Long Live Stephen!
Stephen seems to be back to his normal self again after a nasty bout with a gastrointestinal virus. Let me take this moment to say a gigantic AMEN.
It's never fun when your spouse is sick. He's whiny, you feel a certain obligation to be nice and maybe even cater to his demands a bit more than you usually would, he dirties up the bed from lying in it all blessed day with his yucky sick germs, you have no one to make you popcorn and hot chocolate in the evening, and it's pretty much a given that you'll be spending the evening at home. But when you have a baby, it's so much worse. You work a full day at a place that makes you crazy, come home exhausted to find a baby who is crabby because he's out of his routine and can sense things aren't right and is ready for a diaper change and dinner, but you just want to put your sweats on and make a TV dinner for yourself because you're starved but too tired to make a real dinner, but first it's bath time, pajama time, book reading time, bottle time, toothbrush time, sleepy time, and then there are dishes to be put away and washed, cats to be fed, a litter box to be scooped, a path of destruction created by Baby to be picked up, your own getting ready for bed routine...and did you ever find time or even remember to change out of your work clothes and grab yourself some dinner? Single parents out there: YOU ARE MY HEROES!
Ok, so it was only for a couple of days, and Stephen wasn't a demanding patient at all. In fact, I was lucky if I heard ten words from him - after that initial round of sickness, he slept for most of the duration of the rest of it. And, thankfully, Stephen has an awesome dad who was willing to drive almost three hours in horrendous driving conditions yesterday so he could watch Asher while Stephen rested and I worked.
My point is, though, that I tend to take for granted how great my husband is. I'm always bitching about how the laundry isn't done, or how he hasn't packed a single box for the move, or how the bed isn't made, and I often overlook all the things he does for us around here: making dinner, doing the dishes, straightening up the kitchen, giving Asher his bath, scooping the litter box, feeding the cats, just being a second set of hands and eyes for keeping tabs on The Boy...It's not until times when Stephen is sick, or has to work late hours in the evening, that I'm reminded of how much it SUCKS not having him and his assistance around. Not to mention, how lonely it is without his company. I was so excited last night when he was feeling well enough to lie in bed and watch TV with me for a little while.
So he's back to normal, and now I feel so much more back to normal. It's sort of been an eye-opening experience over the past couple of days. I've been beyond stressed out because of the house stuff and work stuff. His being so sick has put things into perspective for me and now that he's better, I feel so much more calm and collected than I did before he was sick. I'm sure he wouldn't agree that his spending an afternoon at the Emergency Room was worth me learning a life lesson - and I'm not saying it was, especially considering the fact that I could very well be next in line to have this nasty flu - but I guess something good came out of it. I just pray that Stephen doesn't try to teach me anymore life lessons for a good long while. I'm done with learning.
It's never fun when your spouse is sick. He's whiny, you feel a certain obligation to be nice and maybe even cater to his demands a bit more than you usually would, he dirties up the bed from lying in it all blessed day with his yucky sick germs, you have no one to make you popcorn and hot chocolate in the evening, and it's pretty much a given that you'll be spending the evening at home. But when you have a baby, it's so much worse. You work a full day at a place that makes you crazy, come home exhausted to find a baby who is crabby because he's out of his routine and can sense things aren't right and is ready for a diaper change and dinner, but you just want to put your sweats on and make a TV dinner for yourself because you're starved but too tired to make a real dinner, but first it's bath time, pajama time, book reading time, bottle time, toothbrush time, sleepy time, and then there are dishes to be put away and washed, cats to be fed, a litter box to be scooped, a path of destruction created by Baby to be picked up, your own getting ready for bed routine...and did you ever find time or even remember to change out of your work clothes and grab yourself some dinner? Single parents out there: YOU ARE MY HEROES!
Ok, so it was only for a couple of days, and Stephen wasn't a demanding patient at all. In fact, I was lucky if I heard ten words from him - after that initial round of sickness, he slept for most of the duration of the rest of it. And, thankfully, Stephen has an awesome dad who was willing to drive almost three hours in horrendous driving conditions yesterday so he could watch Asher while Stephen rested and I worked.
My point is, though, that I tend to take for granted how great my husband is. I'm always bitching about how the laundry isn't done, or how he hasn't packed a single box for the move, or how the bed isn't made, and I often overlook all the things he does for us around here: making dinner, doing the dishes, straightening up the kitchen, giving Asher his bath, scooping the litter box, feeding the cats, just being a second set of hands and eyes for keeping tabs on The Boy...It's not until times when Stephen is sick, or has to work late hours in the evening, that I'm reminded of how much it SUCKS not having him and his assistance around. Not to mention, how lonely it is without his company. I was so excited last night when he was feeling well enough to lie in bed and watch TV with me for a little while.
So he's back to normal, and now I feel so much more back to normal. It's sort of been an eye-opening experience over the past couple of days. I've been beyond stressed out because of the house stuff and work stuff. His being so sick has put things into perspective for me and now that he's better, I feel so much more calm and collected than I did before he was sick. I'm sure he wouldn't agree that his spending an afternoon at the Emergency Room was worth me learning a life lesson - and I'm not saying it was, especially considering the fact that I could very well be next in line to have this nasty flu - but I guess something good came out of it. I just pray that Stephen doesn't try to teach me anymore life lessons for a good long while. I'm done with learning.
3 comments:
Cute baby and baby-daddy!
I was just thinking this the other day – Kim, you and I (and most other modern moms) are spoiled these days if we have a husband around the house, because they do SO MUCH to help us with the child-rearing. No offense, Papa, but can you imagine our fathers or our grandfathers doing the amount of childcare that Stephen and Jeff do?
I came to the same realization you did last week when Jeff was laid low by the flu. Taking care of the baby at night by yourself is a lot of work, and it's easy to take for granted how much of that load Daddy takes off our shoulders.
Of course, your situation is different than mine, since you're the one putting in 8 hours at the office, but the bottom line is, our husbands are awesome dads!
And I just wanted to clarify that Papa is a great dad (he was just really busy when we were growing up), and it's great to see how much of a hands-on grandfather he's become to Rowan and Asher.
Imagine my surprise when PaPa actually helped with bathing babies every night. He'd wash and I'd dry one night and then I'd wash and he'd dry the next. And he always changed diapers. Shocked his mother to no end!
Post a Comment