The Snack That Smiles Back . . . Goldfish

My daughter has recently begun sprouting teeth, which signaled to us that it's time to move away from the jarred goo that we've been feeding her. With three teeth on the bottom, and two canines plus one front tooth coming in on the top, she's developing an appetite to match her new chewing abilities. During a recent visit, my brother said we'd better start feeding her "real food" since she now had teeth.

So we've launched into the world of adult food, accompanied by more food on the floor than ever before, and a little coughing and hacking as she adjusts to chewing before swallowing. She's now eating all sorts of adult foods, but seems to have a natural predisposition towards cheese, crackers, and Cheerios. There is no real problem with this, other than the fact that her dad shares these dispositions (except for the Cheerios - they're all hers). This means that meals often go like this: One bite of cheese for her, the rest of the slice for me. A few Goldfish for her, then a handful or two for me. Naturally, we're going through "baby food" very quickly these days. Particularly on days like today when my lunch is a bag of Goldfish.

Sprouting teeth has happened at the same time that she's learned to crawl and stand. She's been working on the crawling bit for a while, but couldn't synchronize her arms and legs. Then, one day, she got it and took off. One day she was mostly immobile, and the next day she couldn't be left alone. What made this transition even more abrupt was that she figured out how to stand up the day after she figured out how to crawl. Literally overnight, childproofing became an issue. My wife and I scuttled around the house picking up everything that could be a problem, and cramming outlet covers onto all the outlets. In fact, we did such a good job moving all the loose objects in the house that my parents asked if we were moving when they came to visit.

I wonder a little about the people who design those outlet covers. The covers fit tight enough that you nearly need a hammer to put them on and a crowbar to get them off again. Since we have several different types, I noticed that some covers have a little cutout on the bottom. I guess this is supposed to be where you stick your fingernail to pry them out. However unless your fingernails are made of steel, this is a joke. My strategy is to jam the plug into the slot and prying them back out. So far, I have only badly bent one of the plugs I've used for this purpose. By the time our daughter grows up, we'll giant yellow replacement plugs on most of our electrical appliances.

My wife is not particularly fond of the jarred baby food that we are feeding our daughter. Last night she commented that most of it smells like dog food. Even though some of it smelled odd to me as well, I hadn't connected the smell until she mentioned it. I don't think there will be much more turkey and gravy dinner served to the little one in the future. However, the spinach and pasta still smell alright, though our daughter seems to be intent on visually inspecting each pasta bit that enters her mouth.

I think we could save time by just feeding her in the shower. Whenever she finished a meal, we could give her a quick rinse, change her clothes, and we'd be off to rocketing around the house again. This would save the step of wiping down the area she was eating in and the unpleasant feeling of baby food on bare feet that occasionally occurs.

The Office

My office these days is mostly on the floor of my daughter's room. As I work, I'm surrounded by so much brightly colored plastic and cloth, that you'd think I was either working in the playpen at McDonald's or in the large intestine of the boss's Gloworm. My office chair isn't an Aeron. It's either my grandfather's old rocking chair, or a couple of pillows on the guest bed. While neither offer the "distinctive looks and pioneering ergonomics" these chairs claim, I suspect that they do beat it in "adapting naturally and adjusting precisely to fit people of all sizes and postures doing all kinds of activities, all day long". Do they have a comforting creak when you rock the boss to sleep? Can you slump down and sleep in them when you're tired? Nah.

I sit in the rocking chair with my laptop and phone most of the time, or sit just outside her door at a desk when the boss is in her jumper. Actually, moshing is a better description of what she does in that thing. While I work, I watch her crawl back and forth across the floor, warning her away from the electrical cords and fending off her hands as she grabs at my laptop screen and tries to correct my coding errors or proofread my work.

The majority of my work takes place while she's sleeping. During nap time, I sit totally still at my desk outside her room and work as quickly as possible . . . most of the time. Some days, like today, I find that even though there is plenty of work to do, I am unable to do much beyond surf the internet and read up on some of the topics I am interested in online. Soon enough, a call from behind the closed door indicates that my exile is over, and I scoop my daughter up and go back to work in my office, while she ping-pongs around the room.

When I started working from home, the idea of a home office was one of luxury - a room where everything was organized, full of computers and papers, that I could escape to and work undisturbed. That dream didn't last long. The offices featured in IKEA are illusions. The closest I come to that is a desk at the top of the stairs on our second-floor landing, which has equal parts work stuff and baby stuff spread out all around it, and is so full of papers that the desk top is invisible under a sliding pile of papers. It is also the temporary home to a bunch of computer parts, manuals and CDs while I try to breathe life into my computer after a crashed hard drive and failed RAID setup.

From time-to-time I move my office around. This can usually can be done in one trip. The small human gets one arm, my cell phone, along with a pen, gets stuffed in a pocket, and my laptop is carried in the other arm, with the power supply balanced on top. Using this arrangement, I can leave the upstairs landing and work in other exotic locations, like the kitchen table or the floor in the family room.

I have a couple of friends who think being able to work from home and owning your own business means you have truly arrived. They think I have it all. I can set my own hours, dress however I want to, and I don't have to commute. Yeah, right. My hours are now whatever it takes to make the customers happy, some days I don't get a shower, and others I am clawing at the walls for an excuse to get out. I have to clean up or live with my own messes, there's no IT support, and I don't have people around to bounce ideas off of - just the echo of my own thoughts. And the belly laughs, yowls, and chuckles of my little girl as she zooms past to climb up on another piece of furniture.

It is true that there are some perks to working at home. The flexible schedule means that my little boss can call me in for meetings whenever she wishes, or we can go do lunch together if we choose. I can take advantage of the office rec center, which is open around the clock (ride my bike on a trainer in the laundry room), see what's been left out in the snack room, or adjust the vents so that the draft in my office isn't blowing down my neck. I can also meet with other business associates for lunch - the boss likes lunch with Mommy, or take the company car out for some errands. My favorite perk is being "out of the office". Since I am almost never away, this usually means either that I have something slimy smeared up to my elbows, or that someone is taking a nap. What and who, I'll leave to your imagination.

Well, it's getting late, and I'm the only one still at work, so I think I'll close things down and lock up for tonight.

Superdad Beats Up Mr. Mom

Making the decision to stay at home and take care of our daughter was probably one of the most difficult decisions I've had to make recently. Choosing to step away from work which I found both challenging and rewarding, and which shaped (and certainly continues to influence) how I see myself was tough. Furthermore, that initial decision led to a cascade of other decisions which were easier, but all stemmed back to that first decision to do what I'm doing now.

Even on the crummy days, when our daughter is screaming, I'm sleepy and impatient, and I feel under the gun, it was still a decision. I don't have to be doing what I'm doing. I could stick our daughter in day care, load up my schedule, and work. But I choose not to. That's important.

When my wife was still on maternity leave, we got a lot of questions about what would happen after her leave was up. When we said she was going back to work, people would look at me and say, “Oh, so you're going to be Mr. Mom?” Hardly! I'm a dad, and I am running two small businesses from home besides taking care of my daughter – as a father. Mom is mom, and I'm not her. The idea of Mr. Mom brings up connotations of some wimpy guy who can't handle working in “the real world”, so is staying home with the kids to hide out and has a bossy wife. Sorry. That's not the story here.

I think the term Mr. Mom is demeaning to the dads who are at home with their kids. It's not that they can't hack it, or are somehow lesser men, or aren't accustomed to work, though the phrase implies it. Maybe they just happened to be one of the guys that married “up” and hooked up with one of the smart, bright, attractive girls. That may be one of the dirty secrets of the stay-at-home dads; they're the ones with the real trophy wives.

Setting that aside, there are other reasons we are doing things this way. I'm better wired to work with people than my wife. I can also handle the at-home schedule a little better than she can. She also enjoys her job and has the potential to make significantly more money than I do down the road. Regardless of how we're wired as a couple, my wife and I were already on a different trajectory than most people in the area we live long before the idea of having kids ever came up. This is just another step along that path. Neither of us draw our identity in our marriage from who can earn the most, so whenever it has come to working, we have just gone with whoever has had the best opportunities. In terms of education and credentialing, we are nearly equal, though the opportunities available to me are not as good as hers.

That's not to say that the transition to becoming Superdad is easy. It's tough. I was shocked at how much I drew my identity from the work I did (and do), and how much I valued myself based on goals, achievements, accomplishments, accolades, and rewards. This wasn't a pleasant discovery. Our daughter doesn't know jack about this stuff, but she gets mad if she isn't fed, doesn't get her naps during the day, and isn't snuggled and played with enough. It was also hard to get up in the middle of the night to feed and diaper her so that my wife could get enough sleep to do her job well. This was especially true during the month when our daughter was recovering from a broken femur and had to be checked on every night at 1:30. I don't like giving up my time, and fight to protect it, but there's someone else who needs it. What makes me cringe is knowing that I'd been like this all along with my wife, but that it took a baby and change of lifestyle to force me to see it. Ouch.

Being an at-home dad has also changed the way I relate to my friends. Before we had the baby, my title seemed to be “small business owner” and people respected that, because of the supposed glamour of owning your own business. In reality, it was pretty ugly, but I'm not sure I was able to convince anyone of that. When that label was replaced with “Mr. Mom” in most people's minds, they also seemed to change in how they related to me. This may be a perceived change, however, as I was suddenly much less accessible than I was before, and if I was a hermit before, I probably seemed to be a monk who'd taken a vow of silence after my wife's maternity leave was up. I just didn't have time to do anything else.

One of the potential downsides of being a Superdad with girls in the house is that the likelihood of them turning into tomboys seems high. It's not that it's what I want necessarily, but because of how daughter's wired, it seems almost inevitable. She's big, determined, and on-the-go. In my mind, I see her as a big, tall girl, wearing pink and saying something like, “I like motocross!” in a high squeaky voice. Or, as one of my younger cousins used to say, “Don't mess with the big girl!” It probably doesn't help that we wrestle a lot, run together, and that she's big for her age. I know that big babies don't necessarily turn into big adults, but we've got the right genes for it to happen.

Am I Mr. Mom? No way. I'm a dad. I do dad things with my daughter. I just happen to do a lot more of them than a lot of other guys get to do with theirs. And I'm not hiding out. I chose to do this because it's the best thing for my family. When it isn't anymore, I'll stop. Meanwhile, Superdad's going to bed. He may be able to beat up Mr. Mom, but he still needs some sleep.