#SAHDkitchen Healthy Taco Meat

Last year I was still as SAHD. I tried my hand at doing a cooking show on Facebook Live. During the filming my kids ran into the kitchen, which was fine. It was part of the whole schtick right? I'm at home with my kids, we expect them to be there. The problem was, Buddy was naked and it went out live. Oops! Here's the edited version with no waist down nudity.

Finding Cair Paravel

The absolute best part of being a stay at home dad is the ability to take spontaneous trips around town. Our area is thick with museums and historical sites. When we first started staying home last year we had a lot of breakfast conversations like this:

"Dad, what's a lynx?"

"It's a big cat, like a puma or something."

"Oh, what does it look like?"

"I don't know, let's go to the zoo and see if we can find one."

And off we'd head to the zoo, or the history museum, or wherever we thought we'd find the answer to that morning's question.

One of my favorite trips was our search for Cair Paravel. It started when I found this article about what are thought to be discarded masonry from an old renovation of the Capitol building. The pictures and article struck me as a chance to do something fun and to get some hands-on history.

I think I'm particularly enamored of this trip because I don't often make up elaborate ruses to entertain the kids. I generally think that there are plenty of amazing and wondrous things about the real world, so that we don't need to add much. Not that I'm a total stick in the mud. I love make believe, and fiction, and movies. I just don't think I need to blur the lines between what's real and what's fanciful as a parenting technique. That said, for some reason I really wanted to have a magical archaeological adventure this time. They were reading the Narnia books at bedtime and had recently read about the Pevensie kids returning to find a ruined Cair Paravel, so I went for it.

Another aspect of the stones is that most of the articles about them are circumspect about their exact location. Part of the fun of the stones is finding them. Also, as one jogger blogger noted, it's probably better to keep some mystery so the stones don't get overrun and ruined. (Though the idea of ruining ruins is interesting to contemplate).

So we set off. I told the kids we were going hiking and looking for the ruins of an ancient castle. Even with the information we had it was tough to find. We ended up doing quite a bit of wandering around, which added to the building excitement and mystery. We even went off the trails in an attempt to find a short cut to another trail head. Going off trail meant going down into a ravine, crossing a stream and then hiking back up the other side. It ended up being a much cooler approach than if we'd found it by taking the right trail.

The kids were mesmerized by the ruins and took to exploring them with the kind of abandon that can worry a cautious parent like me. In that regard it was a good exercise for me in terms of allowing them to climb and explore without hovering and calling out "be careful" every few seconds. That's probably a whole other post, but even though I was a daredevil as a kid and only suffered one major injury I see danger all around when my kids play.






We played the Narnia angle for a while, with my son as Peter and my daughter as both Lucy and Susan depending on how she felt at any given moment. I had to be Edmund, which was OK since I know how things turn out.



After some play time and a snack we talked about why the stones were really there, or at least what they really are. No one seems to know exactly why they're there. It was one of the best days we'd had during my SAHD time. It was a trip that included everything I'd wanted when I started staying home with them, make believe, exercise, and education all in one trip.


For me, that's where the magic is. 

Reverse Paternity Leave

My work attire is usually more formal, but don't I look happy?

It's now been about 15 months since I switched things up and became a stay at home dad. When I started I had friends telling me that I'd be clawing at the door begging to go back to work within three months. For me it reminded me of the things I was told before leaving the Bay Area for LA back in college.

One of the main things I was told by friends who had stayed home is that it's impossible to get anything done when the kids are around. This confused me at first, I wasn't sure what things weren't going to get done. It turns out that they meant doing work from home. They're right about that, the thing I felt like I had going for me was that I wasn't going to try to do work at home. After all, I was a "stay at home dad", not a "working from home and hoping the kids don't bother me dad." For the most part that has held true. I have continued to teach night classes, which has meant doing some lesson planning and grading while at home, but if I were less lazy I could do that at night after the kids go to bed. If I decided to be a work at home parent I might be further along in my dissertation, but I decided to make the kids the priority when I'm home, and I regret nothing.

It's actually been harder this fall and spring now that the Boy is in school. I had more fun doing things with both kids, and they did a lot to occupy and entertain each other. It's been harder now that it' been just me and Lou. She relies on me more for companionship now, even though she has shown that she is much more independent than her brother when it comes to entertaining herself.

A couple months after I started staying home I brought the kids to the playground and overheard two young mothers talking about how they couldn't wait to go back to work. "Suckers" I thought to myself. Who would look forward to going back to bosses and customers (and their unreasonable expectations) and schedules and meetings, and an almost total lack of naps? Who would choose that over sleeping in and trips to the park and going to museums and going sledding on empty hills? Crazy talk if you ask me. I warned my wife that if we were able to work it out so that I could stay home she may never convince me to get a real job ever again.

Yes, I know, being at home is a "real job" etc. Except that to me it's not. It's work. It's not easy all the time. But it's not a "job" with all the external expectations and pressures that the word "job" connotes for me. My resolve to never have a job again has been strengthened by the arrival of our third child. Not just because I love her and want to spend all my time with her, but because of the cruel twist her birth has imposed upon me.

At around 20 weeks my wife floated the idea that I should work while she was on maternity leave. I was immediately shocked and offended. Mostly because I really really didn't want to. I'm sure the first thing I did was totally obviously roll my eyes and make a face. After that I think I said, "Sure. Yeah. I could do that."

Thus began my reverse paternity leave. (Paternity Work Detail?)

After a scant two weeks home with the baby I was out in the world, wearing a tie, interacting with adults. It was brutal. Honestly, much respect to you working parents, I don't know how you do it. Waking up in the morning wasn't so hard. I usually get up to get the Boy to school anyway, but now I'm expected to shower before 9:00am. I have other people telling when I can eat. I usually like to have breakfast at 10:00 and lunch at 12:30. That's not flying right now. I like to sleep when the baby sleeps, even when "the baby" is my three-year-old. That's not happening right now.

Part of it is that I'm doing this to myself. My wife said she thought I'd pick up 6-10 hours a week. I've been doing 6 hours a day, 3 to 4 days a week. The thing is, when I do something I like to do it all the way. So if I'm home I plan on being 100% home. If I'm working I want to be all in at work and give my employer as much bang for the buck as possible. I'm not really wired to do things by halves.

There have been positives to being back at work. The money is nice. I've enjoyed catching up with colleagues. I like seeing my former students. I've had chances to make new connections and line up new projects. I'll be teaching again in the fall, and I have done some freelance writing and editing and consulting over the last year, and hope to continue doing that, so it's been good getting my face and name out there to some new folks.

In some ways my reverse leave has been a nice break, even though it's a lot of work. But much like those young moms at the park, I can't wait to get back to my real job.