I am Kate.

Guilty confession time - I have seen every episode of Jon and Kate Plus 8. I didn't start out watching the show, but I heard about it last Spring when all the tabloid nonsense started and I was a new mom with a lot of nursing time on my hands and not a lot to occupy myself so I started watching reruns. I think it actually helped me feel better when my newborn was extra fussy or didn't sleep well. I would watch an episode of Jon and Kate and think "If she can manage eight kids (EIGHT KIDS!!) I can certainly handle just one!"  Okay, the woman had a lot of help, but still! Eight children! I can't imagine what that must have been like when the little ones were under a year old. Talk about needing a padded cell! Anyway, my point is - I have watched plenty of Jon and Kate. Because of that, I am very familiar with Kate's, um, "conversational style" when she communicates with her then-spouse. You know, that sort of barky, commanding "Jon! WTF?!" kind of stuff she says? Probably much like the rest of the viewing audience, I would cringe when it happened. Probably because it was embarrassing and also because I had the hindsight to what was down the road for this Kate from the past.

Therefore, it is with quite a bit of guilt that I confess to my own "Kate" moments. In Kate's (and my) defense, I feel like it's really hard to not have those moments partly because I spend most of the day being the Captain of the ship and when evening rolls around, it's not easy to give up command. It may also have something to do with Husband being somewhat more...shall we say... casual with his parenting. Yesterday, for example, he let the tot play with a pointy screwdriver. Which caused some "Kate" reaction in me that was something like "WTF? Are you kidding me with this?!" Okay, yes, not one of my most supportive moments. I am sure I have had similar duh-type parenting moments, but I guess the biggest difference is that I don't have anyone standing over my shoulder criticizing coaching me when I make a bad call. Most of my mistakes go unobserved and let's be honest, even if there was someone around to give me some..um...feedback, odds are I would not be very good at hearing it. Maybe I need to try to some good ol' fashioned censorship. Or some duct tape.