Tag: stay at home dad

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Reason #23 why I couldn’t be a stay-at-home-dad

I could never be a stay at home dad for a variety of reasons, but the primary reason is boredom. I’d either be constantly ignoring my kids because I couldn’t stand one more second of playing Thomas the Tank or teaching over their shoulder how to play a video game, or I’d be buying them a new toy every other day just so I could keep myself happy.

For instance, even though there’s generally nobody here at the house all day, either myself or CareerMom ALWAYS make the boys’ beds up before we leave. Now, MLI has a number of pillows on his bed, and since one of my all-time least favorite things to do from a chores perspective(right behind putting laundry away and unloading the dishwasher), is making beds, I always try and mix up the pillow arrangement.

It’s my own personal pillow challenge each time I do it.

For instance, here’s one arrangement:

IMG_2315

and here’s another:

IMG_2316

As you can see, gravity defiance and lateral similarity is prized above good looks.

I read a blog yesterday whereas the wife was complaining a bit about how anal her husband was. I had a hard time relating…

Can you imagine how insane the house would be if I were here all day?
I mean, I might start bobby pinning together socks with the boys’ names on them so I could tell them apart when CareerMom buys them matching socks, something that, for the life of me, I can’t figure out.

Maybe I would actually put all the big forks in one slot in the silverware divider, and all the small forks in another. Spoons too.

I could vacuum the carpet so that all of the vacuum marks are equidistant from one another, and all grained in one direction.

Heck, I might even go around, every day, with a bottle of Windex and a paper towel and get off (heh heh, I said “Get off!”) all the toothpaste spray marks from the mirrors.

I don’t know…haven’t given it too much thought.

But suffice it to say that I’m way to uptight to be a SAHD, so to you guys out there who do it, my hat is off to you. Oh, and you moms too I guess (KIDDING!)

Speaking of hats! Oh man, I could build a hat rack and hang it in the closet and then we could put all of our hats up there in order from…

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Society

"It seems my hypocrisy knows no bounds…"

DaddydaycareAs I admitted (gasp!) to CareerMom this weekend after she scolded me for saying, “Dammit!” in front of the boys, I’m not perfect. I drink a beer in front of them every now and then. I get annoyed when they keep asking the same, or similar, questions time after time. And OMG! When MLE starts crying in the car, I could scratch my nails down a chalkboard and find a happier place. I’m not perfect, I’ll freely admit it.

I am also, I’m discovering, a sexist and a hypocrite to boot!

See, despite my, “Hey, men are just as qualified as women to be child-care-givers,” attitude, I’m finding myself having a hard time accepting the fact that a man now runs our daycare facility.

What happened is, our daycare, which was previously run completely by three generations of women (they all worked there at the same time) has apparently made so much money off us parents that after only five short years, they are selling to a national chain of daycare centers (sounds like, “Grids R Grids”). We actually found out about this poorly kept secret this past weekend, and it was confirmed this morning as CareerMom greeted the new daycare owner, a man, in a wedding-reception-like gladhanding session as she dropped the kids off.

And I’m not too thrilled about this. I think part of it stems from the fact that another large chain of centers in our area (sounds like, “Snoddard School”) is also run by a man who just creeped the hell outta me each time I visited there; so much so that right after enrolling MLI after he was born, we pulled him out based almost entirely on the “creep vibe” the dude put out. So, I was already biased against men running daycare centers.

Call me crazy, but I can’t for the life of me, figure WHY a man would WANT to run a daycare center! I’m pretty sure that I lack several a gene that I consider prerequisites to caring for children over extended periods of time, such as:

  • the “sit on the floor and endure hours of monotony” gene
  • the “don’t react violently every time one of the kids swings something at crotch level” gene
  • the “fix three different really good things for lunch/dinner only to have them go and try to eat the dog food” tolerant gene

…and there are others I’m sure.

So here I am, finding myself railing against my kids going to a daycare run by a man, when some of the most well-adjusted men I know, are stay-at-home dads. Admittedly, running a daycare is probably more about project management than it is hands-on with the kids, but still…I can’t shake the bad feeling. I can’t shake the feeling that a man is more likely to cut corners if it’ll save a buck than a woman would.

See, hypocrite. That’s me.

What do you folks think?