Father's Day & Stay at Home Dad




The best picture I could get!

No one deserves a father’s day blog posting more than the father of my children. Joe is an awesome stay at home daddy. The stay at home situation isn’t ideal for him but there is no one else I would rather take care of our kids.  Joe has his teaching credential. He wants to be a history teacher and one day will be. He just graduated at the exact wrong time, right when new teaching positions practically disappeared.  I so happened to have been lucky enough to have good, stable jobs.  It has worked out better for him to stay at home and for me to be a working mommy.

Short of a semester when Joe was student teaching, he has been home with since Zoey since she was born in October 2008. Almost a year ago now we added Hunter to the mix. Joe does an amazing job with them. While he doesn’t love being at home, he rarely lets it show. Joe handles everything in stride and the kids are happy (usually) and healthy.  He recently told me the day-to-day craziness of the kids doesn’t even faze him anymore.  These lucky kids get to go to a different park almost every day. Zoey is a daredevil on the playground. There is no slide or climbing apparatus on any playground that intimidates her. I wonder if she would’ve been quite as brave had it been me with her each day at the park. On days they skip the park they might go to the library, bookstore or on a play date. I know Joe gets bored and longs for the stimulation of being around adults.  He would prefer standing in front of a room full of students teaching something he loves.  But he makes the best of the situation.

I have only a slight idea of what it’s like to stay at home everyday. Obviously I’m there on nights and weekends but am not there for the weekly daily grind.   Other than that I only had three and a half months of maternity leave with each kid. It’s hard work. Some days are worse than others. It takes a lot out of a person to keep the kids busy, the house clean and have no time for yourself. Joe does the majority of the cleaning and essentially all the cooking (he’s a great cook and has always cooked for me).

I wish I could be the one staying home and given the chance and monetary security I think I would. I cried for weeks leading up to my return to work from maternity leave. I longed to be with my kids all day long. Even though it was hard work and could be stressful--I was with my babies and it was amazing. It breaks my heart to walk out the door some mornings. Other days I’m glad for the reprieve.  On my first day back to work in November he put a note in my lunch. The first line read, “Here we go again, each of us filling the role that the other should [wants to] be playing.”

I don’t express how grateful I am for all that he does for the kids and me quite enough. I don’t have the words to express how much it means to me.  I appreciate him as a husband and a father.  We are 50/50 partners in parenting. When I question my role as a mother, he alleviates my fears and tells me I’m the best mom he has ever seen. He’s by far the best father I have known.  I hope one day he will look back on these years and be grateful he had these precious years with our kids. They probably won’t fully remember that he was the one home with them but I know they will always have a special bond with their daddy.

Happy Father’s Day Joe!