Kinsey headed off to a bachelorette party this weekend, which means I got to spend some quality daddy/daughter/son time with my kids. I’d be lying if I told you I don’t get nervous with these situations. Yes, I try to be as hands on as I can, but my wife is a stay at home mom. She has her routine on lock down. The wake up, breakfast, lunch, naps, play time, dinner, nighttime… she’s a machine. She can find something extremely quickly. I on the other hand, feel like I am at my first day of work, and those two little ones are my boss. Luckily, I did fine, except for this heartbreaking moment. The moment where my son looked at me in the eyes with disappointment and said, “I thought you could do anything, papa?”

Yes, the weekend was going fine, until we reached the time to go to a birthday party. It was a splash pad party. Meaning the kids will run around, get super tired, and make life easy for me later on. Before we left Chloe, in her lil bathing suit, ran up to me with her hair stuff and said, “I want a braid, papa!” Excitement in her voice. Hope in her eyes. “I want an Elsa braid for the party!” I looked at her, and said, “ok, baby! I’ll braid your hair.”

Spoiler alert… I don’t know how to braid, but I thought, “How hard could this be?” Busted out the computer, went on YouTube and found a video giving me a tutorial on how to do the Elsa braid. It was a step-by-step tutorial. I crush those with the home improvement projects, so I figured this would be no different. Just follow step. by. step. We set up a station in the bathroom. Cason came up for support, and was sitting, watching me intently. I could see how much he looks up to me. I felt like a freaking superhero. This is what being a parent is all about. Everything is awesome.

I was wrong. This was not awesome. First attempt: Chloe’s hair looked like a python was strangling a mouse. Second attempt: Chloe’s hair looked like an old rope that has been in water for 45 years. At this point we were running late. I had to make the executive decision to withdraw from braiding or we would miss the party entirely. Chloe was devastated, because at 2 years old, that is the biggest thing in her life, and Cason looked up at me, I asked what was wrong, and with a beat down voice he says, “I thought you could do anything, papa… my friends dad braids good… you don’t.” Oh, did you hear that? That was just my heart shattering. Good times. She then tells me “but everyone is going to have a braid!” I said, “don’t worry, they won’t.”

Well, guess what? Everyone had a braid or their hair up. First thing she did when we got there was go up to a group of ladies and asked them to braid her hair, because “my papa is not good.”

ha!