Ada Updates!

It’s been over a month since I’ve fallen into the role of stay-at-home dad.  The transition at times has been extremely difficult. Barriers to my full metamorphosis into super dad stem from my prior work responsibilities and commitments. While I’m scrubbing Ada’s sticky feces into the toilet, I’m also planning nonprofit meetings and conferences. While milk becomes scalding hot in the bottle “warmer”, I shoot of a couple phone calls to donors. While Ada naps, I work. When Ada’s up, I work. When I’m chopping onions, boiling water, grating cheese, and flipping cardboard pages in an animal book, I work.

Finding equilibrium in a schedule that is so topsy-turvy is literally impossible. At times I find myself reflecting on the fact that I’m doing both of my jobs—being a father and a nonprofit administrator—half-heartedly, leaving much to be desired. I guess it’s the plight of all working parents in today’s America. However, it doesn’t mean I have to like it. I understand that some of my fellow Americans have horrific notions of what “socialized” Europe does to people and morals, but I want to assure you that what they do for families is LEAPS AND BOUNDS better for family stability and child-rearing.  In fact, just this past week, I read an article discussing Germany’s recent move to make both paternal and maternal leave mandatory. The ability afforded young parents to stay at home with job security and pay is a luxury too few Americans and children are able to enjoy.

The business of my day-to-day routine, while it brings stress, also fosters joy and feelings of accomplishment. Just recently I returned from a challenging trip to Moldova, and I’ve begun to relish watching Ada progress and develop. Whenever there is a small victory during the day, like when Ada, squeezing and flexing her abdominal muscles, sits up to look me square in the face, a rush of what you could call “positive vibes” envelopes my body from hair follicle (in my case, literally, hair FOLLICLE) to toe nail. Ada is beginning to see clearly and in color. She has begun imprinting my face (and eyes and nose and ears) into her memory. When she looks at me, she leans in extremely close (like so close her-nose-grazes-my-nose close) and darts her eyes back and forth, looking directly into my pupils. She also rips my glasses off. She wants THE WHOLE FACE, nothing but the face. It’s as if we’ve communicated through our hearts and souls, not through tongues. After all, Ada can’t talk. And if we really did want to communicate in “tongues,” I would be on the losing end of the deal. Her milk breath is literally AWFUL. And her tongue is coated in lactose residue. 

I’m sure none of you want to hear about me, though. Ada has been growing quite a lot. She no longer goes cross-eyed when attempting to focus on a stuffed animal. Nope. To the contrary, her blue eyes are alert and sharp. Her head is constantly darting around as she tries to focus on all the activity of life around her. Just this past week we’ve spent over two hours together in the post office. Ada relished watching the postal worker fold envelopes, stick stamps, and type on the computer. The cacophony and activity of paper ripping and sticking was enrapturing! 

On our daily one-hour walk around the Milwaukee River, Ada notices the vibrant purple flowers of late-blooming New England Astors and tries to reach them. Too bad her arms are only about 10 inches long. She never gets them. So, of course, me being the “good dad” that I am, I rip the flower heads off and gently place them in the palm of her tiny little hand. In two seconds flat, said New England Astor Flower is in her mouth. She spits it out. She hasn’t learned that not all beautiful things are edible.

Ada no longer “eats dirt” or what we would call “face plant” into the rug immediately upon being placed on her stomach. To the contrary, she rears her head up, arches her back, squeals and cries, raises her left hand skyward and orients her body to what I call the “roll-over” position. About two weeks ago, I was giddy when I saw Ada use all her muscles and might to throw herself from tummy-to-back. But now I can honestly say that it’s been the worst thing ever. She is supposed to play on her stomach to strengthen her core muscle areas and arms. Well, Ada is smart and lazy. And has figured out that if I put her on her stomach, all she needs to do is lift up her left arm, roll her head sideways, and let gravity do the rest. And in no time she is on her back, staring up at the hanging plush cloud and stuffed Tucan. She wins. I lose. Every time.

Long gone are the days when Ada couldn’t control her motor functions, let alone stick her hand in a bowl of rice and squeeze the rice into a soupy, slobbery concoction of gruel. But she does that now too. If you put something in front of Ada, it is going to get grabbed: Cat: grabbed and fur pulled; book: ripped and crinkled; bowl of cereal: pulled on top of herself; tomatoes: smashed;  pens, iphones, chips, salsa, fruit, yogurt, bags, glasses, everything is at the mercy of Ada’s trembling hands.  And while Ada has become quite the master of “grip”, she is still learning how to let go. Upon grabbing a toy, she will whip it around in the air about 100 times, realize that she doesn’t want to hold that toy anymore, get frustrated, keep swinging the toy, and the eventually release the toy at such an angle that if goes flying across the room. Every time this happens she wears an expression of surprise and revulsion across her face.

Overall, Ada is well-adjusted. She is full of smiles. And RARELY fusses in public. We’re lucky!

Stay-at-home dad

Jamie has gone back to work.  She has decided to pursue her passion for teaching and has been fortunate enough to receive a full-time teaching position at a local Montessori school, where she’ll be teaching 4^th grade Earth Science and Ancient History. What this means for Ada is something rather shocking: mom will no longer be her primary care-taker. That responsibility lies at my feet. Recently, I read an article discussing the social norms and habits of the Millennial Generation— you know the group of lazy young adults more concerned with driving ink-filled tattoo guns into their skin than actually paying down their record student-loan debt. But I digress. Anyway, true to Millennial form (with my generation’s emphasis on education, inclusiveness, acceptance, and anti-racism) heterosexual couples have relished taking a sledge hammer to the household gender roles of generations’ past--at least in principle. In a recent study done by  a university and subsequently published in the New York Times, it found that nearly 80% of young couples expressed a desire to be more equitable in the rearing of children. Meaning, that a full 80% of men my age claim that they WANT the opportunity to stay at home and sacrifice a few years of their “career” to raise a son or a daughter. Millennial women, it is assumed, are not pressured by their partners to be the sole caretakers of the household and the child. One could say that the Millennial notion of work and family responsibility is way more egalitarian than 40 or even 20 years ago. The problem arises, of course, when young adults enter the work force. It’s not that having a job makes one abandon their ideals, but rather that the work environment is still controlled by social norms implanted there from prior generations. What this looks like in concrete terms is this: lower wages for female professionals;  the industrialized world’s worst maternal leave practices; an obsession with the supposed “inappropriateness” of breastfeeding in public; an emphasis on working over-time to the detriment of one’s health, not to mention family life; rampant sexual harassment in the workplace (specifically in areas where women are not the predominate gender); and calcified definitions of masculinity and femininity that leave limited space for re-imagining the family- gender dynamic.

Out of a desire to support Jamie in her attempt to pursue her dream job and out of a desire to raise my daughter and be an “involved dad,” I have offered to stay at home. I will be juggling both work responsibilities and that of child-rearing. It’ll be difficult. But I’m sure that by taking on what is still considered a “woman’s role,” I’ll gain priceless insight into some of the stresses that affect a vast majority of women. I’m excited to invert the social norms and experience first-hand the beauty, stress, and difficulty that come with parenting. I will never be a dad proud of the fact that “I never changed a diaper.” That would be a badge of embarrassment, not pride.

I’ll continue to write about this journey as it goes….