Parental Failure

Smug- Having excessive
pride in oneself

When my wife is mad at me she plans a girls trip out of town and leaves me alone with the two hellions we're raising.  Apparently I've done something recently (or maybe it was this one?) that merited such an event. 

These "special" weekends with my boys are a complete lose-lose scenario for me...either I act like it was a breeze and I start getting weekly opportunities, or I act like it was horrible and my wife sits there with a smug look of superior parenting and eventually notes that she, "handles it all the time."

The questions is, "What happened to my cake plate?"  I shouldn't have to deal with such a brow beating after what I've endured for the last 48 hours.

"It was only 23 hours..."  We slept, so it was two days.  What, are we counting the hours now?  I didn't have time to worry about the cake plate with all the snow on the bathroom wall.

"It was 76 degrees all weekend. How did they get snow on the bathroom wall?"  (Honestly, I had the same question when the bigger one reported back to me with that story.  I had closed every door in the house, barricaded the stairs and given explicit instructions to not open any doors or scale any barricades.  I was just trying to squeeze a little work in when I heard something very scary... silence.  I immediately summoned Big and sent him on a mission to discover his brother's activities.  My follow-up on his information revealed an inch of water on the bathroom floor... that was growing steadily... from an overflowing toilet that was stopped up by what remained of a recently stocked toilet paper roll... the rest of which was sticking in multiple clumps on the bathroom wall... admittedly, providing quite a strong resemblance to snow.)  It was toilet paper... you're always encouraging them to be artistic.  (maybe I can convince her this was her fault.)

"Why would he do that?"  (This question is rhetorical.  My wife is aware that our two year old would have put up a vigorous defense upon confrontation.  No doubt, proclaiming his innocence, producing alibis and purporting conspiracy theories...in absolute gibberish.  The fact that he hasn't mastered the english language does not keep Little from talking, but it has proven a great obstacle for him to be understood.)  They are crazy, you have no idea.

"Handle it all the time." (smug look as she exits stage left)

My debriefing has accomplished my interrogators purpose of establishing her parental dominance and is mercifully over.  I'm thankful for the reprieve because I really wasn't looking forward to getting to the part where I walked out of the bathroom with hundreds of drenched towels, past my destroyed stairs barricade, and into the future cake plate crime scene.  At the time of my arrival, Little was standing on the kitchen counter and pouring a box of cereal directly into his mouth with incredible inaccuracy.  Big had turned against me as well, swinging from the refrigerator door in an attempt to score some milk to add to the mix.  I quickly apprehended the refrigerator raider and agilely detained the low percentage cereal shooter... freed up my hands by tossing the handful of towels onto the counter in the process... which knocked into the cake plate...