Dirty Laundry

As some of you may know--I'm pretty sure I've blogged about it before--my parents traumatized me at a young age with laundry. Suffice it to say, I don't do laundry. I just don't. In New York, I dropped it off to be done at the Laundromat. In Seattle, I simply bought new underwear. In Boston, I leave Adam to do it. Oh sure, he complains every now and then, and I tell him, if he actually left it long enough I would get around to doing it. But he doesn't seem to want to wait and see just how long "enough" is.

So my kids are fully aware that laundry is a "daddy job." Mommies don't do laundry. It's just how life works. Pie, for Hanukkah, got the book Knufflebunny. It was a favorite at her day care and we'd checked it out many times from the library, so she was very excited to own a copy. Doodles got Knufflebunny Too. Our house is full of "Aggle Flaggle Klabbles" and "Snurps" these days (and often at very random times0. But I pointed something out in the book tonight as I was reading it to the kids:

Me: Hey, who does laundry in this book?
Doodles: The daddy.
Me: Who does laundry in our house?
Doodles: Daddy.
Me: How come?
Doodles: Because laundry is a daddy job.
Me: That's right. So you better learn how to do laundry so when you grow up, you can do laundry for your family when you're a daddy.
Pie: I want to do laundry!
Me: I'm sorry, sweetie. Mommies don't do laundry.
Pie: But I want to do laundry, too!
Me: Oh, okay. You can do laundry, too.
Doodles: No!
Me: You don't want to do laundry?
Doodles: I don't want to be a daddy! But I do want to do laundry!

Even if Doodles doesn't become a daddy, some day, some lucky person in Doodles's life owes me a great big thanks.