Frustrated Dad

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-09-2009
Frustrated Dad
2943
Wed, 09-09-2009 - 3:28am
I really need some opinions on my situation. I am a 30 year old dad with 3 children. I work 10-12 hrs a day 5 days a week and every other Saturday. I am pretty much a homebody, the only time I really go out is on Sundays during football season to watch the games. I do what i need to in order to support my wife and kids. But I am at wits end with my wife and need some help.
My wifes day is as follows. She wakes up any where from 10am - noon (which means 2 of our children (11 and 7) wake up feed themselves and walk to school) at which point she will got downstairs to the kitchen to light a cigarette and call her sister or best friend. During the 1/2hr to an hour that she is on the phone she will make (for herself)and drink about 3 cups of coffee. At around noon when the baby wakes up (11 months) she'll feed him change his diaper and set him on the floor and mostly ignore him as she calls her mother. Usually around 12:30 she'll head out to do errands leaving me with the baby until 1:30 when she'll get home so I can rush out to work where I'm 20 minutes away from and need to be in by 2.
Heres the thing i have no problem being the sole financial gainer in the house hold but I expect certain things. I guess thats the reason for this post to find out if my expectation are to lofty. I expect her to get up in the morning with the children make them breakfast help them pick out cloths make sure they have their homework and send them off to school( I would even help in the morning but i got sick of waking up in the morning while shes still sleeping when i was the one at work last night). I would like breakfast every once in a while made when i wake up i don't expect it but it would be nice. I would like the baby up before 11am I just don't think he should be sleeping that long. i expect laundry the be cleaned, folded and put away! The laundry in our house gets washed and dried them it usually ends up on the dining room table for half the day then it makes its way over to the living room where its folded and left on the couch for a day or two (is it to much to ask to have it put away). I expect the house clean! Cleaning the kitchen for her consist of of doing the dishes and mopping the floor! Cabinets, frig, counters, stove maybe once a month. Cleaning the dinning room consist of her wiping the table and vacuuming one area of the carpet. Bathroom, living room are cleaned in the same manner and the children's room and bedroom upstairs can go months without cleaning! I expect lunch made before i got to work! No breakfast and lunch not even a packed lunch/diner!I expect a home cooked diner for my children! Not pizza, macaroni or canned spaghetti!!! Is this to much to ask? i expect diner when I get home, real food not something she sends me on yoville or farmtown, which she's on until 2am!! DO I EXPECT TO MUCH? I thought these where to things a stay at home mom did? Are my expectations to old school? I need answers I feel like I'm being taken advantage of and I don't know how much longer I can last.

Pages

Avatar for rollmops2009
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-24-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Thu, 03-11-2010 - 9:24am
Bwa, I live with two of your clones. Drives.Me.Up.A.Wall.

~o~ ...^^^... ~o~

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

Oscar Wilde

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-01-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Thu, 03-11-2010 - 9:27am
you know I totally get that -- but sometimes it's my own little "hah! look at that dad!
Avatar for rollmops2009
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-24-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Thu, 03-11-2010 - 9:27am
I did the same with showers at one point. Dd got to be 9-10 years old, and I was completely sick and tired of the crying and complaining and hours of circus every time she had to be washed. So I quit. I figured that soon enough, nature would take its course, and it did. Now she washes frequently of her own free will and she doesn't even cry :).

~o~ ...^^^... ~o~

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

Oscar Wilde

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2000
In reply to: daddy_gil
Thu, 03-11-2010 - 9:29am

The solution for me is having a hamper in the hall closet - it is one of those divided hampers so that the clothes are sorted as they are put into the hamper, making it MUCH easier for me to get laundry done. The kids are generally pretty good about sorting their clothes and getting their clothes into the hamper, with the exception of my oldest dd. She eventually gets them there. I've gotten to the point where I let it go during the school week, but by Friday, she has to get all her dirty clothes into the hamper b/f she can play. And with her, it's not that she never puts her clothes in the hamper during the week, she does. It's just some that end up in piles or shoved under places.

Having hampers in each room is too much work for me. I like to do full loads. It's much easier with a divided hamper to see that I have a full load of dirty whites, than if I had to go around emptying each hamper and sorting each hamper individually.

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-09-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Thu, 03-11-2010 - 9:30am

I admit, laundry is one of those things that I *control*, and my kids do not do themselves.

********
Ducky

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-09-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Thu, 03-11-2010 - 9:32am
You know what's really funny?

********
Ducky

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2000
In reply to: daddy_gil
Thu, 03-11-2010 - 9:32am
Is there room for me to join you?
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-09-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Thu, 03-11-2010 - 9:40am

I had the most trouble when we had an actual laundry room.

********
Ducky

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2000
In reply to: daddy_gil
Thu, 03-11-2010 - 9:43am

My oldest is a pack rat. The stuff that she brings home and then wants to keep drive me nuts! I'm constantly saying, "Why do you need or want that? It's just more junk!" Of course, she doesn't see it as junk so that's probably not the right thing to say, but really! Slowly, slowly, she's starting to agree with me about certain things.

I must say, though, that it did come in handy recently that she still had her diorama from a 3rd grade project on the top of her bookshelf. For the project, it had to do with the biblical verse Matt 16:18 and they need some larger rocks and were supposed to illustrate the scene b/w Jesus and Peter. She is now in fifth grade so the diorama is two years old. Ds1 is now in third grade and had the very same assignment. He started doing his decorating his shoe box, but had not collected the rocks yet when we had two back to back record breaking snowfalls - the rocks he'd intended on collecting from the swale on the corner were covered by 8 foot snowpiles from the snowplows. We solved that probably by using the rocks from dd's 2 y/o project! Of course, the blessing in disguise was that it forced her to finally throw out her old diorama b/c the rocks had been glued down so they ripped up the diorama when ds removed them!

I admit that at least once a month or so, I go through my kids' bedrooms and toss all the crap/junky toys and other what not that they accumulate from parties, gift bags, etc. They never notice.

Avatar for rollmops2009
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-24-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Thu, 03-11-2010 - 9:48am
Pft! I moved TWICE with several bundles of old NY Times tied with string. Dh would go into hysterical spasms if I so much as whispered about putting them in the trash. I sure do love the interwebz, they have saved me from living among piles of old newspapers.

~o~ ...^^^... ~o~

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

Oscar Wilde

Pages