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Jun 2008 Issue
by Dave Ellis
My wife recently went to a conference out of town which left me alone with the five kids, for five whole days. That’s like a kid a day, if my math is right. But I wasn’t scared, this isn’t the first time an Ellis man has been left in charge.
We Ellis men are normally pretty self reliant, as long as our wives make us so. But whenever my mom went out of town my dad went a little nuts, although we kids benefited from it. By the second day Dad would go on a spending spree: a new video game system, a ping pong table, toys; anything to take his mind off her being gone. Mom was Dad’s good conscience or Jiminy Cricket if you will. She kept his inner boy in check. Two days with her gone and he was already a donkey on Pleasure Island.
I’d like to think I fared better. Here’s my journal of events:
Day 1
Drop the wife off at the airport. On the way back home my four-year-old asks when we are picking up mom again. I can see the kids’ confidence level dropping already, so I offer them lollipops as a distraction. It works. Later the baby is walking around the house yelling “Mom!” in a Marco Polo-esque manner. I try to explain that mom is gone for a few days and she soils herself (alright, she had already soiled herself, I just didn’t know until she got up close.). I fix that and spend the next few hours doing housework.
The big kids get home from school and I’m too tired to make dinner, so we go out.
Afterwards we go shopping for some night time suppression (bottle and binky) for the baby. After spending an hour in the store vetoing every toy and clothing item brought to me, we finally get home. I can’t find the above mentioned suppression items; we somehow left the bag at the store. It’s getting late and I can’t go back. So I call the store and let the baby cry into the phone for a half hour. I think they understand my dilemma and it makes me feel better. So the first night I’m up holding a crying baby that misses her mom. She finally falls asleep after I promise to get her a cell phone. It works every time.
Day 2
The baby is very needy. I wonder if my wife knows this? She spilled three different liquids on the floor this morning, the worst coming from a potty training chair (enough said) that her older sister uses but doesn’t tell me when she uses it so I can empty it. It is now in the trash. I get all of the big kids off to school and sit down for a quiet moment. The baby comes over for a hug. As I’m hugging her I feel a large marshmallow stuck to the back of her head. I don’t even remember the last time we bought marshmallows. I need to find her secret stash. I call the wife to see how she’s doing. She says she is getting the best sleep of her life. I congratulate her and bind her to a verbal agreement that she will come back after the conference. I later fax over a written contract. Back at home, the evening goes well, with only one hour of baby screaming before bed.
Day 3, 4, and 5…
…pretty are pretty much wash, rinse, repeat.
So what did I learn? I learned that a lot of work goes into running the family. I learned to appreciate her more as homemaker, mother and wife. I also learned to never ask again “What happened here?” regarding the state of the house. I know now, I lived it.
