Being a stay at home dad

I was at a friends wedding the other day, a thoroughly enjoyable affair and far to long in the making, 9 years to be precise.

As with these types of occasions, you end up talking to lots of people from all sorts of backgrounds and places. Our table, for example, had my wife and I, two friends from Boston, USA, a couple from Wales and another from Australia. There was a mix of ages too, with one couple being grandparents, one being parents to older children who had left home and a couple who had young twins (our American friends), so quite a mix on our table.

Now, our friends knew what I did and think its good, they even have a Manny, aka a male nanny, that looks after their twins. But the other older couples were surprised about it. There was lots of talk about changing times and "back in our day" lines, but generally they were positive about it. I think they weren't so positive to the fact that my wife said that she didn't think things would work the other way around and that she wouldn't want to be a stay at home mum.

But why? I know history would tell us that its tube women that raise the children, but these days, in our times of sexual equality and all the nonsense thatgoes with it, why shouldn't a man raise children. What is it that my wife can do that I can't? Or vice versa? Personally I think personality counts for more, ability is always going to be important but if you don't have the tempetment and personality for it,it will never work.

My wife is great with the kids, better than I am in some respects, but she's a go gutter type. She's driven to succeed, always pushing herself and her boundaries, something I don't think the routine of children would satisfy. Me, I'm happy plodding, I like the routine, knowing that each Monday I'll be doing x, and Tuesday y. Every week is the same, except school holidays, and that suits me, everyday is different for the wife and that suits her.

So, how to change perceptions and ideas? I doubt we ever will, at least not in my life time, as few want to. Plus were going against generations of nature. Did you know that one of the highest levels of divorce in the UK is amongst families with stay at home fathers? (That's percentage wise amongst total families with stay at home fathers) And most are iniated by the wives? Yet when things are the other way around the percentages are no different from average?

Personally I don't care for stereo types and averages, it works for us and that's what matters.

Holidays home

There might be a few random posts over the next couple of weeks as were on holiday.

First post is gonna be about the holiday home, or rather apartment as it is. Now the place isn't that bad, well decorated and furnished but there are some things that let it down.

I mean, ok simple things like no oven gloves or kitchen roll, half a spare toilet roll ( in a 6 person house) and pans big enough to boil a single egg in.  The more important things like not mentioning the 6 flights of quite narrow and steep stairs, the bathroom being 2 floors away from the bedrooms. Oh and no stair gates or similar, not good with 2 little ones, both of which are use to toddling down the hallway to find us.

Were all in the same room, so that's not a problem when were sleeping, but its not going to make for a restful night before then!

DIY

So, right now most of my free time, and by free time I mean childless time, is being spent decorating the young ladies new room. Now, when most people decorate they will buy a tin of paint and slap it on the wall, not so in our house! To start the decoration process we took down one of the walls.

Now this might seem like a bit of an extreme thing to do, however, the old wall was somewhat wobbly and a little underwhelming forwhat will be a child bedroom. The new one will be a lotmore substantial and will give a little bit of extra space in the room, along with improving the layout.

Its all pretty easy right now, nothing complex, just some rewiring for the new lights and sticking up some stud work and plaster board.

The upturned stool is acting as child guard! Toddlers and power tools don't mix very well!

By the time that this post goes on-line, I'm hoping to have put the skirting and door frame on.