One thing about being a stay-at-home dad is that I engage in
a lot of trial and error. Basically,
I'll do something the wrong way for an indefinite amount of time. Eventually, I'll have a little voice in my
head click in and say "You could do this better." Not unlike Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket. The good thing is that whenever that occurs,
I'm not afraid to try a different method.
I figure that the worst that could happen is that my new foolproof
method isn't so foolproof. Today was one
of those experiences. However, I fear
that I may have lost my "man card" due to the success of my trial and
error.
In doing my very, very thorough research for this piece in
order to determine whether or not I had indeed lost my man card, I decided to
turn to an extremely scientific source.
That's right; Wikipedia.
Unfortunately, I was met with the following seven words, "The page
"Man card" does not
exist." Fortunately, Urban
Dictionary had plenty of information on the matter at hand (and some of it was
actually clean for once).
- Man Card - Requirement to be accepted as a respectable member of the male community. Can and should be revoked by other respectable males for doing non-respectable-male things.
It could be argued that my man card standing was already on shaky
ground because of my status as a stay-at-home dad. Due to input from other men whose opinions I
respect, I think it's been ok up to this point.
People generally don't advocate for the removal of someone else's man
card for taking care of their child from what I've seen. It's fairly normal protocol for a dad to
change diapers, feed the baby a bottle, or even dress the baby.
Since the weather began turning colder, it's been more
necessary to make sure that Ellie is staying warm enough. While early on in the season, this was
accomplished just by dressing her in long sleeves and making certain she's
wearing pants and socks. Unfortunately,
she's recently reached an awkward phase in her development. The girl just can't find a pair of pants that
fit. I realize that apparently this is
an issue for every woman ever but I didn't expect Ellie to run into that
problem yet. Her pants are all either
way too short or too big around the waist.
 |
| Why are there no pants style guides for infants? |
I figure the lesser of two evils is for Ellie to essentially
wear baseball pants as opposed to having them literally fall off of her. Since that leaves a decent amount of skin
below the knee uncovered, I've had to resort to dressing her in tights so that
she stays warm. For the longest time, I
attempted to put tights on Ellie in the same method that I would dress her in
pants. In other words, put her feet in
the top and slowly try to work one leg down to the foot hole and then repeat. While that's easy with pants,
it's relatively difficult to do with tights.
Yesterday, I finally had this minor revelation though. Why don't I just smush the leg all together
and put her foot in the foot hole to start with and then pull the tights
up? It worked like a dream and a
six-minute process was instantly turned into a 30-second process.
When I proudly told Bethany about this, her response was
simple. "Wait, you haven't been
doing that all along?" Then she
proceeded to apologize profusely for not teaching me that sooner. Something that struck me as a major
revelation was apparently common sense to her.
Honestly, I feel like me having no clue about the correct way to put
tights on until now could save my man card for the time being. However, if I keep having similarly astute
revelations, I don't know if there's any hope for me. #DaddyWrite
No comments:
Post a Comment