle course of puzzle pieces, kicks many a stuffed animal aside, and makes his way to kiss my lips. He knows as well as I do what these kids will put us through over the course of the evening and yet he manages to muster a heartfelt smile anyway. And the truth is that I can hardly contain myself from running up the stairs two by two to jump in a bath full of bubbles and hot-water heaven.
He however, like every other night, is resigned to change the drooping poopy diaper, fill empty sippy cups and feed our ever hungry six-week old. Needles to say, the man is miraculous. He is my lover, my best-friend and lots of times the only sliver of sanity I have left in the world. In the moments when I demand to much and give too little, his patience is a true reflection of love.
Like I always have been, our daughters are down-right smitten with their Daddido. The way their eyes light up when he’s around makes my heart melt. He is the fun one. To be honest I always knew that he would be a great father, but I expected to have to teach him a thing or two about the tricks of the toddler trade. Apparently he read the directions before I had a chance. Like any parental pro he’s caught onto skipping a few pages here and there during bedtime stories. And if you truly want to get out of cleaning up kid vomit, you just gag while rushing forward to help so that your wife yells “Stay back. Just please don’t throw up too.” Yes he is a crafty man that fills our lives with humor. Just the other night he turned his version of “Who Let the Dogs Out” into a whole-family event where we sang about all our favorite farm animals. Who let the cows out? MOO, MOO-MOO, MOO, MOO.
Not every moment is filled with laughter around here though. I leave him to be the firm hand who keeps these little monkeys in shape. There are times that he’s yelling at the kids as I sit high and mighty in my brevity of patience thinking, “Man he’s really losing it.” And ironically just ten short minutes later I’ve lost it with them myself. So here we are in this pig-sty called parenting just rummaging through the mud of uncertainty asking ourselves daily, “Are we raising these kids right?”
It is a rhetorical question of course because there is no immediate answer. We dare not be deceived by an occasional please or thank-you or in turn dis-obedient sprints through department store clothing racks. No, only time will tell.
But I am eternally grateful for a man who will someday help me survive three teenage daughters, and who today will come home to rescue me from pure insanity. Not only has he made my life worth living, but he’s made these three lives worth raising in hopes that their future will be as happy as our present.
What a beautiful blog, Lorie! I look forward to reading more.