First off, what is the biggest honor a person can get? To me, it's having your country designate your birthday as a national holiday. People who have their birthdays as an American federal holiday: Martin Luther King, Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Jesus Christ and America. I suppose you could say the world too (New Year's), but that's kind of stretching it. So, props to MLK for being just one of four people in the past two thousand years to have their birthday celebrated by our entire country. That's impressive.
Unfortunately, not everyone gets the day off, so I guess he still ranks behind Jesus. No offense, Dr. King. Rachel was working yesterday, so Jonah and I had a rare day for the two of us to hang out together. Rachel gets every Thursday off, and I don't know how she does it. I was dying by 4:30. The difference between her ability to watch Jonah and mine is so shockingly large, the term "parent" cannot rationally refer to both our roles. Let me expand on this topic:
The defnition of a successful day with Jonah for Rachel:
- Playtime in the morning
- Trip to the park
- Read some books
- Play some board games
- Shop for Groceries
- Get in time on the elliptical while Jonah watches tv/naps
- Clean the house....the whole house
- wash, dry and fold three loads of laundry
- Have dinner ready by the time I get home
Now, a successful day with Jonah for me:
That's it. If I get through an entire day without sending one or both of us to the emergency room, I think everyone is pleased with the outcome. I suppose this would explain why Rachel was mildly exasperated at my inability to correctly make the bed yesterday. Truth be told, I barely accomplished my only goal yesterday. Jonah got a remote control truck for his birthday in October. A real beast of a monster truck. The remote is still a little too big for Jonah to effectively operate it, but he enjoys either driving it straight until it crashes into something, or driving in a circle until it crashes into something. Either outcome is met by riotous laughter. The weather yesterday allowed us take that bad boy out and run it around for a while. After Jonah had his fun running it into stuff, he hands me the remote and says "here dad, your turn." Very nice kid, my son. He even let some other kid play with it while we were swinging on the swings at the park later on. Anyways, for my "turn" I asked Jonah if he thought I could drive it across the park, around the basketball hoop, and back to us. He said "yes, and I will race it!" Sounds good. So off he goes, staying a few steps ahead of the monster truck. I was a little concerned about the turn at the hoop, as they were on opposites sides of the hoop and thus would be turning towards each other, but it ended up not being an issue. As they crossed the half court line on the way back, Jonah started to tire and the truck began to catch up. Jonah could hear it coming and looked over his shoulder for the truck as he ran. This change of center of balance caused Jonah's path to start to converge with that of the truck. I attempted to course correct the truck, but, being the genius that I am, I forgot to take into account that the truck was coming towards me, therefore left for the truck was the opposite of my left. So I brilliantly turned the truck directly under Jonah's legs, sending both him and the truck tumbling ass over teakettle to the pavement. Thankfully, Jonah didn't smack his head or anything, just a slight scrape on his forearm. The shock of the whole thing justifiably caused him to start sobbing. I run to pick him up, and I'm able to calm him down. As he's trying to compose himself, he asks me between sobs "Why did the truck trip me?" I'm not going to lie, I contemplated putting all the blame on the truck and saying that it didn't want Jonah to win so it cheated and we should probably put it in timeout until it apologizes for its behavior. I decided against that, instead saying that I had screwed up and turned the truck the wrong way. This was met with a volley of "Why would you do that, daddy? Why did you trip me?" questions from the crying boy in my arms.
We have to pass a test to drive a car. We have to prove residency to check out a library book. Yet anyone can have a child. In my case, nobody's questioning my ability to have a second one. Why is that the biggest responsibility I, or anyone for that matter, will ever has is completely unregulated? Sure, if I screw up in a major way, someone will be there to deem me "unfit to raise a child," but really, shouldn't we try to establish this before we completely ruin our children? Practically everytime you leave your house you're bound to run into a someone with kids that you can instantly say "that person should definitely not be in charge of a child."
Bottom line is that if you're going to call me a parent, then Rachel is a
PARENT. She's amazing, and I defnitely do not give her enough credit for all she does for us. It's truly remarkable, and I will be sure to tell her this in person tonight. However, I thought you all should know as well. Rachel is flat out awesome.
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