Relax, we’re just laughing at you

Today is my evening off.  Because our little monkey is so stubborn and smart, I have to actually pretend to leave the house so that she will accept that dad is in charge otherwise all I hear all night is her fussing.  Kurt says she’ll stare at the door to the master bedroom as if to say, “mom is in there, just go get her”.  I got my coat on and said goodbye and went out the front door.   Kurt took her to the bay window to wave goodbye and then took her upstairs.  He showed her that the master bedroom was empty, closed the door behind them and then went into the computer room closed that door turned on some music.  He opened the curtains to signal me that I could come back into the house and relax in our itty-bitty master room.  Thank goodness it has a bathroom.  This was the first time we tried this charade and it’s the first time I didn’t sit in the room trying desperately to ignore the crying, lamenting and gnashing of teeth.  Ok so there isn’t usually a lot of gnashing, but you can’t have lamenting without gnashing of teeth, so I’m keeping it together or the whole world may fall apart.  This is what I get to go through for some time away from baby.

I did hear Kurt at one point say to the baby, “Yes, I grit my teeth.  Stop laughing at me.”  I waited until she went to bed to ask him about it.  He was making himself macaroni and cheese with hotdogs (barf with fake meat chunks), and he was trying to separate two hotdogs from the rest of the frozen pack.

I have to go back in time now.  Kurt and I went to a friend’s house so that Kurt could help them level their yard.  They had rented a Kubota front-end loader for the job and Kurtie was operating it.  Our friend’s mom saw Kurt operating the machine and commented, “Wow, he’s having a lot of fun on that.  Look at him, he’s smiling.”  I told her that he was actually clenching his teeth.  “No,” she insisted, “he’s smiling” I didn’t say anything to her but I had lived with the man for years.  I think I know clenching when I see it.  He clenches when he backs the car out of the driveway.  The man doesn’t know the word, relax.  It’s all intense all the time.  And we all tease him about it ALL THE TIME.  We tell him it’s because we love him; really, we’re just a bunch of cruel bastards.  Back to today with Sophia…

Sophia, my darling evil genius, was staring at her daddy as he’s trying to separate the frozen hotdogs and laughing.  He was clenching.  And she’s my girl, she was laughing at him.