This was a journal prompt I had almost four years ago. I answered it this way on February 21, 2021…

This is the question, isn’t it? It has been for quite some time, the question that gives me pause, makes me stop in my tracks, that question that forces me to take a good long look at what I do and, more importantly, am I any good at it? My answer for the majority of the time I have been an at-home dad has been, “Yes.”

But there are always buts. That’s the nature of the beast. The nature of any job you love. On a good day I love 80-90% of what I do. If the day is not going well, that number drops to 10-30%.

I consider being a stay-at-home dad (SAHD) a job. People who scoff at that and/or give me a weird look when I tell them this have never been a full-time at home parent with two kids and most domestic duties/responsibilities on their plate. It’s really not realistic to expect to do a lot more day to day, especially if you are also prioritizing time spent with a spouse and children, which, I know, I have the luxury of doing.

There was a time in 2019 to early 2020 that I drove for Lyft. The driving force, dad joke, for this was impending therapy bills for London that could amount to an extra $900 a month. They did for a while and driving for Lyft really helped ease the burden of all those $30 copays. Did I love Lyft though? No, but I do have some decent stories from the experience.

What I have loved more than anything else about being a SAHD is that I see nearly every moment of my kids’ young lives. I have been there for all the firsts. Now that London is at school M-F from 8:15 to 2:00, I have this weird feeling and it simply stems from someone else being in charge of her during those hours. It’s much more pronounced now that she is in FT school than it was at Montview where it was just a three-hour day or 5.5-hour days at kindergarten at Montview.

My three years with London before she went to Montview are years I absolutely loved. That’s not to say they were without struggle, but they were great. We had a lot of freedom. Now I have that opportunity with Camden. Of course, the pandemic has made the last year very difficult, but 2021 is going to be better. We have renewed memberships at the zoo and the DMNS and I hope to have more daytime adventures with Camden, more like the years I had with London, hopping from one museum to another with stops at the zoo and long lost parks in between.

For a long time now I have had this goal of being a SAHD until Camden goes to school either part-time or full-time. There is a possibility of him going to FT preschool [he did not]. If that works then my time as a FT SAHD is going to end I think. I have no idea what I will do next. Sometimes I think coaching swimming might be in my future once again. But collegiately speaking, there are not good options in Colorado. Perhaps something a little more low-key, but I don’t like the idea of that becoming a major chapter in my career arc.

I can predict the future though. Whatever I do next and until my life ends I will be grateful for these years. I will likely look back on them as the best of our lives. It hurts so much to know that they come to an end. I would choose to relive all of this again; all of the strife, the scary days, the difficult and dark days, and all of the loneliness that comes with being a SAHD, just so that I could have my loving 3-yr-old Camden and 7-yr-old London run into my arms again and again, without ever tiring of it. So, yeah, I do love what I do.