I have been drowning during the week from all of our activities. By Saturday, our house was a wreck. Thankfully, unlike last weekend, this weekend was almost totally free. After Abe and I went swimming, the only thing on the docket was a baby shower. After I went to that, I came home to find my wonderful, amazing, kind husband deep in the throes of organizing the house.
He literally worked the entire day on the house, doing everything I should have been doing all week. I pitched in, but let’s be honest. Abe did all of the heavy, hard stuff like hauling boxes of things to and from the garage, and he was about twice as productive as I was. As I tell him often, I could search the whole world and all of its ages, backwards and forwards, and never find his equivalent.
At one point, I naively thought Mormon men were just generally better trained in the husband-dad department because they have so many good role models and sit through so many talks and lessons on being a good husband and father. However, one of my LDS Facebook groups has disillusioned me completely of that belief. Reading through the Facebook threads has convinced me that I basically won the lottery in the husband department.
Abe never, ever complains about anything I don’t do around the house, and he operates from the assumption that I have done my best during the day-even if dinner didn’t get made, the house is a wreck, and all three kids are screaming. He is capable of folding five loads of laundry and then turning to me and sincerely thanking me for sacrificing my body to bring another child into the world.
All of our kids adore him because he is so fun and funny…and because part of him is probably still ten years old. Yesterday while we were swimming, one of the kids in the pool took a jump off the diving board. The next thing I knew, Abe had abandoned our laps and was on the diving board doing flips and, er, one flop, into the water.
Anyway, as I sit blogging in my organized, clean, de-cluttered house, I am feeling very grateful. Abe basically slaved all of yesterday while I only intermittently did my part. My part was punctuated by a baby shower, a sudden need to bake bread, and an evening with my mom attending the General Women’s Session broadcast in our church chapel. I keep telling my girls that they will have to search hard–and possibly long–to find someone who can remotely live up to their dad’s incredible example. We are so blessed to have him.