Today was my initiation into the ranks of the (Occasional) Stay At Home Dads.
At 8am, Karen reluctantly left the house to head into her office, and I, faced with a very confused Bernard, was in charge. Armed with all my accumulated expertise, I am proud to say that I didn’t do a bad job at all. I know what he needs, I am reasonably competent at deciphering his signals, my only concern was that the absence of Karen for the first time in his life would leave him unable to keep his head together.
In the event, it didn’t go too badly. There were a couple of occasions when he was clearly trying to communicate *”Oh for goodness’ sake, where’s mummy and her boob?”* but for the most part, he seemed to understand the situation. In fact, the most pleasant surprise of the day was his sudden acceptance of formula milk, which until now he has refused with the utmost of disgust.
After lunch, I took him into town in his pram. We wandered round a few shops, and somewhere around Woolworths he fell asleep. I took the long way home, picking up a bottle of ginger beer on the way. Which I think I shall now open, seeing as Karen has come home early and the three of us have retired to the office ((a vague term, but I hate the term “home office”, I’ve fallen out of love with “studyo” (is it a study? Is it a recording studio? It’s both!) and “Man Cave” is no longer strictly true. What should I call this room instead?)) together. I’m contemplating making a little laptop out of foam for Bernard to gnaw on, so that he doesn’t feel left out.
The prospect of doing this once a week doesn’t seem so bad. I accept the arrangement with relish.
6 replies on “(Occasional) Stay At Home Dad”
Enjoy! I had a blast as a stay-at-home dad and hopefully will be one again for a while between contracts.
a little foam laptop eh? glad to see you’re starting his tech consumption at an early age..!
It’s already started, Estee. He was sat on my lap staring at the screen while I was writing this entire post.
Oh, and reaching for the keyboard too. But he can only reach the bottom row of keys, so he can’t even type gibberish yet. Mainly he just produces a load of spaces and moves the cursor around.
How about “The Other Room”
I’m sure some toy company makes kids laptops. Of course you can just use the foam that comes in that box.
watch him – he’ll be manipulating the cursor one minute and photoshopping the next.
Well my male friends and I used to call the respective room the “Command Center”… dates back to a time when we used to play computer games via Internet; for your amusement, the room which used to be my CC actually is now the room of Adrian, my little son 🙂 (and I got a tiny CC corner in the living room… but we’ll be moving soon to a larger apartment!)