Catholic Husband

Love / Lead / Serve

The Scariest Part of Being A Stay-At-Home Parent

I’m about to embark on a new adventure and I’m both scared and excited at the same time.

At the end of April, I left my job. I’ve started working full time at ChetComm, a company that I started in 2007, spending my time working on both Catholic Husband and developing an iOS app. It also means that when Alison starts her work at the hospital, I’ll be a stay-at-home parent.

We’ve been working for a few weeks on getting Benedict and I’s schedule down. I have a solid plan that allows me to keep the household in order and log 3 hours working on ChetComm projects during his naps. The thing that I’m most scared of is keeping Benedict entertained.

As Benedict keeps growing, he’s becoming more and more interactive. It’s a lot of fun, not only to see him to develop, but to be building a relationship with him. He certainly recognizes Alison and I and he’s now responding to us. I know that over the next 3 years he’s going to make huge leaps and bounds. So how will I keep him meaningfully engaged?

I’m at least thankful that I do have time and his needs will only increase gradually. That’ll give me enough time to plan and adjust.

In the end, I think it comes down to serious time management discipline. I need to balance spending high quality time with Benedict, while being disciplined during his naps to grow my writing skills and my business. I want to help people, I want to help them be better prepared for marriage, and I want to help them live their marriage more fully. I want to help you! That won’t happen if I don’t continue to work every day on Catholic Husband.

I’m excited for our family’s many new adventures, perhaps most of all this one as a full-time Dad and full-time writer. New roles in our lives can be scary, so we need to take them in stride.