home alone vs. mr mom

vs your favorite outmoded cultural signpost.

We've actually met several stay-at-home dads at the park and around the neighborhood. Is it a trend? Is it just our neighborhood?

Anyway, Liz went back to work last Monday so me and Rowan are flying solo. Being with Rowan all day makes me feel guilty about not donating to public radio during their most recent fund drive--it's all I listen to.

More importantly, it's great to see Rowan's repertoire of interests and skills increase. He loves to follow Leon around and try to bat at him. Watching a nearly-3-mo-old boy try to figure out how to reach out and grab a triple-amputee stuffed lion of many colors is, I have to say, really rewarding. Yesterday I witnessed a gurgle-and-cooed conversation between Rowan and Davidson Bear, a stuffed white bear in a red t-shirt that reads "Davidson" (courtesy of the Jim Watkins). Ro grabbed Davidson by the scruff of his belly and said "ooOOoAgg--eeeeuup. ooooooooo...." D.Bear just let the wind respond, knowing Ro would understand.
As I said, Liz has returned to work and is already bringing back lots of interesting/hilarious stories from the life of the cube.

Here she is posing with her mechanical wonder, the breast pump. As you can see in the background, we now have a "family" dry-erase board, on which we've graphed out a crude calendar, to keep track of appointments and scheduling conflicts thereby.

(Note: After a rather long hiatus, Rowan has returned to his bouncy seat, and is now, after only a few weeks, vastly more equipped to enjoy the orange plastic monkeys and blue plastic toucans)

I wasn't all alone this week. For the first few days I had the invaluable aid of UncleT, who discovered the "rollin' Rowan" technique (you grab Rowan's arms and gently roll him back and forth), and was generally lovely to have around.

Also, he brought candy, and we ate too much candy.






Enough talk! Look at this dashing figure.