Since you normally read about food flinging, feces, frustrations and a lot about the negative side of being a stay at home dad, I wanted to taking a minute to step back from it all and take a look at some of the positive and where we’re at as a family right now.
My soon-to-be two-year-old daughter is spouting off sentences like you wouldn’t believe. Some of HER favorites are, “I don’t like it.” and “I don’t want it.” Although my wife and I appreciate her other phrases like, “lub you,” and “mama pretty.” Since we moved from a ranch house to a multi-level house just a few months ago, she has mastered the stairs, in fact she wasn’t even the first one to fall down them, I was. She’s becoming an adventurous eater and enjoys yogurts, PBJs, all types of beans, every fruit she’s ever been offered, and an occasional pulled pork sandwich or bite of steak. She’s even taken her adventurous eating too far, my wife and I have had to put a stop to her eating chalk and sand out of the sandbox.
My son, the only other source of human testosterone under our roof, will be turning four this summer. I can already tell he’s going to be the type of person people are drawn to (I just hope he uses his power of influence for good, not evil). He loves putting a guitar around his neck and singing We Will Rock You and Another One “Busta Dusta.” When he wants to be, he’s a real people pleaser (he’s just not into pleasing his parents). He’s the one I have to watch my every move around, because I know he’s taking EVERY SINGLE THING I say and do and putting it in his little brain. He’s starting to write letters and draw recognizable pictures, but would much rather be lying face down on the floor playing with trucks. If I would let him, he would spend days on end in our garage “driving” my Jeep or our lawn tractor.
And then there’s our oldest, the carbon copy of her mother. It’s hard to believe she will be finishing up her first grade year soon, it seems like only yesterday that I was learning how to change her diaper for the first time. She was so brave when we moved and changed schools in the middle of this past year. My wife and I didn’t think for a second that she would have trouble making new friends and we were right. As an added bonus, one of her friends from class lives only four doors down from us. She’s so strong willed and determined that all it took was the promise of frozen yogurt for each 10 out of 10 on her spelling tests for her to end the last month of the school year with nothing but perfect scores. She’s smart, she’s starting to use sarcasm appropriately, something I think is great now, but I’m sure I will be sick of soon enough. It’s been a fun school year to watch her mature.
It would be crazy to take a step back from things and not include my wife in this. As I write this she is down to the final weeks, WEEKS, of her medical residency. Four years, of a lot of hours and stress that I can only imagine (and heard a little bit about). The four years before that were spent in medical school, and four years of college before that. So if you add it all up on top of a regular K-12 education she’s about to graduate from the 24th grade!
The two of us have had a blast making HUGE life decisions together. Whether it was having kids, where to live for her residency, or me staying home with our kids full-time, I wouldn’t want to make these decisions with anyone else. It’s great to see our kids all run and crash into her as she walks in the door at night. Even when she is completely exhausted from her day, she still manages to find the energy to play with them. She is amazing. As an added bonus, she really enjoys being a chef on the weekends and her cooking skills are out of this world!
My life is so full of wonderful people, I could go on and talk about them for pages and pages, but I won’t bore you will all that. I’m sure I will have another poop story to share with you all soon enough.
-Pete
