At-home dad gets hands-on experience

After Sarah came into our lives, I called her my "good luck charm." Within weeks of her arrival, I signed the contract to write my first book. Soon I'd be a stay-at-home parent juggling fatherhood and a new career. My wife, Sheila, and I had carefully worked out how I would balance childrearing duties with research and writing.

The day came when Sheila grudgingly left us to go back to work. I told her not to worry: the book deadline was still far off and this would be an opportunity for a "real bonding experience."

Together, Sarah and I waved goodbye to her mother and then I got down to my house-hubby duties. I put in a load of laundry and decided it was time to introduce Sarah to the educational plan I had for her. I inserted a video called Your Baby Can Read, and settled back into my favorite chair, while my daughter sat in her child seat on the floor. This wasn't going to be so bad, I told myself.

My wife told me Sarah took two-hour naps in the morning and afternoon. This was when I could write and I'd also have time after she returned from work. My office was downstairs from Sarah's room, so I installed a plug-in intercom to listen to her after I put her down for her nap. At first I couldn't hear anything, so I made several trips up and down the stairs to adjust the volume. I finally settled down to my computer, checked my notes, and started writing. A loud wail shrieked through the intercom. Sarah's nap was over.

I put her into her highchair and started fixing lunch. I heated small containers of baby-food squash and spaghetti. I tasted it like my wife had told me to do. It was terrible. Besides, it was too hot for my baby. I put it in the refrigerator to cool it down. Then it was too cold, so I heated it again, and got out another spoon. It still tasted terrible. Sarah thought so, too.

So, I warmed her bottle and tried my hot-cool wrist-test technique. Sarah hungrily sucked at the bottle until it was all gone. Then I remembered I was supposed to pull her away from the bottle periodically and burp her. I started patting her on the back; she turned her head slightly, missed the burping cloth on my shoulder, and threw up all over my shirt.

After I got cleaned up, we played, with me bouncing a giggling Sarah on my knee. I soon learned why you don't have playtime with a baby right after lunch and changed once more into another shirt. Then I remembered the clothes in the washer. As Sarah watched from her child seat, I pulled the clothes out. They were all wrinkled. I put them back in, added detergent, and tried once more. I even found an alarm you could set.

I put Sarah on a blanket on the kitchen floor and gave her a rattle. As I did the dishes, my mother called to see how I was doing. In the middle of the conversation, the alarm for the washer went off, Sarah started crying, and my mother gave me her best "hurt feeling" goodbye when I told her I had to go. With Sarah in one arm, I tried turning dials every which way to turn off the alarm. When I finally succeeded, I lifted the washer lid, and found the clothes floating in a tub full of water. I couldn't figure out how to drain the tub, so I put Sarah back into her child seat, and started wringing out the clothes by hand before I threw them into the dryer.

When Sarah again awoke from her nap with a wail into the intercom, I was in mid- sentence, so I kept typing until it occurred to me that Sarah was strangely quiet. I rushed upstairs and she smiled up at me as she lifted her hands from her poop-covered body.

I pulled out the plastic tub and started filling it with bath water. It dawned on me that my wife had said she would give Sarah a bath upon returning home and hadn't instructed me on this part of childcare. I frantically searched for that book I'd seen her reading in bed at night that she had tried showing me several times and I had ignored, something like "Baby Raising for Dummies Like Daddy."

I couldn't find that book but I found another one, and felt confident I could get the cradling-of-the-baby-as you-put-her-into-the-water right but the warnings about what could happen to baby's sensitive skin if you got the temperature wrong scared me. I couldn't find the thermometer but found what looked like one attached to the bottom of a plastic ducky. It didn't work. As the water rose in the tub I decided to try the old elbow-testing trick. That's when I discovered I had an indecisive elbow. I hurriedly washed Sarah, and pulled her out.

In the early evening, my wife called to say she'd be late and to ask if I would give Sarah her bath and put her to bed. Smugly, I informed her I had already given Sarah a bath.

Finally, back at my computer, I looked forward to an evening of writing. About the same time I heard my wife come in the front door, Sarah let out a cry. I ran upstairs to find my wife pulling off my daughter's soaked pajamas. I had forgotten to put a diaper on Sarah.

And then… a few years ago, we decided Sarah needed a sister, and Anna came into our lives. Whoever thought that taking care of two little girls is only twice as much work as one is badly deceived. It's at least four times the work, but I have the confidence to handle it, at least most of the time. I now have a profound respect for at-home parents, both moms and dads. There isn't a more difficult job.

As my girls grew, I finished the book manuscript. On the day I finally got the first copy of the finished book from the publisher and showed Sarah and Anna, they both started jumping up and down and cheering. I was deeply touched. Then Sarah, now five, asked, "Daddy, does this mean we get to have Christmas lights on the house this year?"