The Papa Bear Memoirs - A Dad, Parenting Blog: Odds/Ends

Showing posts with label Odds/Ends. Show all posts

2/20/09

Dinner at Papa Bear's in 10 Years

With boy/girl twins and another girl just two years younger, I can completely see this being our dinner conversation in 10 years. Enjoy.

About Papa Bear

I'm a 30-something married father of three living in suburban Philadelphia and have been thinking of starting a blog on the craziness that is fatherhood for a few years now.

See, I was the stereotypical male who played sports through college, worked in the sports field most of my professional career and planned many of my outings around my favorite teams' games. I was the guy who fell asleep during birthing class -- honestly I was.

But back in 2003, exactly two weeks and one day after I became Papa Bear and my wife became Mama Bear (in case you are lost, that's when my wife gave birth to a set of boy-girl twins), I was laid off from work and a wrench was thrown in our lives.

So we abruptly changed our plans and I stayed home with the kids for the next four years, a period which saw us add one more to the family.

Mama Bear is a teacher and since we couldn’t afford to give up her awesome benefits, the first six months or so after the twins, I was a full-time stay-at-home dad. Then, I began working mostly nights in order to save on childcare bills and create an income, but remained the "Daytime Daddy," changing what felt like hundreds of diapers per day and coming up with creative ways to feed two babies simultaneously at 3 am. Of course the summers were different, as Mama Bear was home from school, but it was hectic nonetheless.

It was during this period that I seriously considered a blog to share my mostly insane stories as a clueless first-time father. But for a number of reasons -- lack of sleep probably being No. 1 -- I didn’t go through with the blog.

Now that the kids are older and I have once again rejoined the daily rat race, I have decided to turn my attention to sharing my experiences best I can remember.