Mr. Mom Chronicles: An Update

Tobias can't be expected to
interrupt his work to deal with me.

When I first started the "Mr. Mom Chronicles," documenting my new life as a stay-at-home freelance writing dad, I expected it to be cute. Oh, I also expected there to be challenges, but I expected them to be cute challenges, making for entertaining stories that people would smile at and pass along to their friends.

You might notice it's been more than a month since I updated this series.

A little math: Parenting is hard. Work is hard. Combine the two? Days full of exhaustion and never catching up. And I'm afraid it's my son who is paying the price.

Here's what the typical day has been like the last couple of months: I wake up and go straight into office mode. The boy wakes up, generally an hour later. I get him up, diapered and fed, then return to writing mode. This is how we spend the day: I work. He lets me know when he needs something. I yell at him when he does stuff I don't want him to. And we both pray for the moment that momma gets home.

This is where I've done a lousy job: I haven't routinely set aside time that's just me and him. Parenting has been a subset of my day, but I haven't really let it dominate any part of my day, to where other duties -- to myself and my freelance employers -- get put totally aside. The boy, it seems, has been completely screwed by all this.

I stayed home, in part, so that we wouldn't have to resort to daycare. Not just for cost reasons, but because we weren't ready to have him hanging with strangers all day. At the rate I've been going, though, he might be better served by the attention he'd be getting in an institution.

Or...

Or I could dedicate myself a bit more to the task of parenting. This morning, I took him to breakfast and then a walk through the neighborhood. Nothing fancy, but it was time that we hung out and I didn't have my nose buried in a computer. I think it was good for him. I know it was good for me. We'll just have to keep on trying.

Movie night: 'A Face in the Crowd'

Three thoughts about A FACE IN THE CROWD:

* Criterion: "A Face in the Crowd chronicles the rise and fall of Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes (Andy Griffith), a boisterous entertainer discovered in an Arkansas drunk tank by Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal), a local radio producer with ambitions of her own. His charisma and cunning soon shoot him to the heights of television stardom and political demagoguery, forcing Marcia to grapple with the manipulative, reactionary monster she has created."

So. You Know. Fiction.

* Patricia Neal's face during the movie's climax reminds me of the terror you usually see in horror movies.

* In fact, if I ran a film festival, I'd put this together with CITIZEN KANE, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE -- and, I think, the Boris Karloff version of FRANKENSTEIN.

Mr. Mom Chronicles: The Playground

Daddy was trying to work. Tobias didn't care.

I hate taking Tobias to the playground.

Step back: It's not that I don't enjoy giving the boy a chance to enjoy himself -- and I'm really not opposed to him wearing himself out by running around. What's more, I'm not one of those parents who hovers over my kid: We get there, I sit on a bench and keep an eye on him, but I don't really follow him from toy-to-toy, adventure-to-adventure.

No, what I don't like is ... all the other kids.

I'm not a monster: I obviously like my kid. And I'm not one of those fussy adults who wants to ban the under-10 set from restaurants or movie theaters or other public places. Kids are necessary. But I don't much like childhood: It's all id, no ego, too much trying to hog toys, too much possibility of sudden and minor violence, too much willingness to inflict hurt feelings if the physical hurt can't be gotten away with. Kids are assholes.

Sartre said that "hell is other people." Me? I say that hell is other people's children. And I'm certain other people think the same thing about my kid; I can't say that I'd blame them.

So I feel an abnormal amount of anxiety when I take Tobias to the playground, because it is the place where lots of kids are, and where they are at their most kidlike. Maybe I just didn't have the right kind of childhood, because it looks like a battleground to me. I see only the negative possibilities.

While I was the office worker and my wife the stay-at-home parent, I didn't have to worry about any of this. She took the boy out to play; I hung with him at bathtime. Even after I lost my job, most of the playground duties fell to her. Trips to play just made me itch. Why oh why couldn't my son have been born a 30-year-old slacker with a penchant for reading novels in coffee shops?

Tobias, of course, gets none of this. At least, I hope that's the case. He ambles around the playground -- adventurous, but not too adventurous. He'll climb ladders that surprise me, given that he's just turned two. But he won't go anywhere near a slide without a hand to hold onto.

He's similarly middle-of-the-road when it comes to interactions with the other kids. I don't want to pass my anxieties onto him: I want him to make friends, to learn to share, to have fun. Often, he floats along the edge of a group; if the other kids start to include him, he jumps in and participates wholeheartedly. If they ignore him, he moves onto the next thing. And it's no big deal: my emotional life is far more concerned with these interactions, it seems, than his is.

Last week, a kid slugged him in the chest. I saw it. Tobias went up to play with the young, curly-headed boy -- and the boy wanted nothing of it. So he hit Tobias. Tobias smiled -- smiled! -- and moved on to the next group. He's social, but he doesn't stay where he's not wanted, and he doesn't particularly care that he's not wanted. I love this! I hope this attitude sticks with him the rest of his life! Oh, God be merciful!

Me? I swooped him into his stroller and marched home.Wrong reaction, probably.

It's already begun. I want to protect my kid from all the crap that's sure to come. I want his feelings and his body to stay as innocent and unmarked as they are right now. But the only way he's going to really learn to play nice with others is if he gets out and plays nice with others. The best way for me to be a good daddy is to swallow my neuroses and walk him down to the playground.

But I'll still keep an eye on him.

Mr. Mom Chronicles: A nice moment

A scene in the Craft-Mathis household:

Me: Tobias, I love you.

T: I lahv you!

Me (ratcheting it up): Tobias ... I LOVE you.

T: I lahv YOU! (Giggles.)

ME: I love YOU!

T: I lahv YOU! (Laughs maniacally.) Gufbaw.

He's right. I am a goofball.

Mr. Mom Chronicles: This is why it is occasionally difficult to do freelance writing from home.

I didn't pose this picture. He just decided to crawl up the back of my chair while I was working.

Mr. Mom Chronicles: My toddler is a smart-aleck

The scene: Boy is in his high chair. He has finished lunch and wants down:

BOY: Done. Done! DONE!

ME: (Looking to teach him to be polite and say "please.") I'm sorry, but I didn't hear the word I needed to hear.

BOY: Done ... now!

Mr. Mom Chronicles: Hugs

There's a long list of challenges to being a stay-at-home dad and trying to earn money at the same time.

Like when the kid screams when you're interviewing a source for a story.

Or when he interrupts a great writing flow with a sippy cup shoved, literally, into your face with demands for "juice-juice, juice-juice."

Or when you have to change a poopy diaper, ever.

But once or twice a day, you'll be sitting on the couch, typing away, when two unexpectedly long arms will appear from behind you and grab hold of your neck. It's not an attack! He's hugging you. He loves you! He enjoys hanging out with you! And you're one of those rare fathers with the privilege to spend so much time with your son during his formative years!

It's a blessing. Not an unfettered blessing, but it is a blessing.

Mr. Mom Chronicles: Day One

This morning, my lovely wife woke shortly before 6 am. She eased her way into the day with some sort of apple juice concoction, then showered, blow-dried her hair (!), made lunch, then departed to catch a bus. It is her first day of work.

Tobias at the playground
this morning. His daddy was the
only daddy there.

Me? I drank some coffee, read the papers and waited for my son to wake up. This is also my first day on the job, this one as a full-time stay-at-home dad.

This is not where I expected to be. Oh, I've always said I was willing to be the at-home parent if it came to that, something easy to say to prove my feminist bona fides. But honestly, we moved to Philadelphia a month before Tobias was born -- not exactly prime job-hunting time for my wife, particularly as a recession was starting to bare its ugly fangs. The birth happened, she stayed home with our kid, I went off to the office every morning, and that was it. I never expected to actually have to back up my words with, you know, action.

When I lost my job six months ago, though, my wife drew a line: "It's my turn," she told me. Repeatedly. And then a few more times, for good measure, just in case I hadn't gotten the point: She was ready not to be home with the kid all day. It's not that she doesn't love Tobias; she adores him. She just wanted the chance to miss him now and again.

I suggested that we should probably both of us race to get a job -- that producing an income was the most important thing -- and we could figure out the way forward from there. And, well, she won the race.

Step back: She mostly won the race. I've been picking up some freelance work in recent months, and for us to survive on her full-time job, I'll have to basically make our rent money and she'll get all the other bills. But: Taking care of our two-year-old son is going to be a heavy, maybe the heaviest, part of my responsibilities during the day.

There will be getting him up. And feeding him. Making sure he gets play time. Making sure he gets enough of my attention. And feeding him. And changing his diaper. And feeding him. The reporting and writing I need to do to make my nut? That'll come in the in-between places. Parenting, in a way it's never been before, is my job now.

And that's great: The glory of losing my job when my son was 18 months old is that I've been around quite a lot while he really evolved from babyhood into being a real person with his own real personality. I've been grateful -- grateful as one can be for being unemployed and worried about the future -- to get to be around my son during this time.

However...

It didn't escape my notice this morning that I was the only dad in a sea of moms and nannies at the playground. A quarter-century has passed since Michael Keaton played "Mr. Mom," but gender roles and expectations and actions haven't changed that much. What we're doing -- what I'm doing -- is ... kind of weird. I get that. I'm OK with that. But it will probably involve negotiating my way through some unwritten protocols.

So I'll be writing about that. And I'll most likely be asking your help. I'm not sure how this is going to work, or frankly how long it can last. What I do know is this: We love Philadelphia and want to stay here. Right now, this is the best shot we've got.

Mr. Mom Chronicles: One minute of boy's monologue while playing with his trucks

"Thank you. Thank you so much. You're welcome. You're welcome so much. Good job! Thank you! THANK YOU SO MUCH! Beep beep beep beep."

Mr. Mom Chronicles: The gross-out wars begin

Tobias has added aggressive licking to his arsenal. I may or may not have taught him that, but I'm certainly living with the consequences.

I'm not feeling well, so I settled down for a nap this afternoon. Tobias crawled under the blanket with me, but apparently didn't want me to sleep -- he put his head next to mine and, not getting a response, did the unexpected: He ran his tongue up and down my nose.

I laughed, but apparently it's not a one-time thing. A little later, after I'd gotten up, he came over and licked my knee. So I grabbed his hand and stuffed it in my mouth.

"Dat's gwoss," he told me. He's learning.

Mr. Mom Chronicles: On not getting to parent anymore

My son, Tobias, has been in Arkansas for the last week, staying with his grandparents. It's not a vacation--or, at least, not merely a vacation. Since the surgery, I've not been strong enough to wrangle him on my own. My wife still has to go to work every day. So he's with people who possess the physical wherewithal to handle a nearly 3-year-old boy.

Truth is, I haven't actively parented Tobias since the surgery. That's five weeks now. And I've discovered something that I'm not quite sure how to understand.

Which is this: Parenthood has apparently changed me. I like having time to read the paper, to sit with coffee, to be alone in my head. These are things I loved before Tobias came along, and missed once he did. But ... I'm no longer really complete with those things.

It's not just the relationship I miss. I miss parenting him. It's hard. It's energy-sapping. It's rage-inducing on occasion. But it's part of my purpose now. He is part of my purpose now.

By the time I get back to full strength, it will be something like three months or more since I've had that active role in his life. That bothers me. There's nothing that can be done about it. I miss my boy. And I miss parenting him. I can hardly believe that.

Mr. Mom Chronicles: An update

I've finally figured out one key tool to working/parenting at the same time: the baby gate. I confine kid to his room and let him play in there while I'm writing. It's a small apartment -- his doorway looks out into the living room, where I work. So if he needs anything, he just has to peek out and ask. We're still together, but he's not trying to climb around in my lap while I try to make turn developer-speak into English for Macworld's readers. Very helpful.

Mr. Mom Chronicles: Working At Home

I'm in the middle of typing out an e-mail to a source on a story when my two-year-old boy climbs up into my lap with a book, "Put Me in the Zoo."

"Booky?" he asks.

This is slightly annoying -- I've got work to do. But the boy is part of my work, too. If I'm going to be a stay-at-home-dad-slash-freelance-writer, then I can't neglect the dad part of the equation. Even if doing so would make the writing part of that equation much easier.

So I read the book. Tobias climbs down, retrieves another tome and brings it to me. "Booky?"

"No, son. I've read you one, and I've got to get this done. Can you read it to yourself?"

Tobias doesn't like the idea. He raises the book high over his head, then slams it down to the ground. Then he toddles off.

We're one week into this experiment -- ok, we're a week into my new way of living life -- and it's clear that this is the battle I'm going to have to fight every day. I've got to write enough to bring in my (desperately needed) share of the family income. But I've also got to give the boy attention and nurturing.

When I'm writing, he wants to play with me. When I'm making a phone call he wants to play with his sound-making toys -- or he wants to play with my phone. This would all be much easier if he would just take a goddamned nap, but that's only happened once this week.(Which I deserve: I drove my mom insane by never once taking a nap after 18 months.)

I've tried putting him in his room behind a baby gate. Sometimes he'll take it. Sometimes he won't. I've had to dump him in his crib for 10 minutes at one point just so I could finish writing a piece with a clear head. I feel bad about this. I'm home with him! I'm the parent! I don't really want to shuttle him off to day care -- and I couldn't afford it now, even if I did.

But always, the work is calling. I don't think I'm going to solve this problem. I think that's simply the way it is.