I think people are surprised when they hear I work full time and Ben stays home with our daughter (and soon to be son). Ben is a hard working, multitasking, full time student who choose to finish his degree online when our first child was born to be home with her and have the freedom of more time together as a family. Though I know he is anxious for the day that those roles are reversed, it wont be quite yet, he embraces and loves how things are now, too.
I think it’s awesome in our culture there is so much, and well deserving, praise for motherhood and absolutely everything that comes with it for the rest of their lives. But I’m bummed when I think of the just as deserving, if not more deserving in some cases, role of fatherhood who don’t get any or enough credit.
And to do so, hopefully, like Elder Christofferson says, “To praise and encourage fatherhood and fathers is not to shame or discount anyone.”
As I’m in the home stretch of this pregnancy with only several weeks left, it has become harder to be comfortable and sleep through the night. Today actually, I’ve been awake since 4 am because of it—laying in bed hoping I’d fall back asleep before my alarm goes off to get ready for work, but I don’t. So here I am at work, feeling like actual living-dead, with bags under eyes that are hitting my chin, mascara on from yesterday, about to head into another meeting. And I can’t help but think of how awesome Ben is and always has been.
I come home from work and the dishes are done, not because I asked him to do them or because I’m pregnant, but because he simply saw that they were there. Dinner is cooking. I find where he is in the house by following the sound of laughter and the trail of Legos and toy animals from the animal kingdom they built that day. I’m shown pictures of Gracie feeding a horse that’s in our neighborhood and another bottle gone from blowing bubbles in the backyard.
Read the full article at In The Head of Al.
