So this is the inaugural post for my new "Paternity Chronicles" blog. Why blog you ask? Because it's something to do…and it may motivate me to reflect upon the upcoming 12 weeks a little more than I would otherwise. I also figure it will give my friend kwaz something to make fun of when work is slow.
First things first; the subject of this blog will be my 12 weeks as a full-time stay at home dad (SAHD). I have taken a leave of absence from my job to care for our little four month old daughter Julia. The reasons for taking this leave are many:
1. to spend time with Julia
2. to delay the commencement of day care
3. to take a break from work (to be quite honest)
4. it's a right afforded to me by the Federal gov'ment
5. as an experiment/learning experience
Needless to say, doing something like this comes with a mixed bag of emotions. In many ways I am excited and joyful for obvious reasons. But I'm also a little anxious – hoping that I will not end up spending the days trying to keep Julia occupied while I nap, eat, drink, surf the internet and watch TV. My goal is to do something constructive each day for both Julia and myself. This opportunity doesn't come often, so I need to make the most of it.
Being that this is my first day (and this my first post) I thought it would be fun to look into the future three months to try to predict what things will be like at the end of this leave.
Julia:
- will be sitting up on her own…maybe even crawling around
- will be eating some solid food…and pooping some stinky poops as a result (yay for me)
- will weigh about 15 pounds (she's small)
- may have a little bit more hair on her wee head
- will be saying "Dada – you rock! Don't ever go back to work" – or maybe just "Dada"
- will try to stand with some help
- will giggle at anything Caleb does
Caleb:
- will be about 10 pounds heavier (unless we get an elliptical trainer)
- will have a voice that is an octave higher from speaking to a baby all the time
- will wonder where all of the time went
- will regret having to go back to work because of how much fun he had with Julia
- will probably have several unfinished projects that will forever remain unfinished
- will have only posted three times to this blog
I know – not exactly Nostradomus, but what did you expect?
I look forward to sharing what I learn with you. Hopefully my experience will help to prepare other SAHDs to-be…or at least entertain the three regular readers of this blog.
February 16, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Having just now read your first blog as a SAHD, I want to commend you for breaking the stiff mold of the 20th century NSAHDs, (NON Stay-at-home-dads) that seemed to be taking over our capitalist country at an alarming rate.
Yes Bople, it will surely be a learning experience and an excercise for your motivation which quite frankly, doesn’t seem to need a lot of “tuning up”. Perhaps you could deligate some of your diligence and desire to write and/or invent a practical SAHD manual, for those men who no longer have to fear that their “macho” status may be tarnished should they show any interest in being a SAHD. You could use the time to document Julia’s every move, gurgle, bite of solid food, or even better, chart the stinkiness of her new solid food poo. Perhaps the potential data you could collect would be world renowned, as no man has studied poo so carefully, on a daily basis. This study could mean however, that Jen is not allowed to change any (solid food)poo diapers, unless she agrees to partake in said study.
My thoughts on the POOPs out there, (and forgive me if I am skipping to the next blog entry), is that we must seriously consider how certain deprivements may affect our children. When he/she is old enough to “rap” with his/her peers about what they did when they left the playground the day before, do you want your child to be able to have a hip story to tell?
My thoery is that we must ween are children off of modern day society and its rough underbelly slowly and with patience. In order to prepare our children for what really is the real world, we must give them some freedom and allow them to resort to a minimal, (supervised), slack-off phase, as a real childhood is deserving of some braindead tv watching, thoughtless gaming, and other such frowned upon “kid” behavior.
Allowing a child to experience a full spectrum of life at a young age could benefit considerabley to how they turn out as adults. Consider Caleb for example, he watched plenty of television, played atari, did silly kid things, experienced minimal culture aside from that which the Hell’s Angles provided him, and well, he turned out ok. Do we really believe that not allowing a child to see a television or sip on a coca cola classic will make or break them as an adult?
For now, I will continue to believe that there are so many other factors that mold our children, for example; thier teachers, their friends and friend’s parents, the people in the town they grow up in, politicians, celebrities, food, travel, culture, books….the list goes on indefinitely. Give them healthy doses of good things, and even bad things can be ok of done in moderation.
On that note, I will move onto the next phase of Caleb’s 12 week leave. Long live the SAHDs out there. And to the SAHMs out there, thank you for always being the more accepted stay at home sex, keep up the good work! Jillian Rae–>