True Story Tuesday and Parenting 101

*Disclaimer: I've thrown Alex under the bus a few times so I just want it to be known that, while he does provide me with fabulous blogging material, he is a rockin' dad and a wonderfully romantic husband with a great sense of humor!*

On Thursday mornings my husband takes Jack to school. Since Melody has school at 8:45 and Jack has school at 8, I appreciate his willingness to go to work later than he prefers and save me some time.

However, since Daddy is home on Thursday, this makes for a very chaotic morning. This past Thursday was pretty much the most chaotic yet. In fact, reliving that morning over and over would probably be the equivalent of my personal hell. We had a busted, leaky diaper from Charlie that required a rinsing in the tub, a cleaning of the tub, and then an actual bath. After finally getting everyone dressed, downstairs, and settled at the table with their waffles.

Usually Daddy goes downstairs and works from home until it's time to leave. However, this time he brought his laptop upstairs and sat at the kitchen table.

While the kids are eating breakfast and I'm standing in the kitchen waiting to bring them more of whatever it is they want I realize I had forgotten to make Jack's lunch. As I'm trying to tell him to bring me his lunch bag and water bottle, he's in the midst of explaining to me that he refilled his water bottle yesterday so he doesn't need new water in it. As I'm trying to tell him him that water that is close to 24 hours old is not good and he just needs to obey me, he drops the water bottle (in the sink fortunately) sending water everywhere. He's still talking instead of listening to me and at some point a juice box flew out of my hand and hit the wall. (No idea how that happened. I swear) Alex is still just sitting at the table immersed in his email.

I finally get things cleaned up, talk to Jack about not talking when I'm talking, and get him off to school.

After dropping Jack off, my husband calls me to discuss the incident. I tell him that Thursday mornings are just too chaotic for me. I have a hard time getting the kids ready because they are excited that Daddy is there and that I expect him to help me but he's not because he's on the computer working. I told him that if he wanted/needed to work that was fine, but to please go down to the man-cave and stay there until it was time to leave for school.

"Oh," he said. "I didn't realize you expected me to parent."

(Yes, he was completely serious when he made that statement.)

Thank you, honey, for communicating so well with me. But let me clarify; if you are in the vicinity of your children, I do expect you to parent. Especially when I am on the brink of insanity and throwing juice boxes juice boxes are randomly flying about.