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When I was accompanying my wife to her doctor’s appointments during her first pregnancy, I noticed a distinct lack of male-oriented reading material in the offices. It occurred to me that there might be some value in starting some sort of publication geared towards expecting fathers. At some point, I might actually do that. In the meantime, I’m still in the researching phase. This research consists of my raising two daughters. Since the overwhelming consensus seems to be that our children are extremely happy, maybe my sharing some of my experience can lead to more happy children. I hope so.

I’m not recommending anything or dispensing advice. All I know is, our kids are either really good actresses, or those smiles are genuine. Since our youngest is only six and a half months, I’m going to go ahead and assume she’s being genuine. The two and half year old, well, she can be a big faker at times, but I’ll trust my own intuition on this one. Her happiness seems real to me, and everyone else for that matter. Of all the reactions to our children upon meeting them, the most common comment is, “They’re so happy!” There have been times in my life where I received some external validation, whether it was through applause after a musical performance, a good grade here and there in school, a compliment here and there on my appearance, not to mention ongoing validation from my wife, but to date, by far the greatest validation I have ever received is my children’s happiness. I interpret those smiles to mean I’m doing the right thing somewhere.

We have a small house, and our kids are at ages where they need our attention constantly. The fact that they appear to really want to hang out with us at all times is, I find, extremely flattering. We include them in everything, which is pretty easy to do, since as things stand right now, we don’t do too much. I work, I go home, and that’s it. From Friday night until Monday morning, I’m with the family day and night. I hope to arrange things so I can spend more time with them, but that’s another story entirely, which I won’t go into here. We are fortunate enough that my wife can stay home with the kids when I’m not around. I intend to do anything I can to keep this going as long as humanly possible. The results speak for themselves.

We’re tired, and that’s OK. We haven’t had the benefit of a huge support network. We live in a sort of rural, remote area, far away from what little family we have that happens to live in the same state. The rest are scattered around the country. I’ve called on my sister a couple of times to help, before our second daughter was born, just so we could go out to dinner for Mother’s Day (or was it Easter?), then so we could go househunting after we found out we were about to have a second child. So here we are, nestled in our cozy first house, far from everyone we know, in a new neighborhood. We could use some help, so we’re hoping to find some kind of babysitter or something, someone we can call a couple of times a week so we can maybe get some time to ourselves, however brief that time might be.

We strive to enjoy what we have, which includes eating well, enjoying ourselves and generally trying to laugh often. My wife and I share diverse tastes in music, food, life, spirituality, business, you name it, so there is no shortage of conversation going on. Our older daughter is an increasing participant in those conversations. I think our youngest is attempting to stick her two cents in there as well. Apart from the nagging feeling that I don’t spend enough time with my family, our routine is pretty comfortable and consistent. Our children are safe and loved, and they are constantly reminded of that. Perhaps this is the benefit to having no significant external support system. We didn’t plan it that way. In fact, we didn’t plan much of anything. We’ve been flying by the seat of our pants the whole way, and that’s forced us to live in the moment. There really hasn’t been much of a choice. We went from living in a cramped one bedroom third floor walkup apartment with a lousy parking situation to finding out we were expecting a second child in another five months to having to go househunting for our first house to finding that house to moving into our new house, all within a very short time. There’s been very little opportunity for us to reflect on the whole situation, and maybe it’s better that way. It feels good.

My wife and I are pretty self-aware, in my opinion. We’ve both seen a lot and been through our share, and we’ve explored a wide variety of lifestyles and belief systems, maybe excessively at times, but what the hell. We both value the importance of self exploration and expression, and we talk about it frequently, and we value those qualities in others. We try to encourage our children to develop those qualities in themselves. It seems to be working thus far. Those kids are a couple of characters, that’s for sure. They each have a tremendous sense of humor. I think that might be one of the most important things to possess.

We recently registered our older daughter for preschool starting in the fall, three days a week, three hours a day. It’s a Montessori school, and I don’t know how we’re going to pull it off as it’s really a stretch financially, but I intend to continue to do whatever it takes to provide them all with a safe environment in which they can flourish. I can’t believe she’s going to be starting preschool already. I’m almost glad I won’t be there to drop her off all the time, so I don’t have to face leaving without her. The whole separation anxiety thing works both ways.

Tags: Family, General //