“Okay, so it’s all set up. If you keep it plugged in, you can just leave it on.  You don’t even need to touch it!” I winked in full infomercial swagger.  As my school year winds down, my mother is wrangling the kids on days my wife and I are both working, so I was giving her a crash course on not touching the baby monitor so she would actually be able to use it all day.

“Just the way I like it,” she snickered.  My mother’s technological savvy is just a cut above my four-month-old children’s, so she appreciates when I minimize her button-pushing obligations.

My daughter furrowed her brow and “Guh guh guh-ed” at Grandma through the nipple in her mouth, which translates to, “You shut your mouth while you’re feeding me.”  She has a strict policy when eating: “No talking and no eye contact—I’m focusing.”

I have attempted to implement this same policy in a reciprocal manner.  Whenever I’m seizing a precious free moment to shovel my entire meal stomachward in one gulp and she “interrupts” me, I’ll point an accusatory finger and throw that “Guh guh guh” right back in her face, but it’s an exercise in futility akin to expecting quality from a Kate Hudson movie.  I’ve even tried to sit her down and explain to her that she’s holding me to a double standard, but then she’ll do the thing where she smiles so widely and intensely that her tongue trembles, and her damp, elated eyes literally sparkle.  So, as the cuteness melts my face off, the only thing I can say to that is, “I’ll get you next time, Gadget!  Next time!”

Making sure my son was secure in his jumper, I took a step towards my bedroom, still dazed from his 4 a.m. wake-up call.  (“Hey, Dad!  Watch this!  See this thing on my foot?  If I pull it, it comes off!  You gotta try this!  Oh…were you asleep?”)  I then realized I should see if my mom needed anything before I passed the munchkin baton, especially because I now realize she endured this madness for me when I was one of them.

“Are you good?  I was gonna shower.”

The proud grandma cradled my daughter, whose unrelenting cuteness had begun to melt her face off as well.  “I’m more than good.”

Super.

“How are you feeling?”  I asked my wife, who was getting ready for work. She hasn’t been feeling so hot this week, due to a debilitating cold.  It’s the first time either of us has fallen ill since the Twins’ Earthen premiere, and it’s been daunting running on fewer cylinders than usual with the added two miniature, dependent cylinders.

“Alright, I guess,” she replied.  “I don’t feel any worse than yesterday but I don’t feel any better either.”

It is a national day of mourning when she’s sick.  I’ve always felt it’s better me than her.  As a victim of terrible allergies for my entire life, I was a sickly child, always carrying tissues in one pocket and cough drops in the other, while my bastard friends always had room for cool things, like Swiss Army Knives and G.I. Joes.  Don’t get me wrong—I despise being sick as much as anyone—I’ve just gotten used to it.  My wife, not so much.

Plus, because she is the organized one—I like to think of myself as the “idea” guy—when she is sick, bills are neglected, appointments are forgotten, and basically any planning ahead whatsoever does not happen because I find thrilling new ways to drop the ball when I sub in.  On the other hand, if I’m sick, the most devastating tragedy is usually that our iPods are not perfectly synced with our iTunes libraries.

But I am an excellent caregiver.  As a soon-to-be-former middle school teacher, filthy tweens have blessed me with nearly every illness there is to have over the years, aside from the ones you need a vagina for.  This—paired with the fact that my mother is a pharmacist—has yielded a fine assortment of remedies for every occasion.  One that I swear by is hot tea, especially when you unload about a half-bottle of honey into it.  (According to the leading e-mail forwards, honey has transformative healing powers and is said to be the best remedy for sore throats, unrelenting coughs, and even the occasional Saturday Night Fever.)

I’ve made tea for my wife every night this week.  This is because I am the world’s greatest husband.

So on that fateful morning, upon hearing that my wife was still not feeling well, I inquired, “Do you have teabags at work?”

“Yeah,” she sighed, frustrated. She had that defeated look in her eyes that you see in uncoordinated people trying to play Guitar Hero.  Something needed to be done to lift her spirits.  Something epic.  And as I was undressing to get in the shower, I decided to be hilarious.

“Would it make you feel better if I teabagged you right now?”  For those who are unfamiliar with the act of teabagging, go ahead and Google it, and I’m sure you’ll find your answer.  It involves likening a certain region of the male anatomy to a “teabag” while “steeping” it in a certain cavity of another consenting adult—in my case, a smokin’ hot female.

She finished blowing her nose and just stared at me.  “Are you kidding?”

Well, of course I was kidding.  As you remember, I was being hilarious.  But that’s not to say I would have been upset if she had been up for it, either.

“You’re smiling on the inside,” I quipped.  Then I got one on the outside.  Boo-yah.  My mission accomplished, I jumped in the shower.

Stop picturing me naked.

Just a few minutes later, my wife came creeping back in.  As she peeked into the shower, I wondered if my beverage-innuendo-driven proposal had been accepted.  Then I noticed an odd look on her face.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Um… Your mom…” She was whispering.  “You know the monitor over there?”  She pointed at one of the cribs in our room.

“Yeah?”

“You forgot to turn it off.  I think she heard…about the teabagging.”

“Oh sh*t!  Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Wait, do you think she even knows what it means?”

“I don’t know!”  She hissed.  “Do you want me to ask her?”

“Of course not!”

Several days later, the topic has not been breached.  We’re okay with that.