Things Dads Do

Posted: July 27th, 2012 | Author: kristen from motherload | Filed under: Bad Mom Moves, Husbandry, Little Rhody, Miss Kate, Parenting, Summer, Travel | 7 Comments »

The other day The Husband delightedly informed me that he’d taught our six-year-old how to pee in the shower.

I was so proud.

I mean, this from the man who (until I set him straight) believed you shouldn’t flush Kleenex down the toilet because it’s somehow different from toilet paper. And here I’d always thought sending pee down the shower pipe was verboten. There’s so much we can learn from each other.

Having Mark coach our sweet six-year-old on such a great time-saving tip made me think of all the other gaps I’d leave in our children’s knowledge base if I didn’t have him around. This thought was underscored by the fact that I’m on Day 13 of solo parenting. (Not that I’m counting.) That’s because Mark had to touch base at his San Francisco office before jaunting off to cover the Olympics in London. All the while I’ve remained on vacation on the East Coast with the girls, clinging to my charming hometown like a rabid koala.

All together, I’ll be tending to the child-folk for a sum total of 31 nights (32 days). But again, who’s counting?

Anyway, I started thinking about the other things that Daddy does that the kids will miss out on while he’s gone.

Changing batteries: This is something that I really never even CONSIDER doing. Paige could be ecstatically interacting with a toy that suddenly craps out and I’ll report through her tears, “Well, Dad will be home in seven hours, and he can change the batteries then.” I can’t imagine what I’d do about this if I were a single parent. I’m somehow trapped in some ivory tower were battery changing is just not done. Without Mark I can imagine the smoke detectors in the house starting to beep. I’d have to take them off the wall and silence them with a hammer. If any of the kids’ toys ever ran out of juice we’d have to just toss them in the give-away pile.

Gluing stuff: Not far from The Husband’s “Needs new batteries” pile I’ve amassed a small “Needs gluing” pile. This includes the shattered legs of a porcelain doll Kate insisted on taking to a taqueria for dinner and promptly dropped on the sidewalk. (She may never walk again.) It also includes a tea-set teapot handle, and distressingly, the head of a Cinderella piggy bank. Gluing is man’s work. Mark reinforces this in my mind when he informs the children of the special types of glue that he needs for various broken items. Though that could just be his way of staving off having to deal with this chore. That Cinderella head has been unhinged for some time now. Whatever the case, the whole glue scene is Greek to me. If something breaks while Daddy is away, maybe all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can swing by to help me out—though I hear their track record isn’t so good.

Making pancakes: Do you know of any mother who makes pancakes for her kids on the weekends? NO. This is what father’s are uniquely wired to do. Sometimes my kids ask me to make them pancakes, and I just laugh. To tell you the truth, I have no idea how two-mom households ever enjoy homemade pancake breakfasts. I will have to ask around about this and get back to you.

Teaching driving: This is blessedly not something I’ll have to concern myself with while Mark is away. Unless they suddenly lower the legal driving age by ten years. But when the time comes this SO seems like a Dad-will-do-it kinda thing. I know I bucked and jolted and skidded across the Newport Creamery parking lot when my dad endeavored to instruct me on driving a stick shift. All that tension and repeated bellowing of “EASE UP on the clutch–EASE UP ON IT!” seems to clearly be father’s work. (See also: Teaching Skiing.)

In our house Mark also does a bunch of things I realize many other dads probably don’t. And for that I’m grateful. Anything remotely technical, gadget-y or computerish, of course, falls to him. As does the assembly of any toys more complicated than putting a tube top on a Polly Pocket. (Although I did assemble a high chair once, and I’m proud to report that no children were ever injured sitting in that chair.)

The Husband is also the primary kid bather in our division of labor, and as a subset of those responsibilities he most often clips the children’s nails.

He performs all the small surgeries in the house too–removing splinters, trimming hangnails, washing dirt out of skinned knees, and doing whatever is needed to blisters, burns, and boil-like things (which I’d really rather not know about). After these episodes Kate invariably staggers from the bathroom brandishing big bandages or tourniquets and proclaiming, “Daddy is just like a doctor.”

When the time comes for me to contemplate cosmetic surgery, I’m considering just having Mark do it to defray costs. But hopefully, in the month that he’s away the toll of taking on parenting without my dear husband won’t be so great I’ll need to accelerate the scheduling of any anti-aging surgeries. Which is a good thing since as soon as he walks in the door I imagine there will be a lot of gluing and battery-changing that he’ll have to catch up on.

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By the way, you can follow Mark’s excellent coverage of the Olympics for Wired at Wired Playbook.

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