At 5 a.m. our daughter woke up, walked past her own bathroom, walked up the stairs into our bedroom, threw up on our bedroom floor, then told us she needed to use our bathroom so she could throw up.
This little incident was a good reminder of why became a stay-at-home dad.
Back when my wife and I were both working and a situation like this would come up we would both panic immediately. What do we do now? Who stays home with the sick kid today? We were never sure who it would be, but we knew somehow, someone would have to rearrange their entire day based upon the last thirty seconds. Because my wife’s a resident there’s no way she would be able to take the day off. This meant it was either up to me or a grandparent. Most of the time it was up to me which meant I would head over to my computer login and sign up and pray for a substitute teacher for the day. Then I would scramble through my lesson plans to try to come up with a lesson for the sub. I would email them to another teacher in the building and hope they got the email. Next, I would wonder if they were able to make sense of the lesson and be able to explain it to the sub, that is if I did get a sub. Which would reming me to check again to see if anyone signed up to be my sub. Then I would just sit and wait and stress until I heard back from them.
But today it wasn’t like that. Now that I’m home full time with my kids, today wasn’t stressful at all. I didn’t have to make any phone calls. I didn’t have to send any emails. I woke up to help my daughter. I helped her into our bathroom so she could throw up and infest it with her germs. I cleaned up our carpet and I was able to sit with her. I didn’t need to think about anything else just being able to help her.
When you decide you’re going to quit your job and stay at home with your kids you think of a lot of things you will be able to do. You think about the big things like being able to volunteer at their school, be home when they get home from school and spending time with your little kids all day. But rarely do you think about the little things that aren’t super important, but will make life for everyone a little easier, like the 5 a.m. vomiting child that won’t send your whole family into a tailspin.
-Pete