Last week, my wife was feeling a bit under the weather. In an effort to give her some rest, I volunteered to take our 4 kids (7yrs, 5yrs, 18mo old twins) out of the house and go get dinner with them. We went to a local pizza place for dinner. The waitress snapped this photo of us…
After snapping the photo, the waitress said, “Are these all yours?” I was a little stunned by the question. I hesitated. Then I gave a little chuckle, and simply replied, “Yes they are.”
After dinner, we went to a neighboring fast food establishment that had an indoor play area for kids that was built by soft play installation specialists so that we could burn off some energy on the play equipment. All 4 kids were running around and having a great time. A couple of moms strolled in, each with one kid under their wing. Their kids darted off in search of fun. Meanwhile, the two moms clucked and cackled with each other, with an occasional shout to their kids. After a few minutes, they started counting heads in the play area and realized that I was the only other parent nearby and their was a whopping total of 4 other kids in the play area aside from their own. The turned to me and said, “Are all of these yours?”
“Why, yes they are!” I said proudly, and without hesitation this time. They rolled their eyes and looked at each other and said something about how exhausted they are by one kid and how unimaginable it would be to have 4. I decided I’d have a little fun with them, so I let them in on the secret that mom was back at home resting because she was feeling sick on account of being pregnant with our next one(s). Their eyes nearly bugged out of their heads.
“You have more on the way?!? You must really love kids!” they said.
“Yes, we do. We do love kids,” I said with a big smile and truck load of confidence in my voice. They told me that was cool, and then I turned to my kids to tell them it was time to get home to momma. They followed me out of the play area in single file, the older kids assisting the toddler twins. I felt like a proud papa duck with his line of ducklings in tow.
On the drive home, I was pondering why I got the same question from two different people. Are they all mine? Of course they’re all mine! The question seemed weird to me. Then I realized that I probably seemed weird to them. I suppose it’s not every day that you see a man head out in public with 4 small children and no other parental support. At least, this isn’t normal in 21st century America.
I had a great time with my kids that night. They commented to me several times how our time out was “special.” They viewed it as a treat. The looks on the faces of the other restaurant patrons and wait staff told me that they were expecting me to be miserable and possibly even make everyone else around us miserable as well. But that didn’t happen. We had a great time, and we were greeted by smiles and waves as we left.
Yes, we love children, because we believe children are a blessing. My children blessed me and everyone else we were around that night. And we got to bless mamma with some rest.