Tag Archives: stay at home dad

Guest Post: Winter Gardening

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By: Ben Lindwall

Here in Minnesota, during the winter, there is only one way for a stay-at-home-dad to keep his sanity: grow something.

I’ve been gardening for a little over 5 years but have just recently come to realize the offseason benefits of growing food in the winter. As we speak, I’ve got some young spinach, arugula, lettuce, and chard sprouting up underneath my plastic row covers in the backyard (and today’s high in Minneapolis is sixteen degrees Fahrenheit)!

I planted at the end of October, so come the end of March I will have bagfuls of greens to feed my family. If you tend to eat one 12 oz bag of greens in a week, this will save you between $15-$20 a month– even more if you like cooking with greens, in which case you can double or triple your savings at the market.

More importantly, many of us are completely disconnected from knowing who is growing, harvesting, and transporting our food. As a result, many of us eat food that is grown from depleted and over-fertilized soil, lathered in pesticides, picked by exploited workers, and then driven across the country, if not further. This is absolutely unacceptable.

I grow and harvest my greens and my daughter carries them into the house (in return, I let her eat for free). And speaking of kids, have you ever heard a toddler ask for spinach? Well try growing it yourself. While I water the garden, my daughter will ask for leaf after gorgeous green leaf!

Do I really think that gardening is going to make any difference? Totally. As I till my soil, pull weeds, and taste my own produce, I become much more conscious and connected to the process of growing food. It doesn’t just magically appear. There is actual work involved. I try to take this new consciousness with me to the market. It affects which products I buy and makes me think twice before supporting massive agribusinesses with my grocery budget. I love how Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen put it in their book The Urban Homestead: “Growing your own food is an act of resistance. We can all join [] in dismantling the corporations that are feeding us shit.”

Start with spinach. It’s easy to grow and is packed with nutrition. Plant the seed ¼ of an inch below the soil and keep it moist until it sprouts. Pay attention to what else might begin to sprout. Let your curiosity lead you. Its amazing how one new beginning can lead to another, as well as lots of learning along the way.

I planted my first seed before I had kids and for purely selfish reasons. Today I garden for peace of mind, family nutrition, and even justice. For me, this is especially important in the middle of Minnesota, in the middle of December.

Ben lives in Minneapolis MN, with his wife and two kids and is a stay at home dad and life long Twins fans. That means he has to suffer through great seasons only to lose to the Yankees in the playoffs every year. Along with gardening Ben brews beer, listens to great music, and has an advanced degree in whittling.

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Sometimes the answer is no

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After a gusty storm blew threw the neighborhood the bamboo fence peeled away from the house next door revealing a ridable fire truck. When we headed out of the house to go to school the boys both saw the toy and ran to the fence asking if they could ride on it before school. Our next door neighbors are friendly enough when we see them outside but their kids are never out side and have yet to play with our boys. They hurry them inside when they come back from school so it doesn’t look promising that the boys will be responding to any fires. I asked anyway, knowing that they were unlikely to let us play with it, and they said it was broken. We have a broken Gator that I push the boys in so that doesn’t deter them in the slightest.

Lately I have been trying to watch my “No’s” with the boys. What I mean is I have been trying to evaluate why I am saying no to something and trying to find a way to say yes more often. There are times when the answer is no and Primo now even says to Segundo “Sometimes the answer is no Segundo, and that’s OK.” That is something I say a lot to the kids, but in evaluating why I have found that most of the time it has more to do with my own comfort or mood and less to do with safety or some grand teachable moment. I think I have the mistaken idea that I am spoiling the boys or contributing to a overly permissive society but really I say No more than is necessary for selfish reasons.

Unfortunately no matter how much I try not to say No to the firetruck I have no choice. It is not our toy and sometimes the answer is no and that is OK too.

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When the Queens away, the house will pay

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Beautiful is spending the weekend in Minnesota with some her closest friends from high school to celebrate their ten year reunion. They didn’t want to do the whole meet and greet with the rest of the class this past summer so they scheduled their own time in the Northern Territory in a lovely cabin in the snow. While she is catching up and reconnecting the boys and I are home preparing for Thanksgiving guests.

I have been tasked with cleaning the house, but as you can see from the picture to the left I am a bit behind. Well behind is the wrong word, I am pacing my self so that I don’t have to clean the house more than once while she’s gone. Without Beautiful here the house is much more messy than it normally is. You would think that would be because she cleans it but that’s not true. I do most of the weekday cleaning but without her here I don’t really have to. The kitchen and food stuff sure, but the rest of the place has an early stage hoarders vibe to it. By the time Beautiful is home that will all be cleaned up and put away, including a boxing up of summer clothes and sorting of the winter clothes, but I have planned out how it will go. First I clean our room and get the clothes washed and put away, then I move to the boys room. That seems counter-intuitive I know but the boys play in the living room and kitchen more than their room so it’s a good move, trust me. I move to the bathroom on the day she arrives, then the kitchen gets a deep cleaning and finally the living room get cleaned and toys put away just as we leave to get her from the airport. These are the problems I am now having to solve as a Stay at home dad. No more load testing financial software, but instead finding the most efficient way to clean the house so that my wife thinks I keep the house like this all the time. I am a problem solver though so it will all turn out.

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Although we’ve come, to the end of the road

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Today at 12:30 his mom will come and pick him up for the last time. His little brother will be born soon and he will be staying home with him instead of coming over to our house every weekday morning. I’m feeling a little sad at the end of this Daddy Day Care season as I become just a lowly, non-paid, at home dad. With the Charge I was a child care provider, a Manny (man-nanny), helping bring home a little money to add to the family pot. It was nice to say that I was more than just a stay at home dad, that I was doing something that had a clear monetary value. Writing about it seems silly after I have tried to show the value of raising kids and address issues of Masculinity for stay at home dads, but even I look for ways to assign value to my role. That is a therapy session for another day though and today is for saying goodbye to the Charge.

For the last year and a half The Charge as been my responsibility from breakfast to afternoon nap time. All three boys played together, fought like brothers, and collected developmental milestones like baseball cards.  After living together for two years Segundo and The Charge have not really known a time when the other wasn’t there but now they no longer have each other as allies against Primo. Segundo is on his own and The Charge becomes the big brother after being the low kid on the totem pole all his life.

While it is a sad day there might have been signs for The Charge’s mom that it was time to make the change. Yesterday when she came to pick him up we had been playing outside and in the garage and I was in and out of the house doing things. The garage door was open as well as the side door to the house and I was pretty aware of what was going on, at least I thought I was. When the car pulled up I was in the house and at the door I told her that he was in the garage. We walked around the house and found the Charge.

“What’s he eating?”

Oh, let me see, that’s a muffin from the bike trailer that has been in there from when we brought muffins to Primo’s class two weeks ago.

“Is that a knife in his hands?”

ah, yeah that was a knife we were using to carve faces on the pumpkins, let me just take that out of his hands.

“Does he have shoes on?”

Doesn’t he? I thought he had shoes on earlier, but maybe it was just his dark socks. Oh they weren’t dark socks before?

She was a good sport about all of it and knew that I was mostly a capable care provider but maybe it was for the best that he would be with his mom now. He might not have the other two boys to challenge him as much but he would definitely live to tell about it now. It is a sad day here for me and I will miss my time with the Charge. We will continue to trade child care and have our weekly dinners together but I will miss his little face.

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When you can’t get outside, go to the garage

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It has been raining off and on for the last week here in Portland. There was a mysterious line of animals walking by the house two by two but I don’t think it’s anything to be worried about. We have rain boots and jackets but the kids have been feeling sick and not really that adventurous so we have spent most of the time in the house building forts and watching videos. Wanting to get some fresh air I opened the garage door, suited the kids up, and set up their art tabes out there while I cleaned up a bit. There is still plenty to organize and clean from our move and with a little music and supplies we all had a good time. The boys used markers to color their paper, and then the boxes I emptied, and then wanted to tag the door that had already been decorated by the previous tenant. Fearing a a dangerous precedent I limited their creativity to the paper.

We got some fresh air and the boys would occasionally venture out into the rain on their bikes and then rush back in. We all felt better for the exercise and cleared lungs and I was able to get a little more cleaned up out there. When you can’t get all the way outside sometimes an open door or window helps.

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Band of SAHD has new night!

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The kids of Band of SAHD want you to listen to their daddies!

Starting tonight at 11 PM eastern, 8 PM pacific the Band of SAHD podcast will be on Wednesday nights instead of Sunday. We are excited to be moving to a new night and hope that more people will be able to tune in with us live. A big part of the show is the banter that goes on in the live chat room and we are looking forward to those continuing conversations. Tonight we will be talking about technology and kids, thoughts on the book Unconditional parenting, and a little on the start of the NBA season I’m sure. Tune in if you can, chime in on the chat or by calling in, and if nothing else download the show to listen on your own.

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I live in a house of turdburglars

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It is cliche to say that things change when you have kids but it is also very true. You have less time to your self, more responsibility, less friends, more grape jelly hand print stains on the back of your t-shirts and so on and so on. I knew getting into this gig that things were changing but there are some things that still caught me off guard. One of them is that I would never get the chance to go to the bathroom by myself, undisturbed, ever again. Since getting married there was some foreshadowing but nothing like once the kids started walking. Since then I don’t think I have had any peaceful moment in the bathroom.

Early on in our marriage Beautiful has tried to make me feel bad about my use of the bathroom. To hear her tell it I choose the wrong times to go and I spend way too much time in there once I’m in. I have found it best to try and hide my bathroom time from my wife by only going while she is at work. This seems to work well but she will some how still come home for lunch or some other reason and roll her eyes at me with that “of course you’re in the bathroom” look she has. It is uncanny this second sense she has for choosing just the right time to come home.

Even when she doesn’t come home the boys feel like they need to supervise any thing that happens in the bathroom. They can be playing just fine with their trucks on the train table and as soon as they hear that bathroom door shut they come running. They bang on the door and ask what I’m doing in there immediately. I keep coming up with smart ass ways of answering their questions that they obviously know the answer to: “I’m curing cancer, either get a lab coat on or get out of here” “I’m building a bridge but the suspension lines are missing, go check the mail box” “I’m composing a symphony, do you have an oboe?” They are little turdburglers ruining my me time.

So to any new parent out there you may know that things are going to change, but one big thing that will change is your ability to go to the bathroom by yourself. Now you know.

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Some days are inspired, others are endured

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It was day two of being a parent helper at Primo’s school and the effects of moving, recovering from being sick, and having Segundo and the Charge in the room with me meant a much tougher time in the class. I still had a lot of fun playing with the kids and talking to them about which shapes would roll down the ramp we created but it was a labored time of watching the clock. Out on the playground I couldn’t run around and lift the kids because my back was killing me from the move.

Friday was time of enjoyment and Monday was a time of endurance and that is so true of parenting in general. There are times when you are super dad and your patience is infinite, your creativity unending, and you are able to turn a walk to the park into a lesson in life science. Then there are the days when you snap at little things, have no patience and have to rely solely on the video to give you any sort of break. We hope for more of the previous but sadly I get more of the tough days. I still love those tough days though, I mean as opposed to not having kids or working in the marketplace instead of at home. The whole bad day golfing analogy is true of parenting for me.

The next parent helper day isn’t till next month, but next month is Friday. Beautiful will be helping that day to get a sense of the school. I didn’t realize when filling out the schedule that we signed up for three days in a matter of a week but it worked out great. Helping two days in a row (Friday and Monday) helped me pick up more names and build an acceptance with the kids. I now know 13 out of the 19 kid’s names and a couple more parents. One of the moms talked to me about how much fun her son had on Friday with me. He couldn’t remember my name by said he was the big guy with a beard. As the only dad that has been in the classroom so far it was pretty easy to narrow it down.

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I always feel like some one is watching me

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There are a couple of families on our street and a whole lot of kids so often the boys are out playing with their friends through out the day. There are a couple younger kids not in school yet and then a whole bunch that come home after school changing the dynamic of playtime. When the older kids are out the boys move farther away from the house but when the younger kids are here during the morning they stay within two houses. I am often out on the porch listening to them play but I do not have eye contact with them at all times and this bothers some.

Just this past weekend on the Band of SAHD podcast we talked about time spent on twitter was time not spent watching your kids. While I agree there is a danger in spending so much time on line that we neglect real life, I also know that the 1o seconds it took to send that tweet did not put your kids in any more or less harm. The commenter admitted to being a helicopter parent, always hovering, and that is not me. I am aware of the neighborhood, know the people that live on the street, and know where the boys are but I don’t maintain eye contact all the time. Part of that is intentional, giving the kids room to explore their environment on their own, and part of it is just my natural temperament. My kids fall down, eat dirt, and jump from ledges too high to be safe. There is danger still in there world because I think that is important. Not only can’t I protect them from everything, I really have no desire to. I want to protect them from big things, like other people and traffic, while allowing them to work out the smaller dangers themselves.

I want to make it clear that I do not think this makes me a better parent but I am also not a bad parent. I may be a little lazy in my parenting but it is an intentional laziness. I have thought a lot about how and why we do things when it comes to raising our boys and I am fine with people who have come to different conclusions. It just bothers me when those different conclusion lead people to believe I am a bad parent.

Part of the Fatherhood Friday group of blogging Fathers and Mothers over at Dad Blogs. Please click on the image to the left to find more great writing from other bloggers trying to make sense of this whole parenting thing

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The Cliche First day of school post

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Today was the day. Primo started pre-school today and he was fired up from the time he opened his eyes this morning, until well after we were home and had finished lunch. He has catted with every afternoon walker from the near by medical center and filled them in on his new school attending status. If he had Facebook his status would read: “You wanna come at somebody, come at me, I’m a man, I’m 4!” because he loves sports rants turned into preschool humor.

We also had our first bike ride to school and that went almost as well. The good news is I made it the four and half miles each way, but I do smell horrendous and feel like I might need to nap for a couple of days. It will get easier, at least that is what I tell myself but the rain hasn’t come yet. The ride was great really, and it took us 27 minutes there and 30 minutes back. We made it there early and Primo was bouncing off the walls with excitement. For most of the kids this was old hat, their second year and all but Primo was soaking it in. When the teacher came up and brought the kids down I got a little teary. It was either dusty over by me or I have a gland problem because none of the other parents were remotely moved. Like their kids this process was old hat so I can understand them not acting like Archie Manning watching his other son win a Super bowl in New York.

Primo was cool with us not sticking around and even told me that Segundo and I could leave now when he went down to his class. I don’t know if I have done a good job raising a kid with little to no separation anxiety, or if my son is genuinely ashamed of me. I’m cool with either one. I got a tour of the place and basked in praise of co-op moms who were super impressed with a dad doing the co-op thing. There were more dads there today then the parents meeting, wait that’s not true, there were the same amount but the ratio was better. 4 out of 18 instead of 4 out of 31. Progress! I think there a bunch of dads involved and I can’t wait to meet them and all the parents as it seems this is our life now. We are Co-op parents and part of a bigger educational family and I can’t wait to find out which one is the embarrassing uncle that drinks to much and tries to hit wives.

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