Skylar and I like to take our naughty dogs and perfect angel baby on walks every evening together. It's wholesome family fun. We do it for the attention. At least, it probably looks like that's why we do it since Skylar has insisted lately on going out shirtless.

And listen. Does this man have the body of a Greek God? Yes. Am I happy about this. No.

First of all, I do not have the body of a Greek God and I don't like feeling inferior to anyone else under any circumstances. Second, this man wakes up at 2:00 AM every day and eats like five gargantuan poppyseed muffins for which the ingredient list on the label just says "LARD." He does this because "OMG I woke up so hungry again I guess that trough of Indian food and coagulated fats I ate at midnight didn't quite hold me over until 6:00 AM breakfast."

Meanwhile, if I breathe scented air one time, the back of my pants preemptively splits open and my cholesterol gets added to the national debt.

So, no. I don't enjoy the unfairness of Skylar appearing to live a lifestyle that I must emphasize: this man is not living.

The evening walks mostly consist of us taking turns discussing how and why, specifically, each of our three children are, in fact, cutie patooties. It's very important for their self-esteem. And it makes it more likely that Duncan won't put us in a nursing home when we're 90.

We've made Duncan the sole trustee of the family estate because we can't trust Louie with decision-making power until he stops eating out of the garbage can and we have no idea whether West is going to grow up to be a straight dude. And, yes, we'll love him anyway no matter what he was born that way he can't help it. But if he's straight, obviously we wouldn't want him to be in charge of figuring out what to do with our art collection when we die.

Last week I was busy with something or other so Skylar decided to just take the baby for a walk on his own and leave me with the dogs. He relished the opportunity at one-on-one time. Parenthood has turned less collaborative and mostly competitive in recent months because we are both determined to have West's first word be the chosen name we'd each like him to call us.

I'm going to be "dadda." Skylar has elected to be called "babba," and I haven't had the heart to tell him that word means "granny" in Ukrainian and I can't unhear it.

So far West has only managed to call either of us "waaa" followed by vomit. But we'll answer to really anything right now.

Skylar and West were gone for about an hour, and when they returned home I noticed, to my surprise, they were both soaking wet from head to food. This was confusing, for we were experiencing a hot, rainless, summer day here in Our Lovely Deseret of Salt Lake City.

"Why are we wet?" I inquired. My new thing lately is to position my criticisms as questions and use the word "we" so it seems less combative.

I should write a book about marriage.

Skylar looked like a kid in an abandoned ice cream truck. "We were playing at the splashpad!" he told me, as West giggled a little, a coconspirator who is nine months old and should not be blamed for any of this.

"What splashpad?" I asked, because I have lived in my home for a full Earthly decade and have never once seen anything resembling a splashpad within walking distance of my house.

Skylar gave me the coordinates, nearby, of the miniature waterpark that had so delighted them. Again, I had no clue what he was talking about. But, I confess, there are a lot of things I don't notice in this world. I was famously several years into marriage before I knew Skylar's eye color. So I dropped it.

The next night he took West back to the splashpad. And then the next night after that. The two returned home, evening after evening, looking like victims of Shamu the Whale post-breech. "We had the entire place to ourselves again," Skylar would announce each evening.

Finally, I decided to attend the daily water rave late last week to see what the fuss was all about. We wandered to the location—the same one he had patronized all week, in front of the respectable people of Salt Lake City Utah USA Earth Solar System Milky Way.

I stopped, dead in my tracks, and shook my head when I saw it.

Strangers, this was not a splashpad. This grown ass man has been climbing into a public fountain with our child.

Skylar ran with West straight into the water like the opening credits of Baywatch.

People were craning their necks as they walked by to observe this mess, all happening, by the way, on a busy sidewalk a mere two feet from a busy street.

"Honey," I said in my gentlest voice. "Why are we playing in a public fountain filled with pennies?"

Skylar disputed my claim he was engaged in a misuse of public property.

We argued for a while before he finally relented.

"Oh," he said. "Who cares? Look how happy West is?"

West looked at me, his eyes alit, and he let out the most joyous giggle I have ever heard in my life.

Goddammit.

He's definitely going to say "babba" first.

~It Just Gets Stranger