Mr. Mom & Ms. Dad

Today was Mother’s Day. This was our first real experience with the holiday here at Abbie Update. Last year, Ellie was 8+ months pregnant for Mother’s Day, and could only dream of the terrifying wonders Abbie would bring. This year, Ellie looked at the past 11+ months, at the screaming fits that felt like they’d never end, at the joys of firsts like the first laugh, at the midnight (and 2am, and 4am…) feedings, and declared “I want a ring for Mother’s Day.”

Shortly after Ellie opened her ring, I went to reading the morning paper, and realized just how different our family roles have evolved from most other families. Tributes to mom filled the comics pages, some of them involving the kids or husband doing mom’s jobs around the house, like cooking, vacuuming, and laundry. A little later I realized that I do most of the cooking, vacuuming, and laundry in this house. When I turned to the front page of the newspaper, their cover story on mom’s day was about how the kids might do a few extra household chores for a day, but they’ll leave mom to do the chores for the rest of the year. Once again, I do most of mom’s traditional chores around the house. The story wasn’t completely filled with gender stereotypes as it also contained handy tips for putting your children to work as young as 12-months-old, giving me visions of raising my own Cinderella, except that Cinderella actually had enough free time to go to the ball which will never happen in my house. I started wondering why the newspaper industry assumes that if there’s work to be done around the house, mom does it. That’s probably because it’s mostly true, but not in our house. It makes sense to me that if mom works at a revenue making job all day, while I stay at home and take care of the kid, that I could slip in a few chores while Abbie plays nicely on the floor. That, and I need to do something to earn my allowance.

Next month will be my first real Father’s Day since Abbie was only a few weeks old for the holiday last year and I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Which of my fatherly duties will the media celebrate? Being handy around the home? Handy is not a word commonly used to describe myself. Mowing the lawn? We don’t even have a lawn, though I’d be the one to mow it if we did. Grilling meats? I’m pretty ambivalent toward grilling; Ellie is the one that loves to grill, I’m just happy there’s something easy to be made for dinner that she’ll want to eat. Sitting in front of the couch all day watching sports? Well, I can only do that if the laundry is done.

Following up on yesterday’s gardening story, here’s a picture of Abbie standing in front of the tiny plot we’re calling a garden and wearing a pretty dress for the first and probably only time before she outgrows it.