???? 4 Months +

   I’ve lost track of weeks.  So I’m going to stop trying.  Von Bebe is 4 months, 4 days old. 

   Starting today, I am a full time stay-at-home-dad (SAHD) for about 3 months.  My job rocks.  I work for a college so I already get summers off, and I was able to split my FMLA leave so I get another month off now.  This works out really great because my wife goes back full time starting tomorrow. 

   However, this puts the two of us in an awkward position.  Whereas I am excited to spend the days with my daughter, my wife is really struggling with going back full time.  For about half a second, we actually considered the option of her quitting to permanently be a stay-at-home-mom.  But this would be difficult as we’ve gotten really used to the double income.  Plus, as difficult as it is, we both really love our jobs.  The work is very satisfying and we do really cool stuff!  I don’t think either one of us would last very long as stay-at-home-parents. 

   Despite how awesome my job is, it is the nature of my work to keep me away in the evenings for 2 weeks at a time four times throughout the year.  Which is why there has been very little from me over the last week.  Those weeks were already hard.  Now that I have a daughter along with a perfect wife, they seem agonizing.  I’m already trying to figure out what I’m going to say to her when I’m working over Halloween and can’t go trick or treating with her.

   This being a father thing is difficult.  And it is impossible to do it without being as ass at one time or another.

   Oh, and I totally nicked her with nail clippers today.  Yeah.  That sucked, too.  And my wife blames me for teaching her to spit.  

Week 15 Day 7

   So far I feel like I’ve been doing a pretty good job of helping to take care of my wife during these first 4 months of pregnancy.  I would almost say it’s been relatively easy, but I hesitate to go that far because I’m able to do a whole lot more while on summer vacation.  It pretty nice not to have to worry about a million things going on at work. 

   I know that this whole pregnancy thing is going to get much more difficult when summer vacation is over.  My wife has observed that during the summer months, I am more present and engaged when not thinking about work. 

   I should have been working on this long ago for our own benefit.  Now I need to try to figure out how to keep the same level of attachment while working full time with a wife that is becoming more and more pregnant.

   Hopefully, I can figure it out in the coming months.  Because if I don’t, I have no doubt that our child will observe the same thing and I would hate for them to feel that detachment and then associate it with school.  If there’s one thing I’ve observed lately, it’s that kids are much smarter and more intuitive than adults typically give them credit for.

   I will happily be an ass if it means not screwing up my kid…  I don’t think it works that way, however.