Evening arrives. My husband and five year old son are walking hand in hand up the stairs.
“Tell me a story about Gormagon.” my boy asks. There is the barest of pauses.
“Well, when we last talked about Gormagon, he had just won the battle against the Chinese emperor, right?”
“Right.”
And off to bed they go, already lost in the story; my husband, the storyteller, and my five year old. That’s what you get when you marry a chemist with a minor in classics and Greek mythology. His day to day job might keep him grounded in science and fact, rules and regulations – but his parenting is far from down-to-earth, especially at story time.
During most of our waking hours, I am the one making the rules, reining in the craziness and generally trying to make sure they aren’t all acting like a bunch of cute, yet wild monkeys. Today my husband and I were joking that I do a lot for him and I teased him, saying, “Yep, I love being a mother of three!”
We have two children.
In truth, my husband is a great father. He is loving and affectionate with both kids, and you’ve never seen a prouder dad. Big picture? He’s awesome with them. However, when it comes to the details, I beg, plead and nag for consistency. An old expression says the devil is in the details; my devil likes to break the rules and supply the sugar.
But there is one area where my type A personality is happy to let go and my husband hits it out of the park. It’s bedtime. More specifically, story time. Since the birth of our daughter, my husband has been in charge of our son’s bedtime and it can be very entertaining to listen in.
Knights in shining armour, kings, dragons and blue whales are all potential guests once nightfall approaches. Any given night we could have valiant swordplay, ravenous dinosaurs, Spiderman spinning webs or Elmer chasing Bugs out of the vegetable garden.
All day long we (mostly good-naturedly) battle for control and I will push for things to stay grounded when it comes to our kids. But at bedtime, if this is where he takes them, I hope he keeps his head firmly in the clouds.
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