Q&A: WAHM & WOHD

Hitting the easy questions first...

Mayhem asks,

Are either you or your husband stay-home parents, or do you both work outside the home?

We both have paying jobs. T is a teacher and coach, so he works full-time-plus during the school year and is home during the summer. I work part-time for a non-profit, from our house. Three days a week, I drive the kids to their babysitter's house, then drive back home to work. You can tell it's a work day for me if I'm twittering. Ahem.

Ironically, because of how far the babysitter is from us, my 'commute' time is five times longer than it was when I worked in the organization's office in California. I still think it's worth it, because the whole thing is a pretty great set-up at this stage in our lives. We're both challenged creatively by our work and I still get to do playgroups and library storytime and all those other SAHM-y things with the kids. And every week during the summer we have four consecutive free days to do whatever we want. Summers are awesome 'round here.

On a related note, T took four months of family leave when Puppy was born and was the full-time, at-home parent. (I was still working full-time at that point.) He was great at it and I think it laid the foundation for the nice balance of parenting duties we now enjoy. But you would not believe the sexist bullshit he heard from his co-workers about that choice. Of course, this was the same group who fired him from his coaching job for daring to take three days--three!--off for his kid's birth. So our expectations of them weren't all that high. But still. Asshats.