Stay right there, I need to vacuum the playroom, be right back.

Okay, all done. Time to tell you that the Brits have cracked the code and workitmom.com has caught on! Check it out - here!

So how does it break down in our suburban household?

Now I certainly don’t do as much as my dear wifey - she cooks it all and ORGANIZES it all - I try to pull my own weight in our “modern” family (laundry, trash, dishes…) and gosh darnit, I am HAPPY.

Well, almost.
As the “modern” father quoted says, and I concur:
“Entirely by accident, I seem to have stumbled on the recipe for happiness. Though I’m not sure if happy is the first word my wife or children – or anyone else for that matter – would use to describe me. Happy is far too stable a word. It speaks of consistency and optimism, both of which I only ever experience fleetingly. Grumpy. That sounds a bit closer. Neurotic, high maintenance, insomniac. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

So “happy” is a relative term.

What do you think?

Are you a happy pappy or do you have a happy hubby because he can rock that Dyson?

“Six…teen.”

They look at me, confused, so I clarify.

“She is six, but she is going on sixteen.”

And it’s true.

Our rambunctious, monkey-like, silly, Ramona-Quimby-reading first-grader is just around the corner from being that sixteen year-old teenage daughter that will cause me to have double-bypass surgery in my early years. I just know it.

And still, I say all of this half-jokingly.

At least I DID, until last week, when innocence was lost. Tossed out the window, off the cliff, and is almost nearly and basically gone forever.

What happened was this:

At my rents’ home for dinner, we asked child to demonstrate some of the steps she learned in her amateur dance class.

She kicks off the routine, doing the cha-cha, and then, as she gets into the swing of it, she looks at me, and with the most natural of movements, with not a care in the world, she…

WINKED

at me. Smiled, and kept going.

I stood there in shock. Frozen. Unclear on what had just happened.

But it had.

My little baby had just winked, a come-hither, an I’m-too-cool-for-this-shirt wink.

And my world collapsed. I shook my head in disbelief.

And I kiss her every chance I get.

Because the moments are dwindling.

Really? Are you gonna give me another one to go with the one I already have?

Can’t?

I think not. I think we will be just fine with just one (even if many others might disagree).

Now I know this ain’t a new topic, but it caught the top of my mind as we spent the weekend with a small wedding party of friends and family - many siblings on display, and a few only children.

The tendency is always to ask which is “better” or who is “happier”?

I have been able to stop doing asking those questions, recognize (and celebrate) the differences. Though I never did think I would have an only child (mostly because I am not one - I have a younger brother), I am convinced you really just have to do what is right for you.

I have now witnessed siblings who are completely at odds and detract from one another, and others where it works.

I have been friends with many only children, some who have embraced, some who now have two children of their own (perhaps because they regretted their only-childhood).

But there is no answer, methinks…

What do YOU say?

Everyone liked him in the interviews: he was affable, well-spoken, honest about what he’d done and what he didn’t know, and we closed the deal and brought him on.

I was quite confident he would grow into the role we needed, and two months in, he is well on his way to doing so.

But initially, and still, I was skeptical for only one reason: when he interviewed, his wife was due at any day with their second child. And I knew that given our intense work environment - especially in the first few months (as I knew firsthand) - it would be a challenge: both for him to stay awake and pull the hours and for me to train him.

(Yup, look at me: I live in a glass house and I am throwing stones.)

But I hired him because I was confident that he and I would work something out - man to man, father to father, professional to professional.

And we have, so far, with some challenges.

You see, he is - like me - a working father who also tries to be present at home, and therein lies the challenge.

As I have written before, I work with a number of fathers, but almost of all of them have wives who don’t work, which means they are mostly free to just, well, work - and if they can get home to be with the kids, that is great. My new guy’s wife is not currently working, but she is planning to and always has.

So, how did it go, you ask?

Honestly, I started out with a big bucket of empathy and understanding and told him that he would be able to work from home soon and leave early and la dee da…

But as the work piled up and he seemed to be always tired, I will admit, I grew frustrated. There was a TON of work to do, and if he couldn’t get it done, it was left to me to cover for him. No good.

So we talked about expectations - what I needed from him, what he wanted to do, and what his wife was demanding of him (and this was the most pressing need).

And gradually we seemed to reach a place where everyone was getting what they needed, perhaps.

He is now putting in more hours, he is taking more ownership, and he says that his wife is more understanding…but the whole situation has left me in an odd and new place - confronted, as a manager, with the same decisions that my own managers have had, and it has shown me just how tricky it can be to manage a working parent (and specifically, one who is doggedly sleep deprived - I think we all know that feeling all too well).

Coffee, anyone?

Let me know your experience here - either as a manager or the managed, good or nightmarish, we want to know!