My House Runneth Over

Disclaimer: This post is in no way meant to offend, hurt, push buttons, or generally upset anyone. There are no hidden meanings. Y'all give me too much credit. Specifically, lets all remember that Terry and I are not married. He is not my husband and as a partner in parenthood I am sure that if he was in the US he certainly would be carrying my car seat.

One of my co-workers is thinking about "trying" to get pregnant with her husband over the summer. I am secretly very happy that there was no "trying" involved with my pregnancy. I am positive that planning takes all the fun out of having sex. Anyway, she was picking my brain about all the little things that have changed in my life. Things that you would never think of or anticipate. She also confessed on how she was quite nervous about her husbands' involvement or lack of. It got me thinking about the obvious holes in my life where a partner would be helpful. When it comes to raising children, what exactly are husbands good for? (How Sex and the City was that intro...)

Cargo - Babies come with a lot of equipment. A lot of heavy equipment. Mom was my substitute husband for a while retrieving the stroller in and out of the trunk. But recently she put her foot down saying she raised three children without lugging the stroller around and she was not going to start now. So, I am on stroller and baby duty. The result is Wyatt needs to hang in the car for a few more minutes by himself while I get the stroller set up and ready to go. Also, I have one of those baby carrier/car seats. Unfortunately, I had to give it up already for a permanent car seat. The reason being: the seat weighed 10lbs and Wyatt is almost up to 17lbs. Put them together and what I get is a back ache. Lifting the seat alone was a challenge. Forget walking or trying to wiggle myself in the middle back seat carrying 27lbs in front of me.

Four hands are better than two - to cook my dinner, to clean, to diaper in the middle of the night, to feed, to get me the baby so I can feed him, to rotate while I get ready for work, etc, etc, ad nauseam. Thankfully, I live in a household with 4 other adults. The only time I am truly alone is between 9pm-7am. When we have bad nights, I wish that there was someone to help so I could get that extra 10 minutes of sleep before work. But I know that if I am really in crisis mode, Mom is a phone call away. I have used her maybe a dozen or so times usually when Wy is fussing to get fed and peed through his pajamas, and the crib, then puked on my pajamas, and my bed.

Sex and Money - yes, I went there. I am not going to go into much detail but it would be very nice to have two full incomes. And it would be very very nice to have some sex. It is kind of tricky, living with my parents and my son. It would be like "Welcome to my bedroom, don't wake my son, and my mom will make you waffles in the morning." Or "please ignore the crib in the corner." Or I could blame the crying and the walking upstairs on the cats. Talk about elephant in the room. Yikes.

Rainy Days - So, here's the story. I was driving to lunch the other day with Bean and two of Terry's good friends. In the middle of our drive it started pouring, one of those sun shower rains that comes down in buckets. I remained calm but had NO IDEA how to get Bean out of the car. I kid you not people. No Clue. Thankfully, I had a stowaway umbrella that Sean held over our heads as I got him out of the car and into Buckram's. If he wasn't there I probably would have either drove home or sat in the car until it stopped.

I am sure husbands are good for some other things. None of which I can think of but you can't miss what you don't have, right? In reality, I probably have about three husbands in total. My Mom who does most of the cleaning and cooking, Rebecca who does most of the baby watching and everything else I need help with, and my Dad who does all of the yard work and washes my car. So, really the only thing I have to complain about is sex and money and that, my friends, is for another post.