I was away over night at the weekend (more of that later though) and when I came back on Monday evening it meant that the kids hadn’t seen me since bedtime on Saturday as I’d left pretty early Sunday morning to catch a 7am train. When I rang the doorbell at half seven in the evening almost two days after last seeing them, I fully expected the joyous shouts of “Daaaaaaaaadeeeeeeeeeee!” that greeted me and for five minutes it was great. The kids formed an orderly line for kisses and cuddles, and even let me give wifey a hug.
Then…. then things took a turn for the worse.
“Come and look at this!”
“Give me another cuddle”
“Cuddle!”
“I just want to tell you something Daddy!”
Before I knew it I had three small children physically wrestling with each other over who would get to monopolise my attention first. I quietly sidestepped the whole show and snuck into the kitchen to talk to wifey.
Big mistake.
It turns out talking to wifey had a rather negative effect on the three children, especially when I politely told them not to shout over our conversation. The three children, who had previously been having a punch up, as one decided to throw themselves on the floor and, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth, they all proclaimed I loved mummy much more than I loved them, and after a bit more wailing, that I didn’t love them at all and thought they were all idiots.
There can be such a thing as being too popular, it turns out.