Dad S vs Mom Me

This is not a delayed Father's Day post or anything like that :) I thought of this post after coming back home from our Kumaon break, when we had those episodes of the kids throwing up one after the other while driving through mountain roads. Ads has just finished his session (!) and I knew Y would be up next, so I elected to sit in the front seat with her on my lap. I generally never allow the kids on the front seat but it makes a big difference when you are nauseous if you are up front. 

In this case, Y did not seem to feel any better. I kept asking her "How do you feel - are you going to throw up?" and she would always reply in the negative. S was right at the back and he kept telling me "Don't go by what she says - stop the car and get her down." Of course, I did not listen :) 

And obviously, the next minute, she had coughed and thrown up all over me :(

I was cleaning up and S came around and said "I told you so. She's not Ads. You need to focus on the non-verbal clues."

So I did not really appreciate being fed a parenting lesson when I was covered in puke. However, the episode did underline my husband's vastly superior parenting skills, relative to my own. I used to feel a little insecure about it when Ads was first born. Why, both S and I had begun from the same start line, yet from Day 1 he instinctively knew how to carry and soothe Ads, how to change his diaper without making a mess, how to take sprays of bodily fluids with equanimity, how to know when he was falling sick, when he was hungry and when I needed a hard kick up my butt to wake up and breastfeed him :)

Even today, based on their moods and behaviour, he can tell when the kids are about to fall sick. He can predict a hunger tantrum a clear 15 minutes before I do. He knows what they mean even when they aren't saying it. Not that I can't do any of these things, it's just that he does it so much better and faster and accurately than I do. As my mother put it so many years ago - His father's instinct is so much better than your mother's instinct!

I have girlfriends who call S their best friend, because they know they can drop their kids off with S and he'll happily handle 4 kids for several hours while we girls go shopping :) When we go out to a birthday party, S is far more likely to hang out with the kids and play their games instead of chatting with the other adults. I have to tell people - "You see, he enjoys the company of children more than the company of adults." He's happy to spend a whole day hanging out with Ads and Y and then some more. I simply can't take a whole 2 days of my children's company, undiluted :) He'll read to them, play hockey with them, take them swimming and talk untiringly about wild animals. Yesterday I was calling Y for her bath and he said he'll do it. I said no, it's ok, I have time. He retorted "You don't MIND giving them a bath. But I LOVE doing it. So let me do it."

When I'm feeling crabby, I tend to tell him that he only loves doing all this stuff because he doesn't have to, every single day. He has the luxury of doing the bath routine and all the other routines on the weekends only (he arrives too late to do it on weekdays). But even I know that I'm being unfair as I say this. Often as I am giving the kids a bath and they giggle and whisper and throw soap suds at me, I wistfully wish that S were there to witness the cuteness.

Several years ago, I thought I was getting an awesome husband. I didn't realize that I was getting an awesome Dad as well!