![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Exhausted I Am
Aug. 12th, 2012 09:52 pmWe had our grandchildren for the weekend. A boy, five, and a girl, two and a half. I drove sixty miles to pick them up Friday afternoon (including through stop and go bumper-to-bumper traffic for a several miles due to an accident), then sixty miles back home. We had them Friday evening, all day Saturday, and Sunday morning, before we did another sixty mile (one way) round trip to return them to their mother.
I love them, and I like playing with them. We took them to the pool Friday night and again on Saturday. We took them to their grandmother's brother's birthday party for a while, and we went to Build-A-Bear to get them some stuffed toys.*
But Dear God! We (me, my lovely wife, and Twoson) are exhausted from dealing with them. We all took turns taking care of them, so we all got some time off, but even so....
I've never wanted children. As a child myself, I always sort of assumed I'd get married someday, and presumably have children. That's what grown-ups DID. At least in god-fearing Baptist country. But when I was older, I realized that I didn't want children. I didn't have the patience for it. I still figured to get married eventually**, but having kids? Not for me, thanks. My wife gigs me occasionally about my lack of self-knowledge in many areas (with good reason, I confess)--but this was one area where I knew my mind.
When I did finally get married at the ripe old age of 40, my wife already had two kids, eight and twelve. And we raised them. Not without arguments and tears (for someone who had never raised kids, and never wanted to, I had some firm ideas on the subject that made for a lot of friction before I learned better). But I missed the screaming infant, terrible twos, rambunctious toddler stages...and I didn't miss them a bit.
I've gotten a taste of that with the grandkids on the occasions when they visited (or we visited them), and this weekend. It's exhausting. I don't know how parents do it day in and day out, and I hope I never have to learn.
*In theory they were going to leave them here, so they'd have toys already in place when they come to visit again in the future. In practice, they took them home.
**Or so I thought for many years. In my thirties, especially my mid-to-late thirties, I began to wonder if I was going to wind up the weird old lifelong bachelor uncle to my many nieces and nephews. I'd had some long-term relationships, but I'd never married, and if I'm totally honest, never intended to marry. I knew none of those women was one I wanted to stay with forever. I didn't find anyone like that until I met my lovely and talented wife. She's the one I COULD see staying with forever, and the one I intend to stay with forever. And so it was that I married a little over a month after my 40th birthday.
I love them, and I like playing with them. We took them to the pool Friday night and again on Saturday. We took them to their grandmother's brother's birthday party for a while, and we went to Build-A-Bear to get them some stuffed toys.*
But Dear God! We (me, my lovely wife, and Twoson) are exhausted from dealing with them. We all took turns taking care of them, so we all got some time off, but even so....
I've never wanted children. As a child myself, I always sort of assumed I'd get married someday, and presumably have children. That's what grown-ups DID. At least in god-fearing Baptist country. But when I was older, I realized that I didn't want children. I didn't have the patience for it. I still figured to get married eventually**, but having kids? Not for me, thanks. My wife gigs me occasionally about my lack of self-knowledge in many areas (with good reason, I confess)--but this was one area where I knew my mind.
When I did finally get married at the ripe old age of 40, my wife already had two kids, eight and twelve. And we raised them. Not without arguments and tears (for someone who had never raised kids, and never wanted to, I had some firm ideas on the subject that made for a lot of friction before I learned better). But I missed the screaming infant, terrible twos, rambunctious toddler stages...and I didn't miss them a bit.
I've gotten a taste of that with the grandkids on the occasions when they visited (or we visited them), and this weekend. It's exhausting. I don't know how parents do it day in and day out, and I hope I never have to learn.
*In theory they were going to leave them here, so they'd have toys already in place when they come to visit again in the future. In practice, they took them home.
**Or so I thought for many years. In my thirties, especially my mid-to-late thirties, I began to wonder if I was going to wind up the weird old lifelong bachelor uncle to my many nieces and nephews. I'd had some long-term relationships, but I'd never married, and if I'm totally honest, never intended to marry. I knew none of those women was one I wanted to stay with forever. I didn't find anyone like that until I met my lovely and talented wife. She's the one I COULD see staying with forever, and the one I intend to stay with forever. And so it was that I married a little over a month after my 40th birthday.