editor
March 01, 2015
Posted By: Shaunescy
editor’s voice
WRITTEN BY LEIGH RIPLEY
My husband loves to wrestle with the kids. And they love it too.
Me? Not so much. Wrestling usually takes place at bedtime, has resulted in a few trips to the emergency room, starts with excited screaming and always ends in tears.
But – like I said – the kids and their father love it; so it happens. They beg for it, tackling dad into submission, demanding it. I try to ignore it and that works for a few minutes, but then the Fun Sucker (the moniker that my children have so lovingly bestowed upon me) steps in. In my defense, the Fun Sucker doesn’t drop the hammer on wrestling until someone is either crying or hurt, at which point I love to point out the obvious . . . “I knew this was going to happen!”
We read and hear about it everywhere – how important sleep is for kids and how crucial
relaxing, reliable bedtime routines are to ensuring the quality sleep that kids’ bodies require. My kids don’t have any sleep or relaxing routines. In the Ripley house, 7:30 is WWF time. By 8:30, one or all three kids are crying, angry and seriously over-stimulated, making bedtime a long, drawn-out chore. Naturally, this chore is then deservingly delegated to my husband, the one who put them in this state.
On that rare occasion when my kids are not roaming the hallways in an adrenaline-spiked night-of-the-living-dead-like coma, my husband and I like to have a little private time. And, as these things sometimes happen, we were once interrupted by the 3-year-old. After teenage-like scrambling to recover any iota of our dignity, my husband made a warp-speed move across the room toward our child. From my uncomfortable position of horrified embarrassment I heard the following conversation.
Child: “What were you doing to mommy?”
Dad: “We were wrestling.”
Child: “You guys wrestle really hard.”
Pause. Child again: “I thought mommy hated wrestling.”
Father: “She does.”
