Let me preface all of this with a nod to the fact that this is my beloved husband’s first time parenting a newborn. I understand that. Really. Every first-time parent has a learning curve.

His, unfortunately, seems to be very steep, as he doesn’t generally seem to know what to do or how to do it without explicit instructions from me or Google. And sometimes, he even messes up the instructions from Google.

For example, last night I wanted to go to Sarah D’s house to just chill for a while, sans children. I assumed that I would be home before Tricia needed to be fed her evening cereal, and if I wasn’t, that Bill would know to give it to her since it’s been a routine here for about a week now. But I didn’t explicitly state that. Instead, I told him to give her one of the bottles of expressed milk, if she got hungry. Where this all fell apart was that Tricia managed to get hungry twice while I was gone.

Now while lots of people might have decided to go ahead and follow the baby’s normal routine since there were no explicit instructions given about her being hungry a second time, Bill needs orders from the executive branch of this family’s governing body — there’s no winging it for him. (Which is probably a good thing now that I think about it.)

So I get home and find out that he’s given her another bottle, and I ask him why he didn’t give her cereal as is customary in our house at that time of night. He said, “Well, you told me to give her a bottle.” Touché, I guess. Pardon me for assuming that you could make an independent decision, Oh Man o’ Mine.

At any rate, today rolls around, and I ask him to feed her lunch. Now I’ve explained to him that if the cereal is too runny, he should let me know since it’s harder for her to eat it that way and it makes a bigger mess. I’ve even demonstrated to him the proper consistency of the cereal.

So he starts feeding her, and before he even gets it to her mouth, it’s all over her shirt. Because really, why not batter her in rice cereal to prep her for the deep-fryer tonight? I explain again that the cereal is too runny, hence the mess. I also explain that it’s kind of good if the person feeding her gets the cereal in her mouth.

Now, mind you, I could go into other “Bill is clueless” stories here, but you’re getting the point. This guy doesn’t have any right to feel too superior to other folks. And yet, tonight, he said something that boggled my mind just a little.

Lenna is participating in cheerleading this year. We’re supposed to take part in a fundraiser. (I’ll post more about that when I’m ready to beg y’all to buy stuff.) Attached to the fundraiser information is a tax table. Me, I think this is pretty dang handy since I won’t have to do the math or find a calculator.

Bill, on the other hand, says, “Oh. They’ve attached a tax table for the intellectually challenged.” Excuse me? Now waaaait a minute, bucko. That table isn’t for people who are stupid so much as it is for people who are lazy. Or at least that’s the truth about why I’d use it.

At this point, I say to him, “I might not be able to do that math in my head, but I can feed Tricia without an illustrated, step-by-step instruction manual, so maybe you ought not to get too uppity about people being ‘intellectually challenged,’ huh?”

I swear, the longer I’m married to him, the less I like him. Well, sometimes.