People are Trying to Scare Me.

Heather went out of town last weekend for a girls' trip, so I had the weekend to myself with the kids. In the interest of full disclosure, I wasn’t just being nice: there is a quid pro quo involved. My “quo” will be seeing U2 open their North American tour at Soldier Field in Chicago, together with whatever else one does during a weekend in Chicago. I think my quo is significantly better than her quid, but I love U2 and really don’t care for people I don’t know touching me.

Anyway, as I discussed weekend plans with my friends and office mates last week, a theme began to come together: people feared for my safety or sanity and the safety or sanity of my kids. Either people think I am dumber than I really am, or people think that our kids are harder to handle than they really are. Hopefully, it is the latter, but who knows; my experience with kids is limited to ours. It's all I know. The comments ranged from a polite but concerned “You are going to take them out by yourself as well, huh?” to the blunt “That will never work – you are going to have to call in help.”

I had taken care of the kids during the day by myself and I had taken care of the kids at night by myself; I just hadn’t strung those days and nights together. I was really wondering if there was some awful magic number of hours where the kids’ arms and legs fall off and everything just goes to hell. If there is a magic number, it is somewhere over 48. I tested 48 and 48 is cool. Everything went fine, except the sporadic damaging straight line winds and power outages unrelated to me being alone with the kids.

We took a couple trips and I got some pictures at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens when it wasn't raining:

When I got back to the office on Monday, people asked me how it went. I said fine. Then I got more: “Just wait until they are older.” Seriously? I just did it – at least for a weekend. How bad can it possibly get? I know that if I leave the country for two years, that I would have a hard time handling my children at the age of three. But I will be there almost every day as they turn into little people who are capable of killing me. I think I can learn defensive measures as quickly as they learn ways to hurt themselves and me.

I still can't help but wonder if all of these people who have experience with kids know something that I don't, and there is really something terrible looming on the horizon. Even if there is, defending a semi-violent attack by three toddlers sounds pretty fun. Put me down for 72 hours, please.