Mr. Mom Chronicles 2010

Today started with tears. To understand why started with a conversation last night. You see, the second and fourth Wednesdays of every months are "Men's Breakfast" in our church--a tradition going back a generation or so--where men of the church gather at seven a.m. at a local restaurant to talk about what's going on in the church and various issues of the day. Of course, with Kathy in Michigan, going to Men's Breakfast would mean that Eric and I would need to be up by no later than six a.m. to get us both ready and the dogs and cats taken care of if I was to bring Eric along and I didn't know whether he wanted to do that and miss the bus. So when I posed the question to him last night he gave me a firm "No."

Of course, by now you can guess, when my alarm went off at 6:40 a.m. he heard it, got out of bed, came in and confidently said, "I've changed my mind, I want to go to Men's Breakfast." By then it was 6:45 a.m. and there was no way that we could both get ready, get the dogs and cat taken care of and have gotten there to do anything more than order before they all got up and headed off on their day. I didn't explain all that to Eric and I'm not sure that he would have understood or believed any or all of it, so I simply said, "It's too late, there's not enough time." To which he marched out of my room and into his own and started wimpering and gradually dialed it up so that I could hear every sob and imagine his whole body shaking with disappointment.

I did not, however, change my mind. There was simply not enough time. And besides, it was a relatively harmless way for him to learn that sometimes you have to stick with your decisions. That being said, I did bend a little and told him that after his "Rocket Math" awards ceremony at school today we'd stop somewhere special and get a treat--I'm thinking Daisy's and Volcano Drinks; no doubt he's thinking Target and a toy. Time will tell and hopefully Kathy will weigh in throughout the day via text as to what the treat should be.