Lately, Sunday evenings have been Daddy’s night. Elise has
been busier than usual as we approach our departure date, and more and more
families decide to take advantage of her immense talent behind the camera. Most
Sundays, almost every Sunday, the boys play trains or make race tracks in the
living room or play room or play outside. Clementine will take a cat nap, just
long enough for me to get dinner started or, best case, on the table in time
for Elise’s return home.
Last night did not go so smoothly. Elise had shoots both
Saturday and Sunday nights. I shouldn’t make it sound harder than it really is,
because Elise does this EVERY SINGLE DAY, but I have yet to be comfortable with
the idea that I can’t do everything.
I have always prided myself on my ability to take care of my
children all by myself no matter what. Not that I have to frequently, hardly ever, but I
understood early on that our happiness and the happiness of our marriage called
for me to be able to step up and parent and free up Elise to pursue her own
interests, grow her own career or just have some down time. I had heard Elise
tell plenty of stories about her friend’s husbands who were incapable of
putting their children to bed. I determined early on I wasn't going to be that kind of dad.
And I’m not. But with three kids, I have had to learn my
limits. When it was just Sam and Pete, they could play while I made dinner or
got baths ready. Add Clementine to the equation and, God love her, I just can’t
do it all, and that has been a big adjustment.
I can’t honestly say it was easy at any point last night. I
can’t say it started off okay then got rocky later. It was rough from the
beginning. I’m sure the fact that I had not slept in past 5:00 a.m. in the last
three weeks had something to do with it. As Elise moved toward the door camera
bag in hand, I was immobilized on the couch. She left me wondering how I was
going to pull this off. Never mind that she was only going to be gone two
hours.
We had gone to Wal-Mart earlier in the day to buy a new
wireless modem. (I was already spent and frustrated from spending what felt
like the whole weekend feeling technologically inept. Our old wireless modem
was fried in a near-miss lighting strike during the chuva da manga, the first rain that signals the end of the dry
season, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to install the new
one. It didn’t help that the instructions were in Portuguese, but I had always
been under the impression that you just plugged the modem in and it started
broadcasting a signal. When did setting up a wireless network get so
complicated?) At Wal-Mart, we bought, in addition to glazed doughnuts—the only
place in Brasilia one can buy true, honest-to-goodness doughnuts is Wal-Mart.
Go figure—and pao de queijo the size of tennis balls, an inflatable baby pool
for Clemmy and an inflatable raft shaped like a racing car for Pete and Sam.
Sam had liberated the raft from its box even though I must have told him a
thousand times, it was not possible for me to take three children who had yet
to learn how to swim into the swimming pool by myself. I don’t even think I
could put their bathing suits on all by myself. Sam was walking around the
house, trying to blow up the raft. But since I didn’t want him to
hyperventilate and pass out, I mercifully offered to blow the raft up for him.
Per Elise’s suggestion, I set them up outside with the hose,
the water table, inflatable raft and Clementine’s new inflatable pool. Clem was
getting restless, so I made her a bottle and attempted to put her down for a
nap, while I watched Pete and Sam strip naked and race back and forth through
her bedroom window. In the short amount of time it took for me to give
Clementine her bottle, Pete barged into her room, naked, wet and crying no less
than twice. Not ideal conditions for getting a baby to go to sleep.
I soon gave up. I rolled her activity center outside put
Clementine in it with explicit instructions; Sam was not to spray her with her
hose. She got a kick out of watching the boys play in the water. For all of
about 30 seconds. After which point both Pete and Sam decided they were done
outside, got dressed and declared they wanted to play inside, abandoning
Clementine.
Exhausted and alone, she burst into tears. I picked her and
the activity center up and brought them back inside. I fail to recall what Pete
and Sam were doing at this point, but I thought I would try to put Clementine
down again. She was clearly exhausted, but I had no better luck this time
without intrusions than I had had earlier with intrusions.
It was almost 5:00, and I had only gotten as far as cutting
the butternut squash. Oh, yeah. I was trying to make dinner, too. I had turned
the oven on. Then, realizing I wasn’t going to be ready in time, I turned it
off, not wanting to overheat the kitchen.
I picked up Clementine and brought her into mine and Elise’s
room. I lay on the bed with her, hoping she would squiggle herself out. At that
point, I didn’t really care what Sam and Pete were doing as long as they were
quiet. A few minutes later, they slunk in, guilty smirks staining their faces. They
hadn’t done anything wrong, they just wanted to be with us. I acquiesced, and
the four of us squiggled on the bed.
It was close to five, and I figured I could do this for
another hour. Just let them roll around on the bed for an hour or so until
Elise got home. I was too tired to move, anyway.
At some point I realized I would have to get something on
the table, so I got up and took Clementine into the kitchen, put her in her
high chair and gave her some plastic bowls to chew on. Sam
and Pete followed. I was able to put the squash in the oven and get the rice
on. Then, the boys started breaking down. I put noodles on, too, realizing they
weren’t going to be able to make it long enough for me to also clean, cut and cook
chicken to go with our rice, beans and squash.
I scooped the boys bowls of penne. I make two Tupperware tubs.
One with butter and cheese for Sam and one with tomato sauce for Pete. Why?
Because that’s the way they like it. Yes, sometimes I do make parenting harder
than it has to be, but that’s what you do when you love your kids.
I got the noodles on the table just as Clementine was
winding down in her high chair. I picked her up. Pete whined from his seat at
the table, “I want a snaaaaack!”
Me: “You don’t need a snack you’re having dinner.”
“I want a snaaaack!”
“What do you want? Pretzels? Marshmallows?” I queried,
furious.
“Yeah, marshmallows!”
I reached into the cupboard, got down the bag of
marshmallows and threw them at Peter. They hit him in the face, and he burst
into tears. I immediately felt terrible.
I took Clementine and walked outside. Clearly, I had lost it. I
needed to get some fresh air. Pete’s wailing carried from every window of the
house.
I went back inside and tried to tell him I was sorry, but of
course he wasn’t having anything to do with me at that point. He found his
blanket and curled up on the floor of the play room sobbing. Much of the rest
half hour was a blur. At some point, I started to make a bottle for Clemmy, and
then Elise came home. She saw Pete on the floor and immediately deduced he was
sick. He ran a fever all that night. I had been so discombobulated I didn’t even see
it.
Later that evening, as we lay in bed, I was shell-shocked. I
knew it was hard, but I never imagined it could be that hard. I thought I had an appreciation for what Elise did every day. I thought that if I planned
ahead and anticipated everyone’s needs, I would be okay, but sometimes, despite
best intentions, there is just no winning.
A few days later, Elise shared with me a discussion that was taking place on Facebook. Some mothers were debating the merits of attachment
parenting versus detachment parenting. Now, I’m not exactly sure what
attachment parenting or detachment parenting really is. From the discussion, I
got that attachment parenting involves either breastfeeding your child until
they reach middle school and/or wearing them in a papoose all day, and
detachment parenting involves either hiring a nanny to parent your children for
you or completely ignoring your children whether there is a
nanny around as back-up or not.
I am sure these are extreme examples, but my point is, you
can’t practice either attachment or detachment parenting with three hungry and
tired kids. I don’t know what you call it because one doesn’t have the luxury
of theorizing over one’s method of parenting from the eye of the hurricane. You
do what you do because you love them and because you are their dad. Not to say
those that practice detachment parenting don’t love their kids; obviously, they
do. You just wonder if detachment parents wanted their kids to play in their
cribs in the other room while you prepared a romantic, candlelit dinner for their
significant other, instead of watching them cook from the high chair, why they
decided to have kids in the first place.
The next morning, I had just gotten out of the shower and
was brushing my teeth when Peter padded into the bathroom. He looked up at me
and whispered, “You throw marshmallows at me.” I scooped him up and told him I
was sorry. I told him that I loved him and that I didn’t meant to hurt his
feelings. I think he is going to work this one for awhile.
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