When I really want to push some buttons, I know I can drive my husband crazy by repeating back to him whatever he’s just said in a mocking version of his Australian accent, but when he’s trying to make the point that I’m overreacting and incompetent, he loves to tell me what a big deal I’m making of something he deems inconsequential.

It doesn’t happen often, but every now and then, he lives to rue those words.

Take, for example, the day we went to Dubai shortly after my youngest son was born. I’d won a voucher to go painting, and rather than leave the children at home, my husband magnanimously offered to take them to Mall of the Emirates while I spent three much-needed hours to myself in the art studio.

Now, the little one was just weeks old and the older one not quite two years old, so I suggested my husband strap the baby into our handy baby backpack carrier and push the big one in our massive pram.

Foolishly, my husband spoke the fatal words: “What’s the big deal, Laura? They’re just two kids – you act like it’s all so difficult.”

Without another word, I left him at the mall and went to enjoy my afternoon.

While I created horrible art, my husband spent perhaps the worst afternoon of his life. He’d envisioned browsing with the baby in the pram and the toddler walking serenely by his side.

Instead, the toddler took off like a shot into the heavy Friday afternoon crowd and the baby started crying almost straight away.

My husband spent his afternoon carrying a squirming, crying newborn in one hand and pushing our gigantic pram with the other, only barely keeping up with the toddler he didn’t have a spare hand to corral.

See? No big deal.

Laura Fulton