Well, it finally happened, my wife left the house this weekend for the first time with only dad to watch the little ones. For those without children, I’ll explain the layout. I have a two and a half year old that is currently into 1) jumping on every piece of furniture, including the ottoman with casters 2) slime that can we wiped, rubbed or stuffed anywhere – thanks Target $1 section and 3) climbing things, like the cat condo, bed frames and even her brother’s crib.
Sounds dangerous, well much like Odysseus had to choose the perils of Scylla and Charybdis, my other option was my newborn son. We are breastfeeding, so he eats every two hours. That’s starting from the start time, also, so basically every 90 minutes, he needs to eat or the crap is in the ol’ fan and last check, dad didn’t have any milk (although another few bad weeks of eating and the breasts might show up).
She left to run some errands, probably with her head out the window like a dog riding for the first time alone and free. About seven seconds after she accelerated from the driveway, my son began to cry. I paced, I bounced and I switched hands. I tried to sing, but not surprisingly made it worse – my kid doesn’t like my version of Wasted Years, apparently. I went upstairs and downstairs and finally had a workable level of anger from him.
On cue, my daughter finally tired of smearing slime into the carpet and came crashing down the hall like an adorable rhino. She scaled the crib and yelled “Watch animals!” This means watch the program on Netflix with animals. Of course, on the kids channel, that’s literally all 400 options. Plus, to save a buck, we put a really slow processing TV we bought off a guy online in the kids’ room, so it takes about 35 seconds to load a Netfilx choice. “This animal show, peanut?” Silence. Thank God, I guessed right. Click button to select. “Different one! Different one! No this one! NO THIS ONE!” “OK, OK, OK, I’ll pick another one!” Repeat for 12 selections, while brother, now roused from his semi-sleep from the yelling begins to fuss.
I was sure it had been four days at that point, but it turns out it was 50 minutes when she pulled back in. I was sweating, my son was sweating, my daughter was jumping on the crib, and I am sure the dog was planning something also. Now I know why moms gets maternity leave and dads get their asses back to work. If I read a story about a science lab making it where men can give milk, I’m blowing it up.