Hell Hour.

Hell hour begins the moment my wife walks through the front door and lasts until Taylor’s bath time. My wife cannot wait to kick off her nursing shoes, hang her canvas tote bag in the foyer, strip off her scrubs, take a shower, and unwind from her stressful day with a few minutes in front of the mindless TV. I, on the other hand, after spending the last ten hours caring for Taylor cannot wait to hand her off, finish preparing and cooking dinner, open a beer, and talk to a real, live adult about anything. Regardless of what we want, squealing with joy and frantically waving her arms, all Taylor wants to do is jump into the arms of her mother! Hell hour, as described by Peter Baylies in his book The Stay-At-Home Dad Handbook, are the hours that can make or break your day, marriage, or your sanity. Hell, and the havoc that briskly follows on its heals, unveils itself in our house at 3:45 and withdraws around 6:45 p.m.– just in time for my wife to make her escape to the serenity of a quiet bedroom and for me to begin Taylor’s bedtime routine.

I first encountered these hours from hell coming home from work while my wife watched Taylor three days a week. (The other days Taylor was in childcare or in grandma’s hands.) Virtually every one of these days for the first four months my wife and I were irritated with one another: my wife wanted to hand Taylor over to me so she could quickly pull together dinner and begin her college work; and I wanted an extra half-hour to take a shower and change before attending to Taylor for the remainder of the night. We both felt taken for granted. We became frustrated, and we argued about these transitions three days a week. It was only when our roles were reversed and I was the one waiting at home for my wife to walk through the front door that I clearly saw the folly of my ways and understood, for the first time, what torture Hell hour was for my wife when I was the one walking through that same door.

In time, we have developed a strategy to rein in these uncontrollable hours of hell and share the responsibilities of childcare before they get out of hand. While my wife and I still desire our individual reprieves, we now meet each other half way. Taylor still wants her mom more than anything in the world when she comes home, but my wife, now, snatches her off her feet and hugs, caresses, talks to, and plays with her for several minutes before passing her back to me. Our playtime together is then brought to unprecedented levels in an attempt to distract Taylor for a few minutes while Mom quickly settles into her new role, mommy. For the next two hours my wife takes over as the primary care giver while I immerse myself in finalizing dinner, escape upstairs for my nighttime shower, and finish whatever chores left undone. By 6:45 I return, refreshed, to the role of the primary provider, while my wife is able to say her good-nights and retreat to the solitude of our bedroom until it is time to put Taylor to bed.

Our after-work routine is not perfect; it is wrought with compromise. In a compromise neither side gets all they desire, but for now it is working for us.

Routines.

As a stay-at-home father there are days, like today, that I feel like one arm is tied behind my back, one leg is anchored by a lead weight, my cognitive abilities are awash in emotions, and I still have to function as a loving, caring, concerned father and husband who has been tasked with several “must do” errands in and outside of the house until my wife’s reprieve. Thank God for routines.

At one time my wife juggled three responsibilities at once: going to college, working during the weekends, and motherhood, while I taught high school English Monday through Friday. During this time Taylor spent a portion of her waking hours in childcare. This was a time when Taylor was “out of sight, and out of mind” while I was at work. That is not to say I did not think of her and absolutely abhor the idea of a stranger raising our daughter (hence, one of the reasons I’m at-home now), but for five days a week I had a break from the endless and sometimes mundane childrearing regimen. It was only when I began my new career as an at-home father that I realized when it becomes you who is there when your daughter first wakes, it is you who changes, dresses, feeds, plays, reads to, attends to, and places her down for a nap, on top of doing the housecleaning, grocery shopping, and dinner planning and cooking, that you realize there is a lot more that goes on behind the scenes than you first imagined. I have no idea how I would survive my days at home without the structure routines create out of chaos.

It has taken me quite some time to figure out how and why creating routines with my daughter is important. I thought, like many others who have never experienced the joys and headaches of staying at-home with an infant, that, my days would be filled with ample downtime and leisure to work on and complete projects at will. I imagined my mornings lounging on the living room couch, reading an online newspaper, and slowly sipping my coffee, while my contented baby played with her toys at my feet. Well, I wish that dream was a reality. The reality is that a hungry baby wants to be fed, grabs everything in sight (especially, computer screens and coffee mugs!), and demands constant attention after slumbering away ten hours of their night. Without the routines I have established there would be no possible way I could even begin to enjoy some of the downtime that finds its way into my afternoon.

Much like the birth of our daughter, I had no idea what I was to encounter my first few weeks alone with her. I remember journaling “Okay, today is my first day. Now what?” Followed by a list of prospective fun things we could do together like finger painting, visiting a petting zoo, and attending an outdoor concert. However, I quickly determined that a five-month year old does not possess the most rudimentary fine motor skills needed to keep paint off his or her face, the carpet, or the cat. And it takes more than will power and obstinacy to plan a trip or spend several hours away from the convenience of a crib, changing station, running water, a clean carpet, and a variety of toys.

The routines I have established with Taylor are mediocre at best, designed to make it through the day more than optimize our time together, but I’m learning. Most disconcerting for me has been Taylor’s nap and bedtime schedule; they have, therefore, become the two routines I have focused on extensively. Other routines, such as her morning routine, preparing for a car ride routine, and feeding routine make life easier for both of us: For her, she knows what is coming and what to expect. For me, it gives me a quick look into whether or not she is ready to perform the desired task I ask of her. I cannot explain how complementary it is for complete strangers to say, “I can’t believe how calm, peaceful, and happy your baby is. You don’t even have to bribe her to stay quiet!” No, I don’t. She is quiet because she knows it is, for instance, shopping time. She knows because I prepared her for the car ride, prepped her for the hour long grocery store shuffle, and created a check list so that we can get in and get out of the store as quickly as possible. She is calm and quiet because I have done my part: I changed her before leaving for the store, fed her before entering the store, brought one of her favorite teething toys for her to play with, and she knows as soon as we finish shopping it becomes uninterrupted play time with daddy until mommy gets home.

As we enter the cold season I wonder how it will affect our routines. Already her cheeks are red and chapped by the wind and cold weather from being out on the playground. I imagine over the next few days I’ll begin creating a stricter routine schedule, which details not only household chores but out-of-the-house activities as well, especially since I will be beginning my first online course after the holidays. Routines work. Although they are not as much fun as spur of the moment adventures, they are a necessity to successfully navigate one’s day with a happy baby in tow.

Another Milestone.

Taylor reached another growth milestone the other day. With her ankles and little pink Robeez shoes suspended over the lip of the infant car seat and the five-point shoulder strap unable to comfortably lie across her shoulders without stubbornly rubbing against her neck, she has outgrown her rear-facing car seat. When did she grow so much? Is she really over 22 lbs. and 26 inches long? It seems like only yesterday she was wearing 6/9-month infant clothes; and now her barely fitting, dragonfly embroidered dungarees look more like a pair of capris on her than Levis!

I remember how excited I was my first few days at home with Taylor before the responsibilities of becoming the primary caregiver had sunk in. I intended to treat those first few days as a mini vacation before creating those dreaded routines I had read about in the What to Expect books and our first few free copies of Parenting magazine we sent away for while waiting in the delivery room at the local hospital nearly nine months ago. I have never been one for creating routines. My style, as affably commented on by a good friend last year and quickly seconded by the high school students I taught, can be described as organic. I have always enjoyed wandering off the beaten path, becoming lost in the details, and drinking my morning coffee lackadaisically throughout the day. Little did I know on June 20th, 2007 those days were over.

I was a rookie at-home father for about a week before the severity of the staying at-home decision forced me to make a choice: remain a rookie and flounder for the next year or learn how to become a veteran childcare professional. While I still feel like I am transitioning between being the primary moneymaker and the primary provider, at least understand my new job a little better.

My growth as a stay-at-home father has paralleled Taylor’s physical sprouting. At first, the two of us were stuck inside our small apartment, venturing out only for groceries, stamps, and the occasional trip to the bookstore. The hazy, hot, and humid Vermont weather caused prickly heat rashes to flare up across her sensitive pale skin as quickly as my fear of public scrutiny curtailed our movements outside the home. What would I do if she started crying uncontrollably in the grocery store line or if she pooped while I was contemplating buying a Herman Melville or Nicolas Sparks novel at Borders? My God, what would people think? Is this guy a doofus? Where’s the baby’s mother? Like the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, I felt the world staring down and judging me. And I “knew” they were staring at me, because I am a man doing a “woman’s” job, right; shame on me.

The cooling weather of late summer and early fall, her physical growth, “grandma’s” constant support and advise, and the self confidence in my abilities to take care of whatever problems arose magnified 100 fold the pleasures of staying at-home. Oh, I also learned that dishes should be washed immediately after their use, the stove’s surface is not self cleaning, dinner takes a lot longer to prepare than it ever did, laundry is now my responsibility and all articles of clothing do have their own particular place on the shelf, creating a home environment, that means, at the very least, dusting and vacuuming, needs to be done more than once per week, and my wife works hard at her job. I cannot expect that when she walks through the front door it is like a tag-team wrestling match: she is not “it” and I should not expect her to take over watching, caring, and entertaining Taylor the moment she finishes with her shower.

As Taylor passes her ninth month of life I feel like my gestational period of being a brand new stay-at-home father is also passing. I am making progress by bringing her to new places and meeting new people, even when she is fussy or tired; long drives are considered a mere nuisance not a short-term imprisonment, and routines, like the dreaded bedtime routine, are considered challenges and not hindrances.

This winter holds great promise. Already we are planning trips to both sets of families, my parents to the north and my wife’s family to the south. Between now and then I am finding new places to visit with her, looking for playgroups to join, since the playing outside is getting a little cold, and finding new ways to help her look at old things in a new way. Over the next several months we’ll continue our growth together and slowly experience life in a whole new, confident way.

O! Neighbors of Mine.

O! How does it feel,
Oh neighbors of mine,
To waken from slumber divine,
And feel as if you were waken from steal wailing on steal?

To wake, blurred vision from your doze, forty winks, siesta, and beauty sleep
By the crying babe of mine.
And you can do nothing but ponder in the deep,
Dark night and ask, “Where the hell is that noise coming from?”

It’s from a teething tot,
An aching little girl.
Whose mouth lacks the comfort
That we all have, because hers dos make her shrill.

Welcome to the neighborhood my collegial friends,
Oh yes! I do mind your underage, drunken parties,
Loud muffler, romps and rants and Play station games, nightly, relentless.
Oh yes! It was I who called the landlord the other night to end your soirees.

How does it set,
To be disturbed while you slept,
And be at the losing end of the neighborly apartment pact?
You ask how I feel about your time lost?

Sarcastically… egregious.
But now she’s sleeping just wonderfully, thank you for asking–
No thanks to you, your phony kindness,
Or the pounding on the wall at three in the morning.

Goodnight,
Sweet dreams,
Oh neighbors of mine!

Grandpa's Homemade Thanksgiving Gifts.

Bedtime Dilemma.

“All you need is a belt of scotch,” my father suggests, “that’ll help out your bedtime routine.”

“For me or for the baby?” I inquire.

If there is one thing my wife and I cannot agree upon it is in the consistent implementation of our daughter’s bedtime routine. We have the easy part of the routine down. Around seven o’clock the bathwater is filled. For the next fifteen minutes it is wash and splash time in the sink; between 7:30 – 8:30 it is peekaboo time, block time, ball rolling time, music time, etc., and when she begins rubbing her nose and forehead back and forth on the play quilt it is story time. I love story time. The problem however, begins around 8:30 and on rare occasions lasts later than10 p.m. The bedtime separation anxiety our daughter experiences and the crying which follows at least three or four times a week is enough to break one’s heart and stretch one’s patience.

Putting our daughter down for the night has not always been an issue. For the first six months after our daughter was born we subscribed to the theory that our daughter will fall asleep for the night when she falls asleep. This method seemed to work perfectly for the first six weeks when she slept about as much as she was awake, before gradually falling out of favor. By the third and fourth month this method, known as systematic awakening, clearly was not working– but we had no choice. My wife, working part-time on the weekends and finishing up nursing school as a full-time student during the weekdays, needed her sleep. Me, I was working full-time and had a good friend who kept my caffeine drip filled throughout the morning, an excellent mentor teacher providing me with decades of sacred lesson plans, and enough teaching materials from prior employment, liberated resources (thank you RJH!), and life experience to at least slosh my way through the workday with puffy, bloodshot eyes and dragging feet.

Our daughter’s bedtime routine is complicated by the fact that she is still sleeping in our bedroom. I know, I know; her crib needs to be moved to another room. Unfortunately we are stuck in an old, small apartment and between what we want to do and what can be done. Sadly, our second bedroom is not heated. With the outdoor temperatures quickly dropping into the teens we feel we have little choice but to suffer the consequences of sharing our bedroom with our daughter.

I have read up on the different methods and techniques to put the little one down for the night, and boy are there are a lot of them! But putting her down is not the problem. The problem is keeping her down for the night. I subscribe to the cold turkey theory of slumber. While letting baby “cry it out” does sound harsh and cruel, it works– at least it worked for a little while. My wife, on the other hand, endorses the Ferberizing “conditioning” method. This tactic, named for Dr. Richard Ferber, involves repeatedly soothing and consistently decreasing the amounts of reassurance, in the forms of a back rub, pat or whisper of love, from mom or dad. From my point of view, the problem with the Ferberizing method is that it takes too long for the conditioning to condition, and it is much too easy when one is tired to scoop baby out of the crib, rock her back and forth, or put her on the our bed until she either stops crying or falls asleep from sheer exhaustion, which is exactly what we should not be doing at 9:30 at night!

I’m not saying that the cold turkey method works all the time, it hasn’t. While I have accepted that my daughter will probably cry a little if she is not as ready for sleep as I want her to be, the cold turkey method also too easily dismisses the signs and symptoms of other issues (teething, for instance) and chalks up the baby’s crying up to fussiness. And any set of parents can tell you a crying baby to a mother is comparable to pricking oneself with a tack– neither can be ignored for a prolonged period of time. So what is the solution?

In The Republic, Plato says it is impossible for one to know what they do not want without first knowing what they want. I know that when nine o’clock rolls around I am more than ready to place our daughter down for the night, turn on my 15 watts reading light, open one of the novels sitting on my nightstand and relax for the next hour. I have accepted that my daughter will probably cry a little if she is not as ready for sleep as I want her to be. I can accept that; my wife cannot– hence our bedtime woes.

As we struggle to compromise or find an absolute solution to our bedtime dilemmas, pray for us. Pray that our daughter will miraculously be able to read our minds and fall asleep at the convenient hour of 7:30 p.m. and sleep, uninterrupted, until 7:30 the following morning; or pray that we are blessed with the knowledge of figuring this problem out; or pray that someone out there knows what we should be doing.

Doesn’t she know that sleep is a good thing?

Traveling With an Infant.

One dry-sack, two stuff sacks, one tank bag, a few nylon straps, and a couple of bungee cords¬– that’s all I needed to carry our camping gear, clothing, and personals for a two week motorcycling trip. Our packing motto was “If you didn’t bring it, you don’t need it.” Oh, how things have changed! I never could have imagined how much effort one needs to put into planning and executing a simple five-hour trip when there is a baby in the back seat.

I used to love to travel. Give me a destination, a tote bag to fill with some clothes, a full tank of gas, and a cup of coffee for the early morning start, and I could be on the road in half an hour; and I would be comfortable. It does not work that way anymore. Now I need to make a list to remember all those crucial items needed to survive a few days away from the abode with baby: Similac, Beech Nut jars, rubber covered spoons, paper towels, travel highchair, folding crib, infant Tylenol, diapers, more diapers, wet-wipes, toys, baby blankets, flower-patterned bodysuits, etc., etc., etc.

This weekend’s list was created 24 hours in advance, items checked when found, brought up or downstairs, and crossed off when stacked by the backdoor for the chilly early morning car-loading extravaganza under the 75 watts porch light. The time it took to prepare and load all of the supplies required for the two-day stay several hours away from home was daunting. I never imagined how much “stuff” one family needs away from home with a baby. I cannot help but think that it was not all that long ago I quietly mocked the flocks of caravans loaded with kids and half their house and garage as they traveled down the highway towards some weekend getaway.

Every care was taken to prepare for our trip: a checklist, a visual check, and a second set of eyes to make sure we had it all. Ironically, the one item we forgot to pack was the first item we needed– the baby bottle nipple. Fifteen minutes and a bout of crying later we purchased the wrong Dr. Brown’s Natural Flow nipple, twice. Another hour of calming a now hot (from crying), wet (the milk’s got to go somewhere), and fussy baby our little angel finally descended into an untroubled sleep outside of Hartford, CT. The remainder of the trip was spent in relative peace and quiet. Even after she woke up as we bounced across the George Washington Bridge in New York City, our little one remained playfully content all the way to our destination.

We are now in the market for a mini van. Yuck! But, the idea of being able to fit all our new “necessities” in the back of a vehicle and having the luxury of being able to move to the backseat to take care of the tot without stopping, posthaste, off the interstate is alluring.

What did we learn from this experience? First, the checklist worked. The nipple overlook was an anomaly. If anything, we over-packed. Second, the more room in the vehicle the easier it would have been to care for the baby. Stopping on the interstate or at rest areas every couple of hours to jump in the backseat caused more dangers to passing cars than the emissions a larger vehicle would cause to the ozone layer. And third, one must be flexible. As the old adage goes “Ya get there when ya get there.” I, more than my wife, nearly lost my cool on the drive down. It is frustrating having to lean over the front seat and into the backseat with a bottle or toy in tote to soothe a bored baby as one’s spine is compressed against the vehicle’s ceiling.

With all the setbacks, new experiences, and frustrations traveling a reasonable distance with an infant is more than possible– just be prepared for the inevitably unforeseen stumbling and bumbling along the way!

The Decision.

The decision for one of us, my wife or me, to stay home with our little girl was an easy one. Both of us grew up in strong, loving, caring home environments and we adamantly believe that it is our responsibility as parents to provide our daughter an equivalently strong, loving, and caring home environment as she matures. As for which one of us was to stay home…I qualified best for that job.

Three years ago I walked away from a good career in policing. The pay was competitive, health benefits were excellent, and the city possessed an attractive pension. In other words, there was a lot to lose by leaving. But the job was killing me from the inside out. Job stress, more than any other factor, caused me to reconsider what a twenty-five year stint in blue would inevitably do to my health. The statistics, provided by the esteemed Cooper Institute in Houston, Texas, could not be more telling: The average life expectancy of a retired police officer is ten years. Ten years! No thank you. The physiological and psychological affect of stress on a police officer, whether from working in a large city or a small town, has been compared to the PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) soldiers recovering from combat zones experience. The primary difference between the two is the intensity and the longevity of the stressors. Obviously a soldier will experience a greater and more intense stress in battle than an officer ever will on the street. However, the police officer does experience the same unrelenting hyper-awareness– only the police officer experiences it five days a week, 52 weeks a year, for 25 years. For me, the writing was on the wall after only a few years on the job. I knew that if I wanted to enjoy my life before and after retirement I needed to get out. I did. I returned to graduate school, earned a master’s degree, and began teaching in the public school system. Around the same time, my wife also returned to school and has recently earned her RN degree.

Financially, my wife’s profession easily pays double what I make as a teacher. It did not take long for us to determine which one of us would remain at home: me. How many years will I be the primary provider (an idiom I’ve subscribed to myself)? I am not sure. But for now my job is to raise our daughter in a world that still frowns on the idea of a household where the mother works full-time and the father is a "Mr. Mom."

A little more about me.

We started our family a little later than some. Thank God my wife and I look younger than we actually are! I like to think that our age gives us the wisdom to overcome the stumbling blocks of youthful, emotional, and sometime irrational decisions younger parents make. Yet, maybe my wisdom is little more than a mixture of some life experience, a dash of higher education, a splash of pride, and all of it whipped up with a whole lot of wishful thinking and reflection. Whatever it may be, I am doing the best I can to raise our daughter in a world fraught with scary characters, iniquitous schemes, and seemingly irrepressible vanity.

Over the last dozen or more years I’ve spent my calling working as a police officer and a public high school teacher. Needless to say my point of view sometimes points in odd directions– contrary to the commercial opinions expressed by the masses. I would like to think that those jobs, and the countless other menial jobs I’ve held over the last twenty-plus years, has sharpened my outlook on life, politics, society, and our educational system. Maybe it has.

My life changed at the dawning of 2007 with the birth of our daughter; it changed once again when I quit work to be a stay-at-home father. I’ve thought about blogging for sometime. I have decided to do it for two reasons: First, practice makes perfect. I plan to return to the classroom at some point in time. Writing, like any skill, quickly becomes rusty without constant attention. Second, I love to write; and perhaps what I have to say can be of use to someone else– only time can tell.