I found this good recap of the Annual At-Home Dads Convention, recently held in Raleigh (last year it was in Denver). I agree with nearly everything in the article except for this:
“Minivans are cool now. They’re all tricked out.”
Parenting
SAHD Guidelines for Music Class
Yesterday was my first music class with London. I need to write some things down so I remember them for the next nine classes to come…
Try as hard as you can to act like there is another dad in the room. You are the only one, but be as comfortable as if there were three other SAHDs present.
Try not to sweat when you’re feeling like all eyes are on you because all eyes aren’t on you. It just feels that way because you’re the only SAHD there. 
Just in case you do sweat a lot like yesterday, wear a darker shirt. Yesterday you wore a light blue shirt and within ten minutes you had a band of belly sweat visible on your shirt and by the end of the class it was impossible to hide the fact that you were pitting out.
Don’t drink a venti iced coffee from Starbucks right before music class. Trying to pee while holding London is not as easy as it once was. And yesterday you had to do it twice, right before class and immediately afterward.
Take pride in the fact that the first toddler on toddler assault yesterday was not London’s doing, but don’t forget to corral her if she starts winding up for a nice slap across the face, her customary greeting for babies.
If the opportunity arises, share London’s age. From past experience, I know there has to be someone there wondering why there is a three-year-old acting like a sixteen-month-old. Well, let them down gently, it’s because she is sixteen months old.
Also, be kind to anyone if they assume I am babysitting. Just because I am a dad and I am here with my daughter does not mean I am babysitting. I am parenting. No parent should feel like they are babysitting their own kid.
Do not assume a child’s age. Yes, he or she might be significantly smaller than London, but they might be six months to a a year older.
Just try to fit in. Try not to think of yourself as the pariah. You won’t be if you remember these things you’ve written down here. Oh yeah, and don’t sweat as much.
Ten Insults SAHDs Hear
I read this great article yesterday. A stay-at-home dad writes about the ten insults he hears as a SAHD.
All of them are so accurate and pretty universal. I think I have heard eight out of ten. I have yet to hear, “It must be nice not to work” and “Seriously, you change diapers?”
Great read. Here’s the link.
What Makes You Happy?
With encouragement from my wife, I am very slowly reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. I have enjoyed reading about Rubin’s year-long journey to a happier life.
The book includes a nice mix of practical and philosophical advice for a happier life. In 
the last chapter I read, Rubin spent a fair amount of time writing about what makes her happy. She kept asking herself, am I happy doing this? She asked her readers, what makes you happy? In response, Rubin and her blog readers concluded that what truly makes them happy is not always what they wish made them happy. For example, Rubin might be happiest being at home reading a book without interruption, but in her mind she is tormented by the thought that she might be happier on a hike even though she knows perfectly well that is not going to make her as happy.
Since reading the chapter I have been thinking about what sort of activities make me happy. At this point in my life, being able to do something without interruption makes me happiest. It does not really matter what that something is. If I can sit down and watch a movie without interruption, I am thrilled. Read a chapter of a book without being interrupted? So refreshing and invigorating. Refinishing an end table for our living room without an interruption? This actually give me a strong sense of accomplishment, which combined with the effort it takes to refinish furniture, gives me a lasting happiness that helps me through the menial tasks of SAHD duty: diaper changes, bottle service, dishes, laundry, house-cleaning, etc.
So, today, I set out to do a few things without interruption. One, go to Novo Coffee and read a couple of articles in Vanity Fair without interruption (done). Two, write a blog without interruption (currently in progress). Three, go home and eat lunch while watching an hour of television without interruption (coming soon). Four, work on refinishing an end table without the worry of being interrupted (also, coming soon).
Time for number three.
Buy Me A Beer
No one knows what it is like to be a stay-at-home parent unless they have
done it themselves.
Maybe you watched your kids for a long weekend so your spouse could get a break. Maybe you watched your kids for a week while your spouse was away. Maybe you actually used all your paternity or maternity leave after your child was born. These are all great things to do. Necessary, in my view.
But doing all of those stints with your kid doesn’t give you enough experience to know what being a stay-at-home parent (SAHP) is like.
There is an end you can see in all three scenarios mentioned above. Of course, for SAHDs or SAHMs, there is also an end, but well beyond the horizon and out of sight. As a SAHD, I’m not yearning for the end of this job, but until you grasp the permanence of staying at home, you haven’t gotten a taste for the real thing.
And then you must prepare yourself because that’s the tip of the iceberg. There are so many challenging aspects of stay-at-home parenting. I have mentioned some of them in previous posts: limited adult-to-adult communication, a decent dose of isolation, the fact that you’re not making money, and facing the stigma associated with being a SAHD, which is certainly one thing SAHDs have to deal with a little more than SAHMs.
So why am I writing about this? Well, it’s long overdue. I have talked to too many people since becoming a SAHD who have never been a SAHD or SAHM themselves who imply that they know what it is like. Yet, we don’t do this in conversations with other professionals (and yes, I’m implying that I’m a professional and, once again, if you don’t get that, you’ve never been a stay-at-home parent) like doctors, accountants, or teachers. We don’t assume to know what daily challenges they face because we once used an epipen, did our own taxes using TurboTax, or completed a math problem on a chalkboard for an audience, respectively. So why do so many people assume they know the day-to-day ups and downs of SAHDs and SAHMs because they spend the weekend around their kids?
Because they assume it is easy. They assume it just must be like the weekend over and over again. How hard can that be?
I think the real problem is that being a stay-at-home parent is not viewed and talked about as a real job by enough people. Too many people talk about it as a hobby. I cannot tell you how far from the truth calling this a hobby is. Hopefully, I’ve conveyed that from time to time on this blog.
Next time you find yourself talking to a SAHP, treat them like a professional, understand that they work 80 hours a week, and buy them a beer because they don’t have a paycheck.
“Do you get to stay home with mommy?”
For over a year now I have been telling people that I stay at home with my daughter. Response to this news falls into two categories.
First response: dismay, followed by an awkward pause in the conversation while 
recipient of the news digests what I have told them. Their inability to register that there are such people as stay-at-home dads (SAHDs) is obvious on their face and the direction in which the conversation now moves. They typically switch the topic, pointing out London’s cute outfit or smile, etc.
I get this response mostly from older generations. Just the other night after a meal out, I was standing outside of the restaurant holding London. An older woman started talking to us. She was admiring London. The conversation was going well. I love talking with strangers who want to hear about London. Staring at London, the woman asked her, “Do you get to stay home with mommy?”
“No, she gets to stay home with me,” I said it as proudly and happily as possible and looked at her for a reaction. I saw it. A band of confusion moved across her face like a TVs signal being interrupted. God bless her, she tried to recover, but it sure seemed like she had never met a stay-at-home dad before. I also get the feeling that these people assume my role as a SAHD is strictly temporary.
Second response: surprise (but not as much as the people in the first response), excitement, support, and curiosity about meeting a SAHD. Usually these people immediately tell me how awesome it is that I stay at home with my daughter. They tell me that I am doing a great thing. Unlike the first group, people who give me the second response do not assume I dislike this job or am just doing it for a short period of time. Not surprisingly, people in this group are younger and, because of their response, much better to talk to after the SAHD genie is out of the bottle.
Consider this a public service announcement. When you meet a SAHD today, next week, next year, or whenever, give them the second response. You might make their day and make a new friend.
Blogging Away Resistance
You may have noticed that for a while in the late spring and early summer I was writing a lot on here. Every weekday I would sit down and write something. I was going strong. I was practicing my craft and sharing whatever came to mind. Traffic to the blog steadily increased too.
And then nothing.
Two-week and three-week blocks would pass without me writing anything at all. And when I wrote, the posts weren’t so much related to raising London at all. There were a few book reviews and a little something about Jon Stewart’s last show.
Some of this absence is explained by some summer and spring trips. We are once again free to move about the country with no complications other than those standard hiccups that come with a baby (even though she wears 3T clothing, she’s still technically a baby).
The rest of the absence can be attributed to me thinking it is healthy to take a break from writing every so often and then just a dearth of ideas. The writing break I’ve always been a fan of. It is healthy, but this break has been unhealthily long due to this creeping feeling that I am just contributing to the noise, that is, the saturation of our world by parenting blogs.
I have been having an internal debate about what is worthy of writing about. There is a part of me that wants to write as much as I can on here. And there is also this part that just does not want to spew forth words just for the sake of it. There is a part of me that realizes the stupidity in having a blog about fatherhood. There are thousands of them out there. And there have been billions of fathers before I became a father. What do I have to contribute to fatherhood that has not already been contributed? Is there anything original for me to unearth, create, or ideate?
Well, for a while now the part of me that answers no to that question has been winning the debate. And I think that is the resistance Steven Pressfield writes about in his amazing work, The War of Art.
Coming up with words to share on this blog is moderately difficult for me. But giving into resistance and batting away those words while admonishing myself for ever thinking they were worth putting out there is very, very easy to do. This is the “War of Art,” and it is so unbelievably hard to be in when you think of yourself as a creative, whether you are drawing, writing, painting, sculpting, photographing, or whatever it is that you create.
I have not written these words anywhere else. Sitting down with my computer now and explaining my absence was as much for me as it was for the followers of this blog. I hope it means I return to regular blogging, but even as I write this I fear the next time the fuel gauge reads empty. That thought alone is almost enough to put a halt to the journey right this minute, but I am not there yet.
Pressfield writes that resistance will bury you. Okay, maybe I was a little buried there for a while, but for now, for now I am above ground.
Busy, Writing, and Travel
Taken the weekend of our first overnight trip with London.
It’s been a busy week around here and I’ve not found the time to sit down and write a new post, for which I have some guilt and disappointment. This is the toughest thing about keeping a blog like this. There is so much material to delve into, but not enough time to do the delving. On certain days, not getting the opportunity to do that really stings.
We are going to the mountains tomorrow for a couple of nights. My parents are meeting us there. We hope to catch some fall color and to just be away from Denver for a little bit of time. Writing that reminded me of the shock I had in May when I realized that I had not been out of Denver for more than a few hours since London was born. There was one short trip to Fort Collins for a baby shower. That was it. If I had mapped my location during the three and a half months London was in the NICU, you could see a very heavy line from home to hospital and then tiny little branches breaking off from that. Each brach representing a trip to a restaurant, grocery store, or a coffee run. I kid you not, there was no more variety to my destinations for 109 days. Hospital, home, restaurant, grocery store, and coffee shop.
Now that London is home we get a little further out from the house and with greater frequency, but it is still a challenge to compare our range now as a family versus what it was a year ago. Luckily, as London ages and strengthens our travel radius from home will lengthen out to something closely resembling the old, have freedom, will travel, spirit of the pre-London era.
the FoCo dad 