Stay At Home Dad

As Tarri reminded me last night, this is actually something I’ve been comfortable with for a long time. We started dating back in 1997, and it was shortly after that, in one of those “what do you want to be when you grow up” college conversations that I laid that one on her. I mean, I’ve known since I was a kid that I didn’t want a suit-and-tie 9-to-5 for a career. Back when I was a kid, in my imagination that amounted to being a scientist or a park ranger or something. By the time I finished high school, I figured that meant writing.

That’s where the stay-at-home dad thing came in. In my innocence, I figured if I eschewed the questionable pleasures of soap operas and bon-bons, I could manage to squeeze in enough writing a day to make it an ideal situation. And I was very rah-rah for a stay-at-home parent. I had one, Tarri had one, and we turned out okay, yeah? I may even have gotten into an argument or two or twelve proposing it as some sort of social ideal.

That was until I had to take my kids out of daycare. Not because it’s tough taking care of them at home–that IS more challenging than I figured on when I was 20, but I looked after young Marines 24 hours a day at one point, how much harder can this be? The biggest difference may just be wiping butts. But no, what was hard, what was heart-breaking was taking them away from the friends they had made.

I think there are maybe one or two other stay-at-home parents on our street, but I don’t know them that well, and with the weather getting colder the opportunities for toddler meet-cute are rather small. Otherwise, other than the kids at daycare, they don’t have a lot of friends or chances for other-kidlet interaction. Now, next year Tony will be in kindergarten and I might be able to get Hannah into a local public preschool (though she’ll still only be 2 on Labor Day… but probably potty-trained), but in the meantime we’ve got a whole lot of not much.

So I find myself in the interesting position of hoping I can find a nice 9-to-5 so the kids can go back to daycare and hang out with their friends all day.

Mirrored from Bum Scoop.