Let's hear it for the boy...

Happy Father's Day.
Remember when I had to work on Mother's Day?  Yeah.  Me too.
As sucky as it was for me to have to work on my "special day" - my husband is having an even suckier Father's Day.

It's sucky because today we're driving to Ohio to attend the funeral of his beloved grandmother.

So, on a day where he should be barbequeing, playing golf, or doing basically whatever he wants to do, he's doing something that no one ever really wants to do.



Yesterday morning (a Saturday), I realized I had forgotten to unset my alarm, but was reminded at a blaring 5:00 am.  I shut it off, secretly happy that I didn't have to get up, and snuggled back into my bed.

At 5:01 am - tornado alarms sounded.

We take these things pretty seriously, especially since the tragedy in Joplin, but I have to admit, I was not looking forward to dragging myself, the baby, and our blankets and pillows into the basement.  We tried desperately to be quiet and give the baby a chance to stay asleep - but our cat had other plans and knocked over something big and noisy.  With that.  The baby was up.

At 5:52 am, they called the tornado warning up, at which point my husband looked at my exhausted face and told me to go back to sleep.

But, it's Father's Day weekend, I tried to protest.
Still, he waved me off.

So I went back to sleep.  And I slept until well after 8:00 am.
You guys, the last time I slept until after 8:00 am was before I was pregnant.  I'm sure of it.  I needed that rest and he was happy to give it to me.  Even if it meant he had to stay up with the baby.

This is just a small example of why I have the best husband in the whole world.   Really, the list of his attributes is innumerable (and far too much to post), but here are some of my favorite reasons I am married to and raising a child with the man I love.



The Top Reasons Why My Husband is AWESOME

He is an awesome cook.  This bodes well for us because I am...not an awesome cook.  Well, really, I just don't I have the time or energy to devote to cooking on most days.  In truth, I'm like Wolfgang Freaking Puck, but no one needs to know that.  So trust me when I say - our family would surely go hungry if it wasn't for him.

He is amazingly patient.  This is a plus when you're dealing with children.  It's a HUGE PLUS when you're dealing with me.

He takes the time to learn about our kid.  I cannot tell you the number of things my husband knows about our child that most dads don't even bother with.  He understands our food introduction schedule and can recite it to other people.  He asks questions about things he doesn't understand.  He looks up things on the Internets and in the billions of dog-eared baby info books in our house.

He woke up and came into the baby's room with me for every night feeding for the first month of TIH's life.  YEP.  HE. IS. AMAZING.

He's pretty damn cute.  Or, at least I think so :)

More than once he has said, "So, I was talking to someone about breast feeding today..." AND, the man knows what he's talking about, too!  Is there a men's chapter of La Leche League?  I've got a president for them.  (Kidding.)

He values my career.  Let's face it, as a music therapist, I'm not now, nor will I ever be the breadwinner of the family, but he makes certain that I know that I am a breadwinner for the family - and reminds me all the time about how much we depend on my income for so many things.  Plus, he knows that I'm happier when I can balance out my family life with my work life - and he's glad for it.

He's pretty good at balance himself.  He's awesome at making time for both work and his family.  And even better at making time for our marriage by the way of date nights, lunches out during the week, foot rubs, etc.

He rocks.  Hard.  No, really.  He is the only person in the world that can rock TIH to sleep no matter where they are and what is going wrong - a crowded restaurant, 3 am when mommy can't take it any more, a noisy family get together - the kid is out in a fraction of the time it takes me to do the same.

He doesn't mind that the kid looks exactly like me.  Well...kind of.   He likes it way more when people say TIH looks like him.

The first time TIH smiled for real, it was at my husband.  That boy knows who his daddy is.

He is an expert baby feeder.  As one of 10 (YES, TEN) children, my husband knows a thing or two about feeding a kid food.  The very first time I fed the baby solids, both of us walked away covered in rice.  The first time the husband did it?  Both of them were clean as clean can be.  And - he didn't even use a bib.
He's a magician.

He makes up songs.  I'll be honest, my classically trained musician self knows that these songs don't really have a tonal center, the lyrics don't rhyme (and frequently have a "scooby dooby doo" thrown in there for no reason), and when they involve counting, they often don't match up with any time signature I'm familiar with.  But you know what?  It doesn't matter.  If they sold it in a CD, I'd still buy it because TIH loves daddy's "Bath Time Song."

He's better than me at playtime.  Generally, I'm lost when my 80th rendition of "Me and Baby McGee" no longer illicits a smile.  But my husband can make TIH laugh uproariously for hours.  Sometimes he just laughs because my husband walks into the room.  I'll hear them playing when I'm upstairs trying to get laundry folded and I'll want to drop everything I'm doing and join them because it sounds so. damn. fun.

He gives great foot rubs. The man should open a spa.  I'd pay him.

He was the best birth coach in the whole history of ever.  When I post my birth story later this month, you'll see why, but seriously - I cannot imagine that experience without my husband.  He was amazing.

You cannot say no to him.  It's like a running joke in our family, but his job is in sales and this is really true.  He is not afraid of the word "no."  Probably because he never hears it.  He gets free stuff all of the time just because he'll half-jokingly/half-seriously ask for free stuff all of the time.  My husband once negotiated our bill at a Mexican restaurant.  No.  Seriously.  And they gave him what he asked.

He's one of my top "followers."  My favorite text message from him of all time was, "Blog post sometime soon?  Please?"  He's always interested in what I've been working on and he takes time after every post to read my blog.  He inspired me to write this post after I ranted to him about that very subject.

He takes control.  I am a control freak.  This will never change.  There are times where I will tell my husband we are not to do something (like call the doctor's office for the eightieth time) and then I'll talk to him an hour later and not only has he spoken to the doctor's office - he has the doctor's personal cell number and the doctor is meeting us after hours to open the hospital clinic to check out TIH. Thank God he takes control sometimes.  It's when he's in charge that things actually get done.

He is a great dad.  I mean, I know that everyone says that and everyone thinks that (okay, not everyone, but you know what I mean) and I know that I have basically already listed a ton of the reasons why he's a great dad, but it really is true.  And what's better is that, I know TIH knows that he has a great daddy.  you can just tell the baby loves him so much.  The smile on TIH's face when we go in to say good morning to my husband is just incredible.

He is an even better husband.  Seriously, this man takes such good care of me.  I know I have tons of problems balancing being a good mom and a good wife.  It's like second nature to him to both nurture our marriage as well as nurture our son.

We love you, The Daddy.



Happy Father's Day, babe.