Goodnight Miss Mommy

There's nothing like being away for a whole Monday after being sick for a whole weekend while your husband takes the children to the farm to visit his parents to ensure you'll have presents awaiting your arrival on Monday evening.  My husband is a great father, but he's pretty clueless when it comes to being a mom.  He finds himself sorely lacking laundry, housekeeping, balanced diet, and other general organization skills required to keep the daisies spaced properly.  While he swears he always appreciates what I do as a mother and doesn't need reminders, I always hear these affirmations on Monday evening. 

This last weekend, I was too ill to travel, so he took it upon himself to pack, drive the kids out to the farm, take care of them overnight, and travel back the next day.  We had planned the trip for some time, and he felt it was really important not to miss it.  When he returned on Sunday, the kids were fine (maybe a little mis-matched and dirty, but fine) and he was as frazzled as I've ever seen him.  He filled me with stories of crying babes and inconvenient diaper emergencies.  Stories of stained clothes and scraped knees.  Stories about how little other people understood how necessary it was for him to keep his schedule with these two kids.  I listened, all the while laughing inside.  He knew these events crafted a normal day for me.  That did not change the fact that he had no idea how to handle them.  So I cleaned up the kids, fed them, and put them snuggly in their beds.

And, as usual, he was with the kids all day Monday.  I knew it was going to be rough for him, but it couldn't be helped.  On Monday evening, I walked through the door of my home to find my economy pack of 112 feminine products opened and stuck to everything in the house within reach of a two year old.  My husband was sitting on our bed giving the baby a bottle with a look that left Sunday's frazzled face far behind.  I put my hand on his face and kissed his eyes, took the baby in my arms, and balanced the bottle under my chin.  I asked Sam to come to the kitchen with me.  We got a trash bag out of the cabinet and began to fill it together with the mess she had created.  We finished the evening routine only slightly behind schedule.  We didn't talk about it, but we both knew. 

As I was putting Caius to sleep, he looked up at me and said, "mamma".  I almost cried.  As I was reading to Sam, she wrapped her hands around my neck and rested her cheek on my shoulder.  I kissed her on her head as i pulled up the covers and she said, "Goodnight Miss Mommy."  And it was.