Thursday, September 30, 2010

Men

I know why women are moms and men are dads. If men had to be moms on a permanent basis, they'd eat their young.

I'm going away this weekend to Atlante for a conference hosted by the March of Dimes, for a website called shareyourstory.org I blogged there for about 530 posts before moving here. I started blogging there when Olivia was four months old, before we had her diagnosis, back when we were going on the assumption she'd suffered from intrauterine growth retardation which caused her low birth weight. Back then, I still thought she was 'typical', just screamy and small.

Because I'm going away, Tom has to pick up the slack.

He doesn't really wanna pick up the slack.

He has a lot to do at the old house and this isn't the best time for me to be going away.

This conference happens each year during the first weekend of October (or around that time.) This is the third year I've attended.

I go away one weekend a year. ONE. Weekend. A. Year.

So...I told him to suck it up.

And he asked how much my mom was willing to help out with the girls.

My mom is oldschool. She said, "If he's going to be that way, tell him to hell with it, I'll watch the girls all weekend."

I replied, "No. That's not fair. He is their other parent. I don't want to let him off the hook like that."

And we're not. He's coming up here tonight and getting Alyssa off to school, caring for Olivia, picking Alyssa up from school. He's going to feed them dinner, get them ready for and into bed. Then, on Saturday morning, he's going to take them to my mom's, where they'll stay until Sunday evening when I get home.

And this sounds like a lot, huh?

Except, I've already packed the girls' clothes for their stay at my mom's. Heck, I've already dropped the bag at my mom's house.

I'll pack Alyssa's lunch tomorrow morning before I leave for Julie's house at 4:30am.

So, I'm trying to make it easy for him.

I want them to have fun together. I want him to be willing to give up a single weekend of home improvement and spend it with his daughters, without complaint, with a smile and a feeling of joy just because he gets to be with them.

But he's a man. He sees what needs to be done and thinks that walks to Gram's house that take over an hour and carving pumpkins on the porch at dusk are things that take away from the time to do the important things, like painting and mowing and putting up shelves.

I guess that's just one more difference between men and women.

I know, I'm generalizing and using my specific man as my basis of opinion. I know there are guys out there who don't do this. But I know more who do than who don't, so...

3 comments:

Brittany said...

hi my name is Brittany and I just found out that my daughter has Cri du Chat. She is 3 months old right now and I found your blog through the support group. I would love to talk to you and ask you some questions about your experience if you wouldn't mind. My email address is brittany@ericksen.org

Sarah said...

LUCKY! I went the very first year to ShareUnion. It was great. Unfortunately, life has been nothing short of a rollercoaster ride since then... I haven't had the money nor time to make it to any of the other ones. It's such a wonderful experience to be able to go though. I hope you have fun...

And i hope your hubby can hold it all together while you are gone.

Julie said...

Aw, I'm all caught up. Hopefully your kiddoes were all still in one piece when you got home last night.