The Meanest Daddy

Warning: This is a REALLY long post with not much in it...consider yourself warned, or bored, whatever.

I know it is not good to glorify bad behavior by laughing or saying it is funny on a blog the next day, but sometimes it is really funny, and Garth Le can't read, so he won't know that I blogged about it until he is much older and hopefully out of pull-ups.

A little background: Garth Le potty trained when he was barely 2 with #1, and a few months later with #2, pee-pee and poo-poo for those not versed in potty numerology. He was pretty easy because he hated to be wet. We left him in a pull-up at night because he sleeps really hard and it was usually wet when he woke up the first few months. Then for a long time they were dry, so we didn't have him wear them and then of course after months of dryness, I get to do sheets everyday. Long story even longer, he still wears pull-ups to bed...and he still wakes up with them wet.

Anyways, last night he was soooooo tired and cranky and when he is like that he decides that Mommy is the greatest and Daddy is the devil (which to be honest, I sort of enjoy). Every single thing that I said was gospel and everything that Daddy said last night made Garth Le cry. We had a late night the night before and he was a bear to get up in the morning so we were going to get to bed at a decent time last night. Around 9:30 pm (1.5 hours past bedtime), Garth asks Garth Le to go get a pull up. You would have thought he just shot the dog right in front of us, Garth Le fell to pieces, but with Daddy's prodding he ran upstairs and got a pull-up and pouted for a bit before coming downstairs, standing right in front of us, stone-faced and held the pull-up in the air and then threw it in the corner, turned around and stomped off.

I am reasonable (and I didn't want this to turn into WWIII), so I told Daddy that Garth Le did exactly what he told him to do and nothing more. Then Daddy told him to put it on and he fell apart again, but he did retrieve the pull-up and disappear for a while. When he reemerged, he was REALLY upset. As moms, we can tell the difference between a put-on and the real McCoy. This was FOR REAL. I didn't know if he fell, or sliced a finger off or what. He finally came over to me and I cuddled him so he could calm down and I asked him what in the world would make him so upset, he managed to get out between sobs "Daddy made me do something that was so hard, the hardest thing I've ever had to do". I knew he was talking about having to put his pull-up on, but I like to egg on stories (I got that one from my mom's playbook), so I asked him what Daddy asked him to do, and he matter-of-factly told me that he asked him to put his pull-up on and it was really hard. I of course gave him sympathy and gave Daddy a 'shame on you' look, as any good parent who rewards bad behavior would do.

The rest of the night went similarly, I was the hero, Daddy was the villain. I can't believe how mean he is to our son. There's no telling what tonight might bring, he may even ask him to brush his teeth...the nerve.

This story shows how opposite Garth and I are with parenting than anyone would have pegged us before we had kids. Anyone, including us, would have told you that Garth would be the softy and I would be the strict one, but noooooo, it is the total opposite. BUT I am pretty sure that if we ever have a little girl, Daddy will be wrapped around her finger just as tightly as I am wrapped around Garth Le's.