Kitty & Kevin

Kevin is working double-duty now that there are two crazy little girls at home. Over maternity leave last month, I started getting a little insight into what his life must be like. I decide to interview him on what it is like being a stay-at-home dad!


What do you love most about being a stay-at-home dad?

The thing I love most about being a stay at home dad is all the time I get to spend with the girls and how I have been able to see them grow up every step of the way. I really have enjoyed spending time with Lorelai reading, playing with toys, watching movies, and taking her to experience new things. Its still early, but I am sure I will love it with Pepper too.

Why did you choose to be a stay at home dad?

I wouldn't say I chose to completely, I was more than willing to. I didn't particular like my job before Lorelai, however, it was more that it made the most sense. I was working a retail job, and Kitty had just been hired at her current job which included a salary we …

I'm officially back to embracing the "Working Mom" title. Going back to work brought on a lot of mixed feelings for me. I was nervous to jump back in after being out of the office, feeling bad about the lost hours of quality time spent with the family this week, regretting not spending more time soaking up baby cuddles and reading stories, worried about how Kevin would handle having both girls at home during the day...and then a little exhausted on top of that.

Let me just say it..Mom Guilt Sucks.

I try to overcompensate by focusing entirely on the girls when I get home from work. I spend my commute listening to parenting books and books about how to be a successful working mom, all in an attempt to make myself feel better that I'm missing so many quality hours with the girls during such a fleeting time.

Some days I feel even worse when my emotionally unstable two-year-old sees me arrive home from work and cries...not wanting to be near me, all due to whatever demon …

It's 4:00 a.m on the day my youngest daughter turns 7 weeks old. You may be thinking, "that poor mom, you know its been a rough night if she is blogging at 4:00 a.m."

Wrong, I just woke my daughter for the first time in 8+ hours to eat. I can't say this is the "norm" yet, but she is consistently doing 5-8 hour stretches of sleep at night, before going down for another 4 or so hour stretch. If you're a mom of an infant, you feel like a million bucks after that kind of sleep and I had to share what we did to get here.


When we started "sleep training" our oldest, Lorelai, at around 6 weeks old...I started to think maybe we just had a good sleeper. She had colic, MSPI (if you don't know what this is...you're one of the lucky ones) and all kinds of tummy issues leaving us with a screaming baby any time she was awake. She wasn't exactly the poster child for a kid that would sleep well. I told myself that sleeping well was the least she c…

If you don't wear glasses or contacts, you may not understand the struggle I'm about to describe to you. My struggle is this:


These are my actual shampoo and conditioner bottles in my shower. Can you tell which set are shampoo and which are conditioner? Yeah, me neither. This is honestly what my bottles of hair product look like to me in the shower, as well as anything else when I don't have glasses on. When I started buying shampoo & conditioner that looked the exact same and have a toddler who loves to move around my bottles...it started driving me nuts. I have a system, rather than group brands of products together I put shampoo on one side of the shower, and conditioner on the other. I have a two year old who LOVES to move them around during the day...just one of the many ways she likes to make my life a little more challenging.

That is just one of the many reasons why I'd love to be able to see clearly without glasses. Another big event that happened this year…

If you've been a follower for a while, you may remember my post about nursing Lorelai 2 years ago. That I nursed her for 5 months before giving up the fight. That is truly what it was at that point, a fight between me and my 5 month old daughter. A very strong-willed daughter who after multiple nursing strikes (lasting many days each time) won the battle that she simply wanted the bottle.

When I voiced my concerns to friends about having another baby, and repeating the same struggles (whether nursing or others) we had that first year with Lorelai...I was always told the same thing "every kid is different." All I could think was "yeah right, we are going to get another colic child with MSPI and an egg allergy who hates nursing.

They could not have been more right.

Pepper is mild tempered, a cuddler and has wanted to nurse constantly since she arrived. Here is the problem...her nursing hurt...bad. Let me back up.

In the hospital the lactation consultants just kept tel…

How 3 weeks can go by so quickly and so slowly all at the same time, is really a mystery. Pepper is thriving and adjusting well to our little family...and we are adjusting to life with two beautiful little girls.

Lorelai finds Pepper entertaining at times (particularly when she emits a bodily gas such as a burp ... or a toot) or unintentionally moves her arms to touch Lorelai. Lorelai also likes to bring her things like a pacifier or the bear she was given at the hospital. Other than that, big sister pretty much leaves her alone.

We went through some struggles these past 3 weeks including multiple infections, lactation consults and a tongue tie procedure for Pepper. Not everything has been absolutely perfect.

I will say, learning to adjust to two is so much easier for us than learning to adjust to our first baby. With Lorelai it took us weeks to get comfortable leaving the house with her, both of us were living on very little sleep, and personally I was not handling life postpartum as…

Dear Pepper,

You are one week old today. To our surprise you arrived promptly on your due date, something I had no expectation of happening, even when it was occurring. Saturday morning I woke up at 6am to work on my "due date" project, the laundry room. I decided a couple days earlier I needed a project that I could complete if you did not arrive by your due date. That way I wouldn't be too frustrated that our little girl hadn't arrived. I needed a shelf in the laundry room to put the laundry basket on and plans to spruce it up just a little bit. I worked on it until about 8 a.m.

Once Lorelai got up we decided to spend the morning at the botanical gardens to see the new dinosaur exhibit. We invited your grandparents too. I was a kind of slow moving, but no signs of labor at that time. On our way home it was about lunch time and I started feeling more aches but chalked it up to my normal Braxton Hicks contractions. At home Lorelai ate lunch and went down for her nap…