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Tag: stay at home dad (Page 1 of 6)

SAHD Friday- A Lack of Naked Barbies….

Hello all.  So I am back to writing my Friday posts all about being a Stay at Home Dad.

Last night I had a strange thought.  I was getting in the shower and there were no naked barbies in the tub.  Let me tell you, there is a creepiness that Mattel never intended with a Barbie doll that is your daughter playing with them in the bath, and subsequently leaving them there.  Without clothes.  Why? “Well Daddy, she can’t bath with her clothes on.”  was the logic from my oldest daughter, though she would probably deny that now.

 

Playing with the barbies in the bath would not be so bad, it is when I would go to take a shower and there were 10 of the things naked in the tub.  Made me feel quite creepy to tell the truth.  But last night there were no naked barbies.  Sure I had to clean up some hot wheels cars and a boat, but no barbies.  I had almost a nostalgic twang before the elation crept in.

 

My kids are growing up.  My youngest daughter is almost 9, and she rarely plays in the bath anymore, and when she does, she cleans up the toys.  The older kids just shower.  It is only my 4 year old son who has the bulk of the bath toys, and his are not barbie.

 

Mainly, I start thinking about how my kids are growing up, and the things that we are losing, or more correctly, just done with.  We start cleaning out things to send to charity, and many of the toys that we have accumulated over the years are not relevant or just not being played with anymore.  We don’t want to hang on to these, we don’t want to move them again.  We have thought about saving some for grandkids to play with in the future, but, looking at it, why bother?  By the time we have grandkids and unpack these wonderful (?) toys that we have saved, the plastic will be brittle, pieces will be lost, and there will be so many other new toys out there that it doesn’t make sense to save anything.

 

Some other things have gone away as well.  My favorite thing to get rid of was the diaper genie.  Now, the diaper pail is a great invention, and the diaper genie is great because it holds in some of the smell, but I’ll tell you, the day we thew that thing in the garbage 2 years ago I danced a jig.  We have finally now got rid of all diapers and pull ups.  Some days I am not sure if that is a good thing or not, it is easier to toss a pull up than wash out tiny underwear, but….I have a whole other post about potty training coming up.

 

In the end, there are some pangs of nostalgia for the things that we had to have when the kids were babies and now don’t need anymore.  There are strange feelings when you realize your daughter, your little girl, the one you held most of the first night when she was born the day before yesterday (now 14 years) now needs deoderant, or a bra….don’t get me started.  Or when your son starts to leak body odor like an Exxon tanker, and it is time for his deoderant.  Or when it is finally time to stop helping your kids bathe because they are just too old and it is not appropriate.

 

Yes there will be new things.  in about a year and a half, there will be a drivers license for my oldest, some pretty significant church stuff for my son, and school starting for the youngest.  Holy cow, I am getting old.  But I wouldn’t trade this for the world.

 

Until later,

 

-Justin

 

 

 

SAHD Friday: The new one slows us all down

This title proves prophetic today.  I had forgotten just how much an infant forces you to slow down certain things.

Over the past 2 weeks I have had to slow down many times, with my writing and housework and yard work.  I have watched more movies and tv shows in the last 2 weeks than I have in the past 6 months when I started this whole online venture.

I have been writing about unplugging the past few days and I think that he has a lot to do with this.  Now, if you have read any of this blog in the past, you know that my family is very important to me.  I love doing things with my kids and I really am excited to watch them grow and develop.

It is so much fun to see them grow and change through all of the ages.  It is fun to see their tastes in music and movies change and mature as they grow.  It is also fun to see what the new one will choose when he can control what to watch.  My 4 year old is finally gtting into some of her own things and not just copying her older sister.  My son has always kind of done his own thing, it will be interesting to see if my new son follows him or does something totally new.

I think it has been good for all of us to just slow down.  It has been good for me to get off of the computer and just hold the baby for a couple of hours at a time.  These are the times you can’t get back if you miss them.  This is exactly why I am a dad.

Being a Stay At Home Dad allows me to see all of these milestones.  These 4 kids I own make me want to work my butt off and be able to stay home with them and all of the things that they accomplish.  I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Have a great weekend!  We get to watch fireworks tomorrow!

-Justin

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why I stay at home, part 1

I am a stay at home dad.  I have touched on this before and I am I will again.  So it may be asked why?  Why is it that I stay home while my wife works.  Well a simple answer is complicated in coming.  Here is part one of a peek into my life so far.  BTW, I have decided I will run my fiction stories on Saturday’s if anyone is interested.

Way back when, after high school I was doing the college thing with my wife (then girlfriend) and things progressed, we got married and she graduated.  She was one of those who has known what she wants to be when she grows up from about 5 years old.  I was not like that.  I am still working on that one.  She wanted to be a Nurse and so she became.

In the meantime we had our first child and when here came to there, we looked at the budget and decided that almost 80% of my income at the time would go to daycare.  We couldn’t justify that so I stayed at home and took online classes working on my degree.

Through this and that our second child came along and the same argument held.  I would be working to pay for daycare and someone else would be raising our kids.  Of everything, that was the most important.  My wife and I would raise our own kids.  We would be responsible for their development and how they turned out.  No one else would be in charge of them.

I think that has had a very positive impact on these kids.  I the “old” days of my parents at least there was not daycare.  When I was a child it was available but I would say most kids were raised by their parents.  As I got older, more kids were being raised by others.  We were not going to let our kids be raised by others.

I did go back to work for about a year when my son was small and my wife was pregnant with our 3rd.  That was hard for the family but it worked.  Things finally were looking around and I was thinking about school again so I quit work in April of 2007 to do that.  Two weeks later my 11 month old had a seizure and was diagnosed with Kidney Failure.  That led to 16 weeks in the hospital to get her regulated and healthy enough to come home.

Nothing But A Pile Of Sticks: Part 4- The Hotel and The Search

Boba Fett

Image by Sam Howzit via Flickr

So by now you know of just some of the crap that has completed our lives here at the Matthews house over the past month and a bit.  I have covered the reality and the move so here is the next chapter in the saga.  I could only wish that this saga chapter four was in any way comparable to another saga chapter four namely “Star Wars”.  But alas, as much as I would like to be, I will never be Boba Fett.
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