When the cat's away....

My husband is a great father. He is so fun to be around. He loves our kids. Loves to play with our kids. The kids adore him. And so do I.

We definitely have different approaches to life with our kids. I tend to be the one who is overprotective, trying to "think ahead" and prevent all injuries, conservative in behavior, boring, and just plain no fun. Steve however, likes to live life to the fullest and allow the kids to experience things spontaneously. If some issue is to come along in the process, then he just deals with it at that moment. This earns him the title of the "Fun parent".

Recently I went to Swaziland on a 10 day missions trip with a group from my church. I asked Steve if he would miss me, and he jokingly said, "No, I will finally have some freedom!!" This was evidenced by my first Skype call with him from Africa. He proceeded to tell me how he and Josiah set up the soccer goal that J had received for Christmas outside. It had started to rain soon thereafter, so "Since you weren't home....", he says, they moved the furniture aside upstairs, brought the goal in and then played soccer in the house.

He had no idea how this move would impact his future or the well-being of our two-year old daughter.

You see, Saturday night of that week he decided to give the kids their baths instead of waiting to do it on Sunday morning. He put a little bit of water in the bathtub, inserted Zoe with a few toys and then went about doing some tasks around the house. Not long afterwards, she started hollering for him. He goes to check on her and she asks him to fill her Dora castle with more bubble bath so she can make bubbles. At this same time, Josiah comes in asking Steve to play soccer with him. They debate about how long their game would last, finally settling on a 5 minute limit. They head upstairs to play. About 2 minutes into their game, Zoe starts yelling for Steve again. He calls downstairs telling her that he would be there in just a minute. They continue playing and she continues to call to him. At the 4 minute mark, Josiah kicks the ball and it goes down the stairs. Steve sees this as an opportunity to head down and check on Zoe. As he is going down the hallway to the bathroom, her cries are getting louder and louder. Once in the bathroom, he sees tears just streaming down her cheeks. Her arms are extended and she was holding her hands outwards. She yells out, "Daddy, it's the poop!!!" Sure enough, there was one in each hand. He grabs it out of her hands and throws it in the toilet. Washes his hands, gets her out of the tub, washes her hands and tries to get her cleaned up, while Josiah comes crying in the bathroom because daddy had left him with one minute to go in their soccer game.

He did finally manage to get them both into another tub and give them baths. The old tub got cleaned. Now if we can just convince her that she isn't going to poop in the tub every time she takes a bath...