SAHDism

a collection of thoughts by a Stay At Home Dad

“The Year of Living Sequeiralously”

Sometimes, You Just Need To Be Right

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I found my daughter playing with scissors in the playroom and immediately told her to stop.  I knew it was her safety scissors but I felt that scissors need to be used at the art table and with at least some initial parental guidance on the art project rather than random cutting while sitting on the carpet next to her brothers.

Daughter: “They’re safety scissors so no one will get hurt…see?!?!”

[pause for introspection]… This puts me in a difficult situation that I find myself in more often than I’d like.  I’m trying to set some safety rules to prevent injuries but when no one gets hurt, the kids think it’s a stupid rule.  For example, I let my kids walk ahead of me when we’re out walking but I make them stop at all streets, alleys, and driveways to look both ways.  If one of them forgets and starts running, I yell out and, while they do stop, they look at me with “stink eye” as I hold their hand to cross a street that didn’t have a car in either direction for as far as the eye can see…[end introspection]

Daddy:”Well, I don’t like you playing with them on the floor, and not when your brothers are around because they aren’t old enough, so please put them back where they belong for now.”

Angered, she throws the scissors down on the soft carpet and it bounces up and hits my middle boy in the arm and he starts crying, more out of shock than anything else.  Instantly, I see my opportunity and I seize it.

Daddy: “See, I TOLD you they’re dangerous.”

What I’ve Given Up

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As time passes since the day I gave up my career to be a Stay-at-Home Dad, it becomes clearer that I’ve given up so little in exchange for becoming so much more

Don’t Cry

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Here’s a Daddy greeting card moment:

“Don’t cry because the TV is off, smile that I even let you watch it in the first place.”

One Great Reason

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I love my kids – they give me reason to drink.

Our Incredible Culinary Delight

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So our toaster oven broke a few years ago and we never replaced it.  Not for any particular reason, we just never got around to it.  Neither did we own a regular pop-up toaster, as we had used the toaster oven for this purpose up until its untimely demise.  This put us in the amusing situation of going for years without eating a slice of toast at home – only plain bread.  For my wife and I, it was something we occasionally missed, usually at breakfast time, but nothing that caused us much concern.

Our kids, however, are young enough that they have never eaten a slice of toast,  bagel, or English muffin in their lives.  Fast forward to the present time and we now find ourselves on vacation in beautiful Sunriver, Oregon, renting a house that has, as many American households have, a toaster.  Needless to say, on our first trip to the grocery store, we purchase some of which has been denied to us for so long – English muffins.  For my kids, this magical treat was something they’d never had eaten before and they couldn’t get enough.  It looks like a slice of bread and yet it pops up hot and crunchy – what magic is this!  They were so excited that not only did they finish the entire pack of muffins, they didn’t even think to ask for dessert as  they were so enthralled with the English muffins.

Being the Dad that I am, I’m currently trying to think of what other delectable treats I can whip up for them now.  Maybe I can make some exciting pastries, the like of which they’ve never experienced before.  I can just hear the excitement in their voices as they cry out, “Oh, Father, do makes us another one of your magical ‘popped tarts’ again !!”

 

Low Expectations, Highly Successful

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One great thing about being a Stay-At-Home Dad is that people expect so little from me that I get credit for even the simplest of tasks.

If I change a diaper in a public location, you should see the smiles and admiration.  Double points if my wife is present.  It doesn’t even matter if the other two children with my wife are throwing tantrums and the kid I’m changing is the mellowest one of the bunch – “Dad is helping”.

Grocery shopping, which millions of families do every day of the week, is a special occasion when I bring my kids.  I get smiles that say, “How wonderful it is of you to help out your wife.”  You might be thinking that perhaps I’m reading too much into people’s looks but, no, I’ve actually had people come up to me in the store to tell  me this.  Specifically, it’s the little old ladies – they have no problem speaking their mind.

It’s not all sunshine and roses, however.  All this goodwill comes from the assumption that Mom is doing the vast majority of the child-rearing.  So when my wife was on vacation visiting a friend out of town and I had the kids all to myself for a week, I really wasn’t in the right state of mind when someone came up to me and said, “Mom’s day off, is it?”  This was the one time that I strayed from my usual smile and told them, “Actually, I’m the one who stays home with my kids, and I don’t get a day off.”

Still, no complaints really, it’s a great situation right now.  The saddest thing is that as more Dads are staying home with their kids, I’m just becoming another parent doing my job.  Until such time, however, I’ll just keep milking it for what it’s worth.

The Taste of Bread

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As I was making grilled cheese sandwiches for the kids’ lunch today, I realized that after years of eating only cut-off crusts and end slices, I’ve forgotten what the delicious squishy insides of a loaf of bread actually tastes like.

Sugary Cereals

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My kids had recently been addicted to sugary cereals.  I’m not sure why we started buying them in the first place.  I think it’s because the box showed pictures of endangered species on them and apparently the sugar has less calories if it is taken in conjunction with environmental awareness.  I decided that it was time to ween them off this and was mentally prepared for the push back from the kids (“push back” = “screaming and stomping”).

Just before Day Zero of the New World Order, I came up with a flash of brilliance that I thought was worth sharing:

As I was about to serve them the boring crispy rice cereal, I brought out our sugar bowl and excitedly sprinkled a teaspoon into each kid’s bowl in front of them.  Can I tell you how excited the kids were at the fact that I, Daddy, the Sugar Nazi, actually sprinkled sugar on something for them.  Never mind that their cereal had barely a fraction of the sugar they previously ingested, they were completed excited and never fussed.  It was new and exciting and they were content (and I was relieved).

In this situation, I couldn’t have created a better outcome no matter how much I tried to rationalize the health benefits to my kids.  Being an engineer, my default is to resort to logic but it was pure marketing and salesmanship that won the day today.  Just another little parenting skill for me to continue developing, for the good of us all.

TGIF

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At our house, come 5pm every night is Friday night; unfortunately, come 6am every morning is Monday morning.

Bedtime Rituals

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I’ve found that a successful bedtime hinges upon rituals.  Kids who know and understand what’s about to happen are much more at ease and co-operative.

For the babies, it’s a bottle of milk and some snuggling in the rocking chair.  For the older kids, reading books and brushing teeth.  For Daddy, it’s a martini and a good cry.