Today I got what I feel was the biggest validation of my life as a wife and mum.

Let me back it up a bit.

My dear friend who has just moved to Rocky asked if I could help out by looking after her two gorgeous daughters, aged 4ish and 2ish for a few hours today. No problem, I said. I knew that Hubs was around this weekend and would be only happy to help out too. While the youngest slept, Hubs took Chanbe down to our friend’s place for a play, and offered to take Darby, Quinn and my friend’s oldest daughter for the walk, while I stayed with the sleeping 2-year-old. Except he didn’t come home. He sent me a text to tell me that he’d also picked up our other friend’s 3-year-old and they were heading to the park.

Not long after, I received this photo and a text that read: “I don’t see what the big deal is with 4.”

Hubs just goes about parenting without the drama. When I head to the park, I pack water bottles, food, nappy bag and sometimes toys, and I drive there. When Hubs heads to the park, he walks out the gate with the kids in the pram, and sometimes takes a nappy bag. He spent the whole afternoon there, and the kids had a blast, while I had the house to myself and 1 toddler to look after once she woke up from her nap.

I didn’t have to ask Hubs to do it. He didn’t  have  to do it. He just did it because he knew the kids would have fun and I would get a bit of a break.

And it gets better.

When he got home, and the girls had been picked up, and after he had walked down to pick up Chance, I went to give him the biggest hug and thank him for his efforts. And he said something like this:

“I honestly don’t know how you do this every single day, honey. I was walking home and thought if I had to cook dinner when I got home after this, we’d have Maccas every night, and I’d buy new clothes for the kids every day cos there’s no way I’d want to do the washing as well. And you have a grumpy husband who asks you what you’ve been doing all day long when he gets home from work and bugs you for sex at night after you’ve put the kids to bed by yourself because I’m too tired from work. I can’t believe you do this every day.”

I almost cried. And I’m almost crying as I type this. He gets it. Today he got a taste of my life and instead of trying suggest how I could maybe do things better, he empathised and he got it. And as a stay at home mum to three kids, and a devoted wife to a budding orthopaedic surgeon, there was no greater gift he could have given me.

This Man. And he’s pretty easy on the eye to boot 🙂