Mr. Mom

You'll all be happy to know that I'm still married. The Nadia crisis has completely blown over, and we've gone back to being a happy household. Actually, we've kind of transgressed that - we've become a happy, well-ordered and efficient household, mostly because of my transformation over that last year.

By 'transformation' I mean going from the guy whose dirty clothes mixed with the "clean" ones on the floor to the guy who picks up stuff off the floor, almost before it falls. It may be a residual effect of the increased productivity I've been having at work - or it could simply be that I finally live in a dwelling that I'm kind of proud of. For what ever reason, I'm finding it hard to so much as let a towel hang over the back of a chair without grabbing it and finding where it needs to be.

One of the dynamics of our marriage used to be my wife's dissatisfaction with a few of my personal habits - one of them was smoking, which isn't an issue anymore. The other big one was my apparent lack of interest in contributing to the management and maintenance of the homestead. I used to think that the problem was that we had different thresholds of "ick" - the point where one of us couldn't take it and had to clean. That was usually her. It wasn't that I refused to clean, she just usually got to it first. As you can imagine, she got tired of that after a while.

Every once in a while, she would try to sit down and have a "serious" talk about dividing up the work in an equitable way. A couple of times she even tried to make a schedule. It never really took. She gave up... kind of. She stopped bugging me about the dishes - but she still left them for me to do. Sometimes two days would go by before I got around to it. Just before Cameron was born, she admitted that she had doubts that I would cut it as a father and as a homeowner. She was afraid of getting stuck with all the work while I sat around, watched movies and played video games.Boy, did she ever have to back peddle on that one.

Like I said, I don't know where it's coming from, but lately... well... I've pretty much been doing all the cleaning. Like all of it. Dishes, baby bottles, floors (sweeping, vacuuming and mopping, counters, mirrors, dusting, bed sheets... Yesterday I organized the pantry (pasta boxes by height)... really....

For the first time in our marriage - she has become the "messy" one. In her defense, she doesn't have the same amount of Cameron-free time that I do. Our daily routine usually involves her coming home and going right to work on dinner. Afterwords, it's bathtime for Cameron and bedtime for everyone. On the weekends, she takes Cameron to the in-laws while I do the bulk of the cleaning (I have a "system")

It seems like every week I've been taking on more and more tasks - to the point where I don't quite remember the last time I just sat and watched TV. (People warned me about that before Cameron was born). This week I even took care of dinner a couple of nights, because my wife said that she wasn't getting enough time with Cameron. (Believe it or not, I actually did okay)

My wife is appropriately impressed with my efforts - maybe even a little flabbergasted. And honestly, I don't blame her - I wouldn't have expected it either. I guess the big question is "Will it last?"

Who knows.