The Invisible Parent

Mothers’ Day has got me thinking about fathers’. Strange, yes but it does. Josh often comments that I am the Queen of left-field comments and will often get me to recount the connections that happened in my brain before the words came out of my mouth, just because it’s a roller-coaster ride.

When I said I was thinking about writing about Dads’ for my next post he said (rather indignantly) ‘you should – it’s like you’re running a one man show’. Point taken. Or point not taken and get your own blog. Either way. But it got me to thinking that it isn’t just my husband who is the invisible parent on my blog. The most involved, engaged and active father can be somewhat invisible to the world. Little ones often have an unshakable preference for mama and are likely to spend the majority of their time with the stay at home parent (often their mama).

Now it’s not as though Josh is completely absent around these parts. I wrote about his tattoo here, our story here, how he antagonised me when I had the plague here, and all about him as an attachment parent here. And even though he’s fine with me blogging about him, I do tend to err on the side of respecting his privacy. Not mine of course. I have no respect for my privacy.

And I will freely admit that I frequently and loudly complaing about his:

1) Snoring. It’s so loud! Beating him with soft objects is unsatisfying.

2) Tendency to whinge when Riley is whinging in our bed and not going back to sleep. Listening to two people whinge is heaps better than listening to one.

3) Inability to look for something in a useful way. Staring at the same spot will not make the missing item appear.

4) Unhealthy attachment to the Xbox. Actually I don’t mind that one – it makes me feel better about my unhealthy attachment to my computer.

But really, all of those things are just things that people say to make sure that they don’t invite disaster and have a piano fall on them when they’re least expecting it.

Right about now, Josh is probably wondering why he ever brought up the whole thing in the first place.

But here are some of the awesome things that Josh does that make him a kick-ass parenting partner:

1 ) He tidies up the house and does the dishes every day after his 90 minute commute from work.

2 ) He wrote me a message on the shower wall to cheer me up

3 ) On Friday he left Riley and I a plate of delicious brownies to devour at will

4 ) When I ask him for a massage at night he never says no even when he’d really rather not

5 ) He spends on average about 15 hours a week in the car, commuting to and from work, so that we can afford a house and a mortgage

6 ) He discovered that puzzle games on the iPhone will give us an extra hour of sleep in the morning. Genius.

7 ) He reads lots of stories, does lots of puzzles and changes DVDs every 10 seconds because Riley finds changing them over far more entertaining than watching them.

8 ) He makes killer scrambled eggs. Riley will flatly refuse any eggs that I make.

Tip of the iceberg really. But you get the idea.

Mothers’ Day is coming up. He asked me ‘so do you want a present for Mothers’ Day?’. There are so many things that are wrong with that, I wouldn’t even know where to begin. But really, it’s the other 364 days of the year that matter more.

Note to Josh: That is not an excuse to blow off Mothers’ Day. Proceed as instructed.

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