Breaking Unknown Rules

I never should have done it.

You don't want to see the picture of the explosion, I promise

I fell victim to one of the oldest tricks in the book - putting milk in “the princess cup.”

It started off like any other normal morning, except that my wife was going out for the day and I was playing stay-at-home daddy. Breakfast began innocently enough, fixing toast and giving my two-year-old something to drink. Like any good parent, I wanted to give her a glass of milk to start the day. But she wanted to drink from her princess cup, a new non sippy cup that she loved because it makes her feel like a big girl. No problem, I thought, I’ll just put the milk in the princess cup. Innocently (and now, in hindsight, I know quite foolishly), I put the princess cup full of milk on her tray. Within seconds, my kitchen was a war zone, and my precious redhead had become the Enola Gay.

Whoever coined the phrase, “there’s no use crying over spilt milk,” had obviously never been in a situation like this one. I turned to my wife, who by this time had come down the stairs to see what all the ruckus was about, and asked, “is it a cardinal sin to put milk in the princess cup??” She looked at me and gave me “the smile.” You know that smile, dads. It’s the one that sitcom wives give to their husbands when they’ve done something everyone watching at home knows they shouldn’t have done, but they did it anyway. It’s that smile that says, “oh, you silly husband. Why did you ever do that?” It’s encouraging and humbling all at the same time.

So we brought out the Swiffer, and after a quick tutorial to yours truly, the kitchen had returned to its pre-catastrophic state.

This really comes down to routine, and this is where I think dads are apt to make some of our biggest missteps. For those of us who do the normal 9-5, we step back into our families, not having a clue what has changed and what has stayed the same. My wife, God bless her, sees these routines change daily and doesn’t think much of it. But it’s almost like we need a presidential-style briefing early Saturday morning: developments on speech, new rules that have been set down, allowances that have come about since last weekend. 

Short of a board-room sit-down, however, it’s tough to know everything that needs to happen. And it’s rather unrealistic to have my wife go back through every day and recollect it all. So I think the best we as dads can do is pay attention as best as we can while we’re home. That still won’t catch everything, so when those blow-ups happen (not “if,” but “when”), you just get out the Swiffer and move on. As frustrating as it might be to feel out of the loop, we need to keep engaging, adapt, and keep going. 

Just please, whatever you do, keep the milk out of the princess cup.

Do your kids have their own versions of a princess cup?

What routines have you unknowingly "violated?"