Some women would look at the pictures of Ben Affleck carrying daughter Violet and say they felt a little twinge in the ovaries. His eldest daughter with wife Jennifer Garner is that cute with her little glasses and flowery dress. But I look at the photos of the Affleck/Garner family hitting a farmers' market, and the ache goes right to my back.
Violet is 5 years old and still apparently being carted around by dad. As the mother of a 6-year-old who sometimes pulls the pampered princess routine, man, do I feel for him.
There has to be some kind of irony that we spend the first year of our kids' lives practically salivating over the day they will finally walk. We can't get over how heavy their little chunkbutts are getting. Of course it's followed by some rambunctious toddler years when "I do it myself, Mommy" means they get into all kinds of trouble. What you wouldn't give to be able to carry them then. And then, finally, they're getting to the point where you can trust them to walk around and not pull everything off the grocery store shelves or sprint off the curb into traffic, and now they want to be carried.
I can't fault Affleck for giving in to Violet's whims. Mom was carrying little sister Seraphina in the background. And besides, we do it ... more than I'd like to admit.
It happened just this past weekend. After getting up early to trek upstate to visit our babysitter at college, we spent a day running around and tiring out the 6-year-old. By the time it came time to bid the teenager goodbye, our daughter was exhausted and emotional. The farewell brought out the tears, and we still had grocery shopping to do.
Some parents would have frog-marched her, tear-stained cheeks and all, straight out of the car and around the grocery store. My husband, on the other hand, reached gently into the backseat, extracted her from her booster seat, and walked into the store with two arms wrapped around his neck.
I wish I'd captured a picture of the little mary jane with pink tights poking out from the space between his arm and body. It would have done him good later that night when he lay on our couch, his lower back throbbing, to have a reminder that he didn't suffer in vain. Sure, toting a 6-year-old around for an extended period of time will do that to you, but sometimes that falls under the sacrifice part of parenting.
To me that's part of what puts my husband in the hot dad category, just like Affleck. They really care about their kids, even when it means suffering for love. Besides, maybe she'll keep her feet on the ground at 7. Or 8? Or 9?
When did your kids stop asking to be picked up? Do you still pull a Ben Affleck and carry your kids around?
Image via Splash News