I’m ok with puke. I can handle a little snot. Even a bowel movement that doesn’t happen where it’s supposed to doesn’t evoke much gagging on my part. (Please note: I can handle these things when and if they are produced by MY children: Vital information.) These immensely useful skills have come from motherhood. Ah, the things it will teach you.
My son is 13 and my daughter is 3. I’ve had some trials and tribulations controlling the bodily fluids of children. And not just that, but I’ve experienced many tantrums in grocery store aisles, questions you don’t really know how to answer, sleepless nights, finicky eating habits, middle-of-the-night trips to the ER, and sleeping with tiny feet in my face. It wasn’t exactly second-nature in the beginning; it took a little time to get accustomed to these things. But I choose motherhood, and I welcomed every ugly detail.
My fiancé, on the other hand didn’t exactly choose fatherhood. I mean, he did choose to date and subsequently marry me knowing I had children. But I’m sure his list of life goals didn’t include “being married with children (that aren’t mine) at 26”. And yet, he never showed the slightest hesitation in loving my children just as if it was in his life’s desire.
My daughter nicknamed him GeeGee (like Lee, but with a “g”) the first time she met him. He is now referred to by this name at all times, and by all members of my family. Using his given name is equivalent to your mother saying your full name when you have done something that appalls her. I was skeptical that he would really stick around. When he met me, he was 24 with no children: aka: a single mother’s definition of “out-of-my-league”. But by some miracle, he is still with us and will marry me in September.
Now, he is a lot of great things: sweet, loving, a sender-of-flowers; but the single most attractive thing about him is that he loves my kids. I don’t mean that he tolerates them, rolls his eyes and grits his teeth at their silly requests…I mean he genuinely cares about them, despite all the weird experiences they have introduced him to. This is just a short list of the ways that I know his lifestyle has changed since meeting us.
~He has gone to work with his toenails some beautiful shade of pink or purple safely hidden beneath steel-toe boots on at least two occasions. Don’t tell him I told you all that!
~He has been forced to move, during mid-meal from the place he is sitting at the table of a restaurant while everyone stares at the tantrum-throwing child we have with us. Lily likes to decide where everyone sits when she gets cranky.
~He has learned to ask lots and lots of questions about specifics he never knew mattered. “What color cup do you want to drink milk from…the pink cup with the straw or the pink cup with the lid?” “How many marshmallows do you want in your bowl for snack” Because if you get it wrong, man does it cause a mess.
~He was quick to recognize and accept (maybe a bad word choice…more like deal with rather then accept) my children’s complete and total disregard for bathroom privacy. There is no lock on our bathroom door and they fully intend to take advantage of that fact. If they need you, the bathroom is no safe haven. Dressed or not, they will enter and tell you just what they need.
~He has spent countless hours watching Busy Town Mysteries, Barney and Friends, and WWE Smackdown and you would never know he wasn’t actually enjoying himself.
~He is instrumental at averting hormonal teenage rants. And if you have never experienced any of these rants, just know that the fact that GeeGee helps keep them at bay sometimes is vital to my sanity.
~He has stood by patiently while the family he loves grieved the very man he would “step-in” for. He was there for us when no one in the world would have expected that he should be. Always respectful and never judgmental, the manner in which he conducted himself and cared for us will forever astonish me.
~He has been awoken in the night to wet sheets and a crying toddler who struggled with potty-training.
These may seem like small insignificant things that he has done, just all part of parenting a lot of people would say. But for a man who has never before known what it was to give selflessly of his time to two tiny humans who desire his undivided love and attention, I know loving us has not come easy; but he sure made it seem that way. Our GeeGee has taken to our wild and crazy life, one that is exactly opposite to what he was familiar with, like a duck to water. And we are forever grateful that he likes to swim.
True story this week:
When I was younger and dreamed of marrying Randy Travis (no judgment, please) the most terrifying issue facing me was that I didn’t know how to cook pinto beans. Never mind the fact that I have no recollection of ever uttering the words “I’d really like to have a nice pot of pinto beans for supper”...it none-the-less bothered my tiny 8-year-old soul that I wouldn’t be able to fix something that seemed a staple food and thus couldn’t be found in a cookbook, at least none of my Grandma’s anyway. Maybe it was because I knew Randy would like to have beans and cornbread after coming home from a hard day of singing, maybe it was because I knew my daddy thought pinto beans was the finishing touch to any meal served after 9am, or maybe I knew there was always that possibility that I’d fall for a boot-wearing country boy who would like his woman domesticated. Whatever the reason, I was genuinely concerned about cooking pinto beans. And yet, I have eluded this bean dilemma for nearly 30 years. But my husband-to-be is one of those country boys who cooks with lard and eats beans and cornbread…looks like it’s time to learn how to cook pinto beans.
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