So I texted my husband this afternoon with the usual: "Hey Hot Boy. See you soon. PS: Can you take over when you get home from work? Deadlines."
"Sure. No Biggie"
"Oh, and can you do dinner & bedtime? xoxoxo?"
"You got it."
My husband is a school teacher, and is always home before dinner, which is so nice! He leaves at the break of dawn however, and so I'm hardly alive to even mention the usual reminders.
But he is so good about coming home and playing with the kids for an hour while I play catch up in the studio. I work at night when the kids go to bed, and I don't do the late-nighter thing very well (although that's what usually happens.)
So.....
Let me preface this by saying that the past few times I asked him to watch the kids and have him make dinner and do bedtime, this is what happened:
He ended up going to the thrift store and purchasing an original 1970's-ish Clip Clop for the back patio. He started small.
And then it was the tree swing, complete with climbing 50 feet into our backyard locust and sawing down branches while the kids waited for their cue to yell, "TIMBER!!"
Then it was the teeter-totter that was built in the empty space in our deck supports made with a palette, a left over fence board, and some cut up branches from said tree swing.
Most of the time, it's working on a new project in the garden. Which is always a huge hit.
And then last week, it was a zip line from our mostly-dead cherry tree at the top of the hill, to a locust beneath.
Remember: this is all in response to "Can you watch the kids, make dinner and put them to bed?"
And today's babysitting activity?
Oh, you know. Just building a platform for them to zip from. No biggie.
Just some power tools that he always seems to have in his back pocket. I mean, don't you?
Some oh-so-coveted-snacks for the Princess to keep her occupied away from said power tools.
And Voila! A safe place for feet with nothing fancy...but left overs in the garage after building the booth for Quilt Market.
And one.....
....two...
...three...
....Oh, ya....
So there you go. All my worrying that having to work on my "art" while the kids are with Dad somedays is all in vain. They got so excited this afternoon...and when they get excited, they get super cuddly.
But you know, who's taking all these pictures? Me. How am I supposed to get any work done when they get to have all the fun? I still don't know.
Pretty soon our backyard will be Disneyland made from scraps around the yard. Just you watch. Man...if I stopped designing in the afternoons, these kids would have a pretty boring back yard.
Actually, no. Instead, the new tree platform would just have curtains, floor pillows, and be painted turquoise. Hmm......