clearly, moms know best
My husband and I are usually on the same page when it comes to parenting. We pretty much agree about everything- discipline, hygiene, schedules- all the big stuff. But there are times when I just know deep down inside that I am right I am so very right I am so right you should be able to see the glowing aura of rightness surrounding my body… and he just doesn’t get it.
Like tonight, for example.
Zibbit didn’t take a nap today, so when Ammon came home from work I had him put her to bed early. She was so exhausted that she fell asleep right away, and I didn’t go in there until right before I headed off to bed. I always go in and kiss the girls goodnight, making sure they’re all tucked in and comfy. When I went in to check on Zibbit, she was curled into a ball on her pillow, having kicked off the blankets. This afforded me a clear look at her attire. She wasn’t in pajamas. She was in the clothes she had worn all day. The clothes that had gotten soaked up to the knees from splashing in a puddle outside before bed. Thankfully, Ammon had the bright idea to roll up her pants so that she wouldn’t feel the wetness. Not only that! But he had to undress her to change her diaper. People! With a closet a mere arms length away full of clean, dry clothes, he put those clothes BACK ON HER!
When I came into our room to ask him what the heck he was thinking, he sputtered and stuttered and just could not see what the problem was. Why? He asked me. Why, when the pants were rolled up so nicely, was putting her to bed in wet pants that bad? I asked him if he would like to sleep in wet pants. He said it wouldn’t really bother him.
So I did the only logical thing a woman in my situation could do.
I picked up the water bottle from the bedside table.
And I squirted water on the crotch of his pants.
And then he got all mad at me, like I had done something terrible. What, honey? Was that wet feeling uncomfortable for you? Huh? < insert wicked cackle here >
Am I wrong here? Am I missing some important, character building lesson you get from sleeping in wet pants? Is it too much to ask to clothe the children in clean, dry pajamas before they go to bed? Am I just CRAZY?
OK..that was stinkin hilarious! Sometimes men need to be “shown” in order for them to understand. he he he! I am just laughing!
Comment by Queen Beth — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 5:38 am
Father of 2 here… I often let the kids sleep with their clothes when we went out for a campfire or something. I would support Ammon but the removal and putting the pants back on puts him in a very bad position. This being said I think you over-reacted and thus clearly he had a right to be upset
Unless it’s the 20th time he does this…
A little pet peeve of mine is the (I AM GENERALIZING HERE) continum of examples where dads get involved and does his parenting in a different/creative way. Mom gets involved and destroys/removes what dad did to have it her way. Me and my spouse have had this discussion and she has grown to respect what may seem weird/bizarre/odd to her but makes perfect sense to me.
Cheers!
Comment by DavidR — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 5:50 am
This post made me laugh. I agree, the logic behind putting wet pants BACK ON doesn’t make any sense…and I also think that men don’t learn anything unless it’s the “hard way” or it happens to them personally - so good call with the water bottle. I would’ve done the same thing.
Comment by Kelli — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 6:15 am
Karli, I am so with you. Good call on the wetting his pants.
DavidR: This is not ‘different/creative’ nor is it ‘weird/bizarre/odd’. This is simply NOT thinking - until it affects YOU.
My husband would say: You told me to tuck her in. You didn’t say I had to change her!
Is is any surprise some women are so long winded sometimes? You just hv to be so literal to cover every possibility so u dont need to hv that thrown in your face!
:)
Comment by Jenn — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 6:36 am
Jenn, you crack me up! After posting I was pondering what I would have done in Ammons’ position.
Seriously… I can’t confirm 100% I would not have put the pants back on…
I think we need clarification on the ‘level’ of soakdness of the pants in Ammon’s defense.
Karli, kind of exagerated by showering her husband, maybe she also exagerated a bit on the level of soaking the pants had.
If you see any other exit door let me know…
Comment by DavidR — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 6:43 am
Oh my gosh, this is exactly what happens with us! I come home from work in the evening to find that the girls have eaten Cocoa Puffs for dinner, and that they’re either in just a diaper or the clothes they’ve worn that day. Exactly! I know what you mean about that whole intuition knowledge. Sometimes you just know, whether you can fully explain it or not. Great post.
Comment by Alecia — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 7:09 am
That was hilarious! Worth doing, *JUST* so you could make us all laugh. I would have done the same thing to my Hubby.
Comment by April — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 7:34 am
*snicker*
go, you!
Comment by Lou — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 8:08 am
Happened to me last week, too. Luke (our three year old) was in damp, dirty clothes. Lionel offered to put them to bed to give me a break. I went up later to check on him…Luke was in bed, in those clothes. When I asked Lionel about it he said it was because Luke didn’t want to wear pajamas.
Didn’t want to? He also doesn’t want to eat anything other than candy all day and watch non-stop tv and date underage girls…but do we let him do that?
Comment by misha — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 10:39 am
PS LOVE the water bottle idea! Perfect logic if you ask me.
Comment by misha — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 10:40 am
HA HA Ha Ha ha ha hahahah - Oh goodness!! What a picture!!
Comment by Grandi — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 11:10 am
Ha!! My husband does that too, except instead of being wet my son is soaked in his dinner and we get ANTS in his bed.
I see your point DavidR and I do understand what you are saying. There are varying degrees of this but this is one particular point that I take issue with and the “I just do it differenly” argument drives me crazy. And again, I am generalizing here b/c my experience is limited to my husband, my BIL’s and friends husbands…..I think that most moms do try to give dads some wiggle room when they do things that are different then how mom would do it.
The big difference I see though, is that mom’s are usually thinking 10 steps down the road when they put rules or order in place. For example, when I don’t let my husband make sandwiches for the kids to eat at church when it is his turn to pack the diaper bag, it isn’t because sandwiches at church are BAD, its just that I don’t want to deal with the begging, the battle and the screaming the next time we DON”T have them in the bag. Or, when I get mad at him for having a fun game of jumping from couch to couch and onto the floor. They want to do it 1000 more times over the next five days and in the process jumped onto a) a baby on the couch being changed, b) snowglobes left out (that one required an ER trip and stitches) and c) a juice box left on the couch which then soaked the furniture and required lots of cleaning (ie…known as “more work for mom”). See what I mean. It isn’t that jumping on the couches is a terrible thing, it is just that I know my limits and I cannot constantly monitor the playroom to be sure that there is nothing that they will jump into/onto that will create pain or work. See what I mean? To some extent it is self preservation for me. I have enough to do. We try every do to avoid the things that “make more work for mom”. Not work as in the normal stuff of being a mom, I am talking work like having to stop on the way out the door to school because the 2 year old covered the tv in butter (true story). It is a concept that my tiny ones understand.
So the same thing holds true for bedtime and pjs…in our house I have to battle my daughter every night to get her PJ’s on and when her dad lets her sleep in her filthy, wet clothes, it starts the fight all over again. Beyond that, we work all day w/ our kids and do many things to make the feel safe and comfortable and dads shoudl respect our boundries with this. The particular issue of not sleeping in jammies isn’t a dealbreaker, it is the thought behind it. It makes almost every mom I know a little crazy when some one who only sees the kids for a few hours a day cannot respect our role as mothers to establish order and boundries. When you don’t take a few extra seconds to just do what should be done it feels defiant, lazy or disrepectful to most of us. We are the boss of the home (but I don’t mean boss in a bad way, more like an office manager or caretaker–the one who’s job it is to hold it all together). It is disrespectful to not do thing the way they should be done. My husband doesn’t do it at work..why should he do it at home? I can’t fire my husband, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have rules. There are consequences for actions and if breaking “the rules” brings a consequence of wet pants, cranky wife or something else, what did they expect would be the outcome? That we woudl cheerfully be defied (and then have to just go in and do it ourselves anyway…..). Are the consequenses not high enough?
So, when moms want things done a certian way there is often a reason behind it beyond “that is just the way I want it done”. Then again, I have friends that would have the same reaction for a husband putting the WRONG jammies on (why can they always find the only too small pair in the drawer?). Like I said there are degrees.
Ironically, when I try to explain to my husband WHY I have the rules, his eyes glaze over and he tunes out … so I often just end up saying “please just trust me” or “please just do it my way”. Like I said before, it is a respect issue. My husband doesn’t see it that way, he says he just didn’t want to or he just forgot, but that isn’t an acceptable answer. Like the other commenter above said, sometimes we don’t want to get up with sick kids or we want to “forget” to do laundry or feed kids, but we don’t becaues it is our job.
I am not a crazy person, seriously and I am sorry for this long rant. I have newborn and didn’t get any sleep last night. That and we are dealing with this issue at my house again got me boiling……
Comment by bek — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 11:33 am
I believe that this war has been raging for centuries. Yeah for him for helping.
Comment by Mary — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 11:33 am
Thanks (seriously) for sharing bek,
Your rant makes sense in some (ok a lot of points, mostly the 10 steps). I never really thought about the consequence, neither have I ever seen it as defiance of rules/regulations on my part.
The experiences in your household got me LOL.
I wonder how many rules I will break as my wife has left me today to go to NYC for 4 days. I am going camping so hopefully Zo (3) and Al (1) will think we did it all upside down because we were camping.
I know I will be fine and I was laughing when I was telling my spouse… does he still drinks milk in a bottle, Am I to feed them somehting else than Cheerios?
I got (sigh) (sigh) (sigh)…and then she said she loved me and wished me good luck.. Good luck? What for! Me can take care of kids.
I’ll post monday so you can have A GOOD LONG LAUGH!
cheers,
Comment by DavidR — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 12:38 pm
Thanks (seriously) for sharing bek,
Your rant makes sense in some (ok a lot of points, mostly the 10 steps). I never really thought about the consequence, neither have I ever seen it as defiance of rules/regulations on my part.
The experiences in your household got me LOL.
I wonder how many rules I will break as my wife has left me today to go to NYC for 4 days. I am going camping so hopefully Zo (3) and Al (1) will think we did it all upside down because we were camping.
I know I will be fine and I was laughing when I was telling my spouse… does he still drinks milk in a bottle, Am I to feed them somehting else than Cheerios?
I got (sigh) (sigh) (sigh)…and then she said she loved me and wished me good luck.. Good luck? What for! Me can take care of kids.
I’ll post monday so you can have A GOOD LONG LAUGH!
cheers,
Comment by DavidR — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 12:39 pm
This was definitely the funniest thing I’ve heard all day! My stomach hurts from laughing! I have sooo been there! Men are DEFINITELY from Mars and Women are from a planet with a lot more intelligence! I only wish that I had thought of that to do to my husband! Leave it up to them to make a lame A$$ comment, “It wouldn’t bother me!”. They have to say that to justify their actions! Kudos to you!
Comment by Carrie — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 3:36 pm
That is so funny. I can’t believe you poured water on him!
Comment by Oh, The Joys — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 3:49 pm
I’ve never commented on a commenter, but David, you are a brave man. I say it is a credit to you that your wife didn’t get “backup” for the kids care.
And no kid ever died eating Cheerios for every meal for a few days….
I also agree that sometimes I get so used to doing it my way, when my husband does it another way, I automatically see it as wrong—even though it’s harmless and mostly just different. I’m talking about dressing him in train overalls for church or feeding him a weird buffet of food instead of what I traditionally feed him—not putting a baby to bed dirty and wet.
It does seem to defy logic and reason when an intelligent and loving man doesn’t see the sense and care in changing wet pants. And I agree, putting the pants BACK on is where the crime was committed. As for dumping water on him—I guess you can be confident he won’t put a kid to bed wet ever again.
Comment by Angela — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 4:15 pm
HILARIOUS! My husband is SO the same way! Like today, I asked him to get my son dressed for the day, and the previous night when he put him in bed, he didn’t clothe him in pajamas either, but let him wear his shirt to bed…so this morning when I asked him to get him dressed??!! YA, he wore the same shirt he slept in and wore all day yesterday, and again today! What are they thinking? I hear ya sista, I hear ya!
Comment by Kim — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Thanks Angela… the neight thing about my spouse not being here is there is no chance I will be thrown a glass of water!
It’s my first time in this blog and it won’t be the last, Karli’s content (and herself it seems) is more than baloons and lollypops!
p.s.not many wifes’ will accept my comment on ‘their way or the highway’… kudos to you too..
p.s. She is in her dry PJ’S
Cheers
Comment by DavidR — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 5:27 pm
DavidR…thanks for taking it in stride. Like I said…I have a newborn and sleep is an elusive thing. I have no problems with my husband feeding kids cereal for dinner…the problem is when he doesn’t feed them…
You sound like a gem… and really, my husband is too. He is great and he does a good job..I just have to help him understand that some rules are not negotiable and others are flexable. 
Now I might get to sleep. Have fun w/ the kids. My husband had the kids for 2 weeks while I was overseas this summer. They had a ball, everyone survived….. all’s well that ends well. I can’t wait to read your posts!!
Comment by bek — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 5:30 pm
Karli - I would NEVER have thought of the water bottle solution. Brilliant.
Comment by Redheadmomma — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 5:56 pm
DavidR, thanks for sticking up for me. I assure you all that it wasn’t as bad as it sounds…
Comment by Ammon — August 24, 2006 @ August 24, 2006 at 9:00 pm
Hilarious. I love it. (btw, kinda bummed you’re back from vacation - those pics were great)
Comment by Julie — August 25, 2006 @ August 25, 2006 at 4:21 am
The Irony is killing me.
- When dad is away on business travels, Z always sleeps with her mom.
- Consequence (bek you can laugh) Z decides she will sleep with me last night since mom is gone
- Z stopped wearing overnight diapers 3 weeks ago everything was fine until 2 nights ago she peed in her bed.
- Moron didn’t buy diapers thinking all will be fine
- Moron wakes up drenched at 3am …drenched like Ammon but not in water.
- We ended up sleeping in her bed without any drapes since they were in the washer from the night before (NO I DIDN’T PUT THEM IN THE DRYER.. I WOULD HAVE NEEDED TO WALK DOWNSTAIRS AND THAT IS WAYYYYY TOOOO HARDDDD)
I seriously think I am getting the ying/yang because Ammon let his kid in bed with wet pants
Damn you Ammon
The weekend should be beautiful, serependity now.
David over and out
Comment by DavidR — August 25, 2006 @ August 25, 2006 at 8:04 am
I hate to have to throw my fellow men under the bus but, yes, he should have known better.
Comment by Chris — August 25, 2006 @ August 25, 2006 at 8:37 am
At least she was asleep & in her bed. Although, sometimes I think that dhs intentionally mess up an assignment we give them, just so we don’t ask them to do it again.
Comment by abc momma — August 25, 2006 @ August 25, 2006 at 11:54 am
They simply just don’t get it. Never will. Who, might I ask, washes those sheets she slept on with the pants? Surely not the dad because he would’ve tried to avoid further work by putting clean pajamas on the child - if not, he would have had to wash the sheets the next day. Clearly the dad wasn’t used to worrying about those things. Mothers rule!
Comment by Nina — August 25, 2006 @ August 25, 2006 at 12:43 pm
What is WRONG with men?!?! I love the way you handled it. Wayyy too clever and funny! The other night, I was making some phone calls and gave my husband my daughter’s pajamas and training pants for bed and asked him to please get her pjs on for me. Half hour later, I came back inside, and she was still in her clothes. So I put on her pajamas. His response to me? “I was gonna do that.” Yeah. When? Aarrrrggghhh!
Comment by Kristen — August 25, 2006 @ August 25, 2006 at 12:50 pm
Oh, Karli! I LOVE that you did that. In fact, I laughed out loud–no, cackled would be the better word. Good for you!
Comment by Caryn — August 25, 2006 @ August 25, 2006 at 2:37 pm
you might be crazy (although I don’t think so) but he’s definitely male.
Comment by s@bd — August 26, 2006 @ August 26, 2006 at 7:32 pm
That is hilarious! And totally something I would do. And Greg would never talk to me again. (but I’d still laugh)
Comment by EmLouisa — August 26, 2006 @ August 26, 2006 at 8:42 pm
My “Favorite” is when I tell my husband that something needs to be done for the kids and he gives me a blank stare and asks”WHY?”
To clarify, it’s for things like when we’re heading straight to the beach after church, and I say, we need to stop at a store and get some food to take. “WHY?” UH, because kids get hungry dontcha know and 5 hours at the beach with hungry kids sounds like ehll to me me what do you think?
Or when I come home form grocery shopping or something and find myself asking,”So it didn’t occur to you that since it’s past their bedtime you should have at least gotten them bathed and in PJ”S with their teeth brushed?”
The startled look at me from the computer that he’s been staring at since coming home while they have torn the house apart in my absence tells me pretty much everything.
Comment by carrien — August 27, 2006 @ August 27, 2006 at 9:32 pm
Just spent 4 days by myself and the kids. I did think a bit more in advance..but no more than 3 steps.
I agree we sometime men don’t fully understand all the in/outs of day to day dealing with the kids.
a bit tired…
Comment by DavidR — August 28, 2006 @ August 28, 2006 at 9:52 am
That was hillarious, I think you won this round girl.
Comment by Nicole — August 28, 2006 @ August 28, 2006 at 10:44 am
That is SUCH a guy thing.
Comment by Lisa M — August 28, 2006 @ August 28, 2006 at 4:49 pm
OMG! That was so funny! With hubbies, you have to S-P-E-L-L it out what you want them to do, and I mean S-P-E-L-L it out. Oh, sorry I said that already.
Comment by Waya — August 30, 2006 @ August 30, 2006 at 6:03 pm