I am lucky. I officially have the greatest job on earth. I hadn’t really realized it, but having lately thought about what I am going to do with my life, I realized that it is not ever going to get better than this. So, I am going to revel in it while it lasts.
Being a stay at home dad wasn’t always the bomb, though. When I was 25, if you would have offered me a job whose chief qualities were getting thrown up on and corralling handfuls of human feces, I would have politely declined the assignment. (Unless, of course, the job was at the world’s most bizarre burlesque club.) Somehow, I survived the newborn stage and made it to to toddlerhood, where the job involved corralling an angry mutant, hell bent on biting and hitting anything that moved. Any hint that the mutant wasn’t going to get what he wanted was met with loud tears and even more aggression. Not so fun either. Little preschoolers are nice, but you spend so much time and energy trying to figure out what the fuck they are trying to say that you feel drained at the end of each and every day.
The older preschooler is amazing.
What other job involves naked abacus sessions?
Fully potty trained and able to eat exotic foods like salami, they, for the most part, talk and function like real people! Plus, they no longer just want to sit around the house and play pretend with their horsie. In the past six months, Malcolm and I have: bowled, gone to the horse track (and won!), learned at the museum, gone to a baseball game, golfed, went to the movies and watched a boat load of football on TV. What’s cool about all that stuff? I like to do it, even if my kid isn’t there! That’s right, I get paid to do things that I enjoy doing anyways. How cool it that? OK, so I don’t get paid, but it sure feels like I do!
Sure, the job sometimes gets to me. Then again, all jobs do. As an attorney, I had to leave a Superbowl party early to go look through 20,000 documents to find examples of delivery drivers who peed into gatorade bottles in their trucks. I’ll take an occasional meltdown and a few Mr. Mom wisecracks over that any day. The thing that separates this gig now is that with a little imagination and some patience, you can do whatever you want. And when you can actually enjoy your kid and not have to worry about throw up, diaper changes, mutant attacks or the inability to communicate, then life is sweet. And right now, it is.
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Awwwwweeee…
Wedding Slideshow Picture.
That is an awesome picture!
He is gonna regret doing that someday. Maybe at a wedding, maybe at an inauguration.