My boyfriend came to parenting late in life. I already had three boys from a previous marriage when we became a couple, and three year later, we (well, I, mostly) decided to have a child together. But he had never been a father, and his parents had kind of given up on grandchildren from him. When he told them they were going to be grandparents again, they asked, "You mean, your sister's pregnant?"
"No, Amy is."
"Your Amy?"
It took them a minute to figure out that he meant that he was going to be a dad. He was over 35, and wasn't married, so I guess they gave up on that idea years ago. But his sister (and their only other grandchild) live 5 hours away, and his parents were really thrilled, so they spoil the shit out of the girls. I am very lucky in my in-laws.
During the Memorial Day weekend, I was tired and sick with a cold. His parents had a cookout, and I didn't really want to go. So, he got the girls ready. I offered to help, but he said he already had clothes for them ready. I laid down, then got back up to kiss them before they left.
Now, because my honey became a parent late, he hasn't spent a lot of time around children. It's ok, and he loves our children, and my children, but children in general do not give him joy. I see somene else's child playing and laughing, and it makes me laugh, because kids are great, and other people's kids are even more great, especially because they're someone else's.
He doesn't understand this. Kids are not fun to him, kids are work. And serious work, at that. In his mind, parenting is a flowchart, with equations that make sense, when in reality, raising kids is a poster board where someone vomitted the alphabet and you have to try to make sense out of the bile-encrusted letters.
But I had kids when I was young, so maybe I had to figure out how to enjoy life with kids. He was single and had fun sans children, so having fun with kids is not something he's used to. Or maybe it's a woman thing, I don't know. Anyway, since I can do all kinds of stuff with one hand tied behind my back (or with a kid in one hand, same diff) I try not to immediately jump in when I see him do something with the girls that might come back to bite him in the ass, so to speak. Like maybe ... dress them in mis-matched and ill-fitting clothes and take them to Grandma's house. I've learned THAT lesson already when the boys were young. My mother bitched at me for two hours about the importance of undershirts. Really?! It was summer, and .... I'm sorry, I digress.
The four year old was dressed in a dress that she used to wear when she was 2, and I was kind of saving it for the 2 year old. The dress was white with green flowers, only it was waaaaaaaay too short for my little princess. If she wore it as a dress, she would look more like Brittany Spears than Princess Di, so he had wisely given her pants to wear it with. The pants were hot pink, and were also too short. And she was wearing all of this cacophany with red sandals. And socks! Oh my God! "Mommy, look at my pretty dress!"
"Um, yeah sweetie. Don't you think that dress is a little small? Do you want to wear a shirt with your pants? Look, this one has a horse on it!"
"No, This is my favoritest dress! Daddy says I can wear it! We're going to Nana and Poppa's house!"
"Fabulous, honey!"
The toddler was in a dress that reached to her ankles. It was a red and white shirt dress, that the 4 year old princess had almost grown out of, and I had been using it as a nightgown for her. And then he put on her pink sandals. She said it all, with "Oh Noo!" in her mournful little toddler voice. It's pretty much the only thing she says, but, well, it was super accurate in this instance.
I mentioned to their dad that the outfits were a little...mismatched. He said it didn't matter, because his mom would probably change them when he got there. Fair enough, I would've changed them too. I'm not one to bitch constantly. If I see a potential minor problem, I mention it. If he doesn't listen, well, that's his decision.
I went to sleep and when I woke up, they were still gone. My boyfriend made it back around dusk, alone. Turns out, the girls were staying at his parents for the night. Excellent! A night without kids. He did have a box with him though - containing food from the cookout and a bunch of plastic packages.
"What are these?"
"Mom sent them. It's just some clothes she found while doing laundry, and wanted to send them here for the girls to get some use out of before they outgrew them."
"Why are they in ziploc bags? Is this ... Did she label them with the girls' names?" and I started laughing. I do love his mother, she is certainly creative. "Are these divided up into outfits, labelled with each girl's name? And it looks like they're all color-coordinated!" Wow, much better than a lecture, she is good.
"I don't know, I didn't really look at them, why?"
"No reason, honey, no reason!"
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