My husband, God bless him, is not a gift-giver. I used to really like receiving gifts, so this was tough on me early in our marriage. I buy little gifts all the time and I save up big gift ideas for Christmas and birthday, which, in Tony’s case, come back-to-back. Often, however, Tony will ruin my gift-giving ideas by just going and buying himself whatever he wants when he wants it. Clearly, he does not punish himself with delayed gratification like I do.
When Tony does give a gift, though, it ends up being super thoughtful and extravagant. Gorgeous sapphire drop earrings one Christmas, pretty, delicate wine glasses one birthday, and then, for no reason whatsoever, a night away from the kids and the house last weekend.
Okay, it’s not for no reason whatsoever. It’s because I’m going batshit crazy.
It’s because Charles throws a tantrum about stupid math homework every other day – he could breeze through it in 30 seconds, but he thinks it’s so. stinking. dumb. that he has to do counting and basic addition and subtraction problems that he whines and cries about how he wishes he could go back in time and stop the first teacher who ever assigned homework from doing so, thereby preventing this demonic concept of “homework” from ever being invented. Guess who gets to be the homework parent right after school each day? Yep, me. I talk that kid off a ledge all the time about that ridiculous homework and honestly, I think half of the reason I have so much trouble is that Charles thinks that I am possibly too dumb to understand his homework. He won’t listen, no matter how I try to explain the concepts.
It’s because Jamie’s emotions outrun his reasoning skills 8407256 times each day, and I have to employ every negotiating tactic I’ve ever learned from watching formulaic cop-dramas (“Put the stick down so we can talk about it, Jamie. Why don’t you come over here and give me your list of demands? You don’t really want to hurt anyone, so just let go of your brother’s ear and walk away. Time-out is no fun, kiddo, put the rock down.”) just to get through the day. He’s often in time-out and he often loses privileges. He just as often snuggles up to me and asks me to read stories, but geez, it would be nice to have some middle ground between “infuriating” and “sweet as sugar.”
It’s because Freddie never sleeps and he never, ever wants to stop nursing. I can’t really remember what it feels like to be well-rested. At this point, it would take me a month just to fill the giant hole of sleep debt in my life.
Tony, apparently, has been making plans for me to have a night away with some girlfriends for MONTHS. That’s love, people, plain and simple. My friend Jodi picked me and two other friends up on Saturday morning and drove us to Canada. I felt like yelling to my children, “Sorry, SUCKERS. I’m going to be in A DIFFERENT COUNTRY for the next 36 hours!” Oh, sweet freedom. We drank all day long, soaked in a hot tub, went shopping and walking, shared laughs, and gorged ourselves on fantastic sushi. And then I didn’t get out of bed to nurse a screaming child once, all night long.
36 whole hours of ADULT TIME. Best gift of the year.
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