Sunday, June 20, 2010

Father of The Year

As much as I sometimes want to devote entire blog posts extolling the virtues of My Beloved, I generally refrain, as my love and adoration for some of his virtues ebbs and flows (Sometimes I love his biting wit, other times, not so much). Today though, in honor of Father's Day I will share a few things that I love about My Beloved and why he's a such a great dad.
When you get married, before you have children you only have an inkling of the commitment required to be a parent. Before the blessing of babies, you have no idea just how consumptive they are of all things, big and small.
Yesterday, after a long day of work and running our garage sale we decided to go out to eat to a family restaurant. We divided up sides of the booth, 3 on one side, 2 on the other. Just as My Beloved began to take a bite of his juicy, much longed for cheeseburger he felt a tug on his arm, and he looked down to see Baby Henry smiling as he happily pulled a scab off of My Beloveds arm (from an earlier landscaping injury). Instead of getting angry, My Beloved looked across the table into my eyes, smiled and said "We've reached a new low, even scabs aren't sacred." Strangely my eyes filled with tears at the love I share with someone who is so deeply entrenched in parenting that even really gross things are some how meaningful.
Did I ever imagine 12+ years ago that the highlight of our days would be a successfully executed bedtime routine, when we operate like a well-oiled machine transforming wild, grubby, noisy children into sleeping angels, incapable of nothing but sweetness (note I said sleeping!) until morning? No, I somehow thought it would be more exciting and glamorous, or at least I would be more fashionably dressed, and significantly thinner in my imaginings.
Nevertheless, My Beloved does not disappoint in the fatherhood area, is he always perfect, NO WAY. Does he sometimes yell? Yes. Does he occasionally swear in front of the kids? Yup. Do they often repeat these swear words? Of course, but only when it's really embarrassing for me. For the big stuff though, the man I married is Father of the Year. He works incredibly hard for our family, both at the office and at home. He tries hard to teach our kids lessons in everything he does. This summer he and the kids designed and planted a garden in the backyard, which was somewhat bigger and more work than he bargained for, I think. So far so good, although I'll be interested to see how some of the more exotic things turn out (planting our own cantaloupe for instance). This endeavor has been enriched by our family foray into composting, and everyone is into that. The kids now beg to see how the food scraps are rotting in the backyard compost bin, can you say EXCITING?
So while this life of rotting compost and scabs was not what I imagined when I met my husband, I would choose it again in a heartbeat, scabs and all.

1 comment:

Sue said...

Your husband is a Gem and Rory is like to have you as a wife.