When Faith and I first got married, things were tight…
In hindsight, I realise this is because we were young and had only just started working, but at the time, we couldn’t figure out how Faith would ever be able to stay at home with our kids when we had them.
Thankfully, we’ve been very fortunate, and when we had our first son, we had a lot of support from our community, we lived in an inexpensive flat, and I’m very good at spreadsheets, so we were able to come up with a budget that somehow (I maintain that it was miraculous) meant Faith could fulfil her dream of being a stay-at-home mum. She has now been at home with our boys for four-and-a-half years, not including a brief return to work when Adlai was 10 months old. (She thought she was ready to be away from him for three days a week – she wasn’t.)
It has meant making sacrifices sometimes, but it has worked well for our family, and she has really enjoyed it. Since then, Faith has started her own business as a photographer. The nature of her work means she is sometimes away on an evening or a Saturday, leaving me to be the stay-at-home dad.
Our work schedules mean we often kiss each other hello and goodbye as I arrive home and she rushes out.
Tonight, for instance, she had a meeting with a client. She gave the boys dinner before she left, so when I got home my main job was putting them to bed. I started by turning on Wreck-It Ralph at around 6pm. I figured I’d let them watch it for an hour and put them both to bed at 7. It is now 9:11pm and I have literally just sat down. Three hours later. Bedtime is never what you think it is going to be. There will always be crying, negotiating, missing snuggly toys, empty milk cups, the wrong toothpaste.
Faith came home at just the right time for the glory leg and magically made both boys fall asleep while I put the kettle on. I guess we make a good team and there’s still at least 47mins of American sit-coms on E4 before we go to bed.
The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the blogger and do not necessarily represent the views of Dad.info
