Hi, my name is Brooks and I’m a Stay At Home Dad. This is a choice my wife (Annie) and I made together. Can I get a full-time job? Yes I can. I am by trade a Stagehand. This means that my work schedule is really not a schedule at all. Work can be spotty, sometimes it feels like a tsunami, other times it feels like the Sahara. I have incredible flexibility in that I can turn down gigs. So, in times that the work is abundant, I can, in a way, dictate my hours. That being said, if I don’t work, I don’t get paid. And when there is no work, I again don’t get paid. Please note, after twenty years of living this professional “anti-schedule”, regular hours tend to grate on me—it’s a personality thing. The toughest thing about my job these days, is that no matter how early into the morning I work on a stage call, I still have to be a Stay-At-Home Dad when that Baby Monitor sounds off.
When our daughter, Lydia, was born in 2009, work was abundant, a couple months later work died off, it wasn’t a surprise, happens every work season. This coincided with Annie’s maternity leave wrapping up. Next thing I knew, there she was, back in her pumps and nylons, briefcase in one hand, coffee in the other, giving me a kiss and getting back in the grind.
I turned around, stared at this little creature with a little tiny cry and said, “it’s you and me today kid.” At that same time I was thinking, “What the hell do I do now?”
Well, I figured a few things out, the biggest thing I figured out is that there will always be something to figure out. Over time we were settling into a new lifestyle that neither of us ever pictured. Not that we ever had a picture in our head, but it wasn’t necessarily this. As mentioned earlier, I am by trade a Stagehand, my specialty was Stage Management. I think analytically, I problem-solve, I strategize. Stay-At-Home Daddying was turning out to be a perfect gig for me—it’s turning out to be the ultimate gig. It’s one that I can formulate and mold, and make my own, and my motivation for doing a perfect job is greater than any other motivation I’ve ever felt.
Add to this a strong tendency towards writing, after a couple years of talking about starting a blog, a year of self-education in the mysterious “Internet” (Gimme a break! I’m a Stagehand, I pick things up and put them somewhere else for a living!). And the occasional disruption…oh yeah, along the way we ended up having a second Daughter, Regina (She’s…not as complacent as Lyd was) that kind of gummed up the works as well.
Anyway, this blog is primarily written by a Stay-At-Home-Dad for Stay-At-Home-Dads, however at the end of the day, Mom or Dad, we’re all parents, right? So Moms, this ain’t an exclusive club, it’s just going to be a little more guy-oriented. I’ll be writing about keeping the house running, tips, chores, keeping the wife’s spirits high, general musings, cute and funny stuff the girls do and anything else I feel like talking about, figure on the general subject being domestic. I’ll do my best to stay on task, but since becoming a Dad, I’ve been seeing the world through kid-tinted goggles, and there are a lot of fascinating distractions out there!