Four Days of Reality Training
Day one started early.
I showed up with the kind of cheerful energy that makes guilty people uncomfortable.
The twins were already awake and loud.
Lydia stumbled downstairs, angry and exhausted before breakfast.
Toast burned.
Juice spilled.
One twin screamed because his banana was “broken.”
As in: cut in half.
Day two got uglier.
A diaper situation happened that humbled her immediately.
Lydia gagged at the sink.
One twin bit her finger.
The other smeared yogurt in her hair like it was styling gel.
She muttered, “This is insane.”
I kept it simple: “Welcome to parenting. The full version.”
Day three, she tried to vacuum while holding a tantruming toddler.
She looked like someone trying to do two jobs at once — because that’s exactly what it was.
At one point she sat on the floor and stared at the wall while one twin pulled her hair and the other tried to eat a crayon.
That moment wasn’t funny.
It was the first time I saw her understand what she’d been dumping on Olivia.
By day four, Lydia wasn’t angry anymore.
She was in survival mode.
Stained hoodie. Hair shoved into a limp bun. Oatmeal on her shoulder.
Scott walked in that evening to a calm house and a quiet Olivia reading.
Lydia was stirring soup like someone who had been forcibly reintroduced to responsibility.
Scott looked confused.
He asked, “What happened here?”
I answered him plainly.
“Your wife learned what domestic life looks like when you don’t outsource it to a child.”
And Lydia didn’t contradict me.
Because she couldn’t.
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