Confessions of a Stay at Home Dad: Part XV

The one thing about having three kids that is most difficult from a logistical point of view is leaving the house. It is sometimes impossible to get out the door and off to where you need to be on time. To kids it is always a big surprise, “What? We are leaving now?” The thing about having three is that one kid can get lost in the shuffle. When it was just Bella and Mady, I had Bella follow me around while I got Mady ready to go out the door—there were no loose ends. After Sophia came into the picture, it became more and more difficult to keep track of the other two as I took care of Sophia. One common scenario would begin with me getting Sophia’s shoes and coat on and me asking the other two girls to get their shoes and coats on. It is very difficult to watch what each child is doing at this moment and because of this things go wrong. Invariably, as I collected the other two girls and made my way for the door, I would notice that one of the girls had used this brief window of unsupervised time become unready. Instead of seeing a child ready to go, many times I looked down only to see a girl in a princess dress-up gown, or a naked girl or a girl that has just poured juiced all over themselves. 

 

Sophia’s first year went by very quickly. Mady was now in a co-op preschool and Bella was in four different activities. I had begun my taxi service in earnest. If I wasn’t running back and forth to preschool with Mady, I was running to dance, basketball, soccer or gymnastics with Bella. It wasn’t too long before Jodi and I noticed that we felt a little disconnected as a family unit. There was a lot of running around and less time left for the family to hang out as a group. Also, we noticed that since Bella was in a lot of activities and that Sophia was—well—a baby, much of our parenting energy was missing Mady. We did not like this trend. We looked for a solution and came up with our “Special Day” philosophy.  We decided we would spend one day (an afternoon out) with each of them alone. For instance, Mommy would take Mady out and they would go to the movies and pick up a special book at Barnes and Nobles together. The next week Daddy would take Mady fishing and out for a milkshake. Each girl would get a turn having their “Special Day.” We started “Special Days” when Sophia was a year old and we have kept up the tradition ever since. 

 

I became active in playgroups in our new neighborhood around the time Sophia turned one. Surprisingly, I met a couple of moms at the co-op preschool where Mady went to school that were actually really cool to talk to. Usually, moms avoid stay-at-home dad conversations, but these moms were actually really cool and laid back. After talking to each other a few times outside of preschool as we waited for dismissal, we decided to run a playgroup at alternating houses. It was great, Mady was playing with girls her age and Sophia was able to see some kids her age on a regular basis, not to mention I was able to have some adult interaction during the day. 

The ladies in the playgroup were very cool. In past playgroups I had been involved with moms usually talked about mom stuff and made little to no effort to include me in conversations no matter how hard I tried—these ladies were different. They didn’t just talk about their pregnancies and Oprah, they actually talked about their kids, life, news and politics. We had an eclectic group of young and old, men and women, and hip and nerdy. As a group we not only went to each other’s houses, but as the weather warmed and the summer came we went to area parks and included our older school aged kids. The summer brought not only playgroups at parks, but also big news for the family—we were expecting number four.

 

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