There’s sort of an unspoken rule at our house. If my husband is home, he’s the one giving the kids a bath.
I should say that there are usually at least a few nights a week he’s not here for the dreaded witching hour (hours?), but when he is home, bath time is his thing.
We’ve never actually said this agreement out loud to one another. It always just sort of happens. I think it comes from him seeing that I need a break come bath time, coupled with the fact that he hasn’t gotten to spend quality time with the kids yet.
I think it also plays to our various strengths.
I tend to be no frills when it’s time to get things done (like getting babies bathed). Whereas, he will spend 20 minutes collecting just the right toys to curate a bath time spectacular. So while all of that is going down, I’m usually cleaning the kitchen up from dinner. I’m just better at cleaning the kitchen. No matter how many times I’ve lovingly reminded this man over the last 8 years we’ve lived together, he can never seem to remember that wiping the counters is a 100% necessary part of cleaning the kitchen.
So if you could peek into the windows of our life on an evening where I’m lucky enough to have a second set of hands around here, you would see me loading the last of the dinner dishes into the dishwasher and him yelling to tell the 3 year old for the 100th time to stop getting the floor so wet.
When he’s home and once dinner is over, it’s like watching perfectly placed gears at work. We both know what needs to be done and we just get to work doing it. We basically never go to bed with a dirty kitchen or children, so the tasks are set and we go forth making them happen.
My husband actually asked me recently what were some new blog posts I was working on. I hesitated before answering. If I spoke of this agreement out loud, would that somehow negate it? I told him my idea and he chuckled. I was a little perplexed what that laugh meant. He said “Yeah, you’re right. That’s how it is.” I’m not sure if the thought I had never occurred to him before or if he thought it was funny that it was something I was actually going to write about. But that did get me wondering how other households run in the evenings.
We do what works for us and I do wish he was around to handle bath time 99% of the time. But when he’s here, it’s his domain and that’s how I like it.
