Let me start this off by saying that I love my husband. He does a lot of great things for me and our family, and he’s a wonderful hands-on-dad too. However, I have a complaint and I just need to vent about it, so here I go. In the 3 in-a-half years that we have had our daughter, I can probably count on both hands how many times he has given her a bath (and he will protest what I am saying right now). He just doesn’t do baths, it’s rare. It’s kind of just become assumed somehow that giving our daughter a bath is my responsibility. Now I understand this to a certain degree because often when it’s time for her bath, it’s also about the time that our dog Monty wants his walk, so my husband usually does this while I’m giving our daughter a bath. However, there are times when I may not be home and so my husband, unless I specifically instruct him to do so, will still not give her a bath! It seriously drives me crazy.
Now here’s an example of my Husband Complaint; today we took our daughter to a birthday party. The party was held outside and it was a hot summer day. So of course the kids were running around getting sweaty and dirty. Then they played in a toddler pool for awhile and then they ran around getting sweaty again. I had a bridal shower to go to directly from the birthday party, so my husband dropped me off at the bridal shower and then went home with our daughter. From that point on her daddy was in charge.
I had met my mom at the bridal shower, so she dropped me off back at my house around 8pm when it was over. My daughter typically goes to bed between 8:00pm-8:30pm, so I was pretty surprised to walk in and see that she was playing on the floor with some toys, still wearing her dress from the party (that I had asked my husband to change) and she was not in her pajamas yet either. I then noticed her sandbox open in the backyard, which she had been playing in while I was gone, and all I could think to myself was, “Oh geeze, she really needed a bath tonight.” However, it was too late at this point for me to give her a bath, so then I felt more annoyed that she hadn’t at least been washed up and put into her pajamas already. This really frustrated me and so then I thought to myself, “Why couldn’t he have just taken the initiative and given her a bath?” This just felt so typical of him.
My husband doesn’t like it when I give him instructions pertaining to our daughter, that’s when he will make his complaint to me to not treat him like the babysitter, that he’s her father and knows what he’s doing. He doesn’t like me to “tell” him to do anything. However, practically in the same breath, if I ask him, why didn’t he give our daughter a bath he will say, “Well you didn’t say to give her one.” So my question is, “Why do I have to say that she needs one, don’t you just know? After all you’re her father, not the babysitter.”
Overall, when it comes to grooming our daughter: baths, dressing her, hair brushing, my husband is almost never the person to do it. However, once again I can see why, because he doesn’t know how to brush and style a little girl’s hair and for this reason I wouldn’t want him to do it anyways. Yet I don’t understand why if I need to go out for the day, when I return home, our daughter is still often in the same pajamas I left her in from the morning. His excuse for this is usually the following:
A.) He doesn’t know where all of her clothes is.
B.) He says I didn’t leave out an outfit for her (which is usually the only way I can guarantee that she will not still be in her pajamas all day if I’ve been gone).
C.) They were just having a relaxing day at home together.
AHHHHHHH!!!!! Can someone please explain all of this to me? Here are my replies:
A.) Here’s a good starting point. If you don’t know where all of her clothes is then why don’t you explore her dresser drawers and closet, I’m sure you’ll find something there.
B.) If you find out where all of her clothes is, then I don’t have to leave out her outfits for you to guarantee myself that she will get dressed and not stay in her pajamas all day.
and finally, my favorite C.) What’s a relaxing day? (Moms I know you can relate to this one).
So that’s it, that’s my gripe, that’s my Husband Complaint. I guess in the scheme of life there could be much worse things to complain about, but still it really bugged me tonight and so I just had to go there.
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