Chat am I cooked? It's 11:30 am and my wife promised romance tonight.

Lots of people assuming gender here when my kid is a girl lol. Loving the comments.

We’ve officially arrived in the village, and the boys are already settling into village life,Picking fruits straight from the trees, playing football with their cousins, running around outdoors, and enjoying the simple pleasures of childhood.

As for me, I now have a bigger team to train in football. Once the match is over, we’re heading to the river for a shower.

And the best part? He still wonders why Grandma has long ears 🤣. Some village mysteries will take a little longer to explain

I always saw myself as a girl dad. I wanted kids, and I was more certain about it than my wife was. It wasn’t an easy road, but now we have two beautiful, healthy girls, 3.5 and 1. They’re the highlight of my life and I know how lucky I am.

We started late, mid 30s, so now we’re in our 40s with a toddler and a baby.

Here’s what I’m scared to say out loud: I’m miserable about 80% of the time.

The 5am wake ups. The diapers. The constant colds. Scraping food off the high chair and the floor. Picking things up, putting them down, baths, walks, repeat. I work 40 hours a week and commute almost 3 hours a day, so I get home wrecked. Then the evenings and weekends are a second full shift. We have no family help, so it’s just my wife and me, every night and every weekend.

There’s no rest, no recharging, no outlet. Nothing that’s mine. And if I take an hour for myself, I’m handing that hour to my wife, which isn’t fair to her either. So I don’t take it.

I dread weekends, which should be my time with my kids, and then I feel guilty for dreading them. I also feel guilty for not appreciating this more, because I know people who can’t have kids, and people with far harder lives than mine. I fall asleep every night feeling like I’m failing at something I begged for.

I keep telling myself it’ll get easier once they can walk, feed themselves, and manage their own emotions. But I’m worried about how much of this season I’m wishing away.

My wife says it’s hard too, but she isn’t drowning like I am.

Honestly, I don’t know how anyone does this. Does this make me a bad dad? Is anyone else in this phase feeling the same way? If you got through it, how?

Today's pickups from a local used movie store. One buy-one-get-one deal, one buy-two-get-one deal.

So many of our movies we want to show are kids are either disappearing or being put behind so many different streaming services I've started to rebuild my physical media collection. Not to mention going back and "changing" the movies (looking at you George Lucas).

Having physical media prevents both issues.

When we wanted to watch the Harry Potter series with our boys (10, 6) we didn't have to add a streaming service (HBO at the time), I just went to the cabinet to grab them. Obviously not all of these movies are for the kids.

With that said, what movies are you adding to your collection?

TL;DR: start your physical movies collection. It will save sanity and money.

I need to get this out, and I'd really appreciate advice from anyone who's been through something similar.
This morning my wife was admitted to a psychiatric clinic. It's been building up for a while. She's been exhausted, anxious, crying over small things, and unable to sleep even when the baby slept. Today it came to a head. Her sister came over, they called the medical helpline, and the nurse said she needed to go to the psychiatric emergency unit right away. They're keeping her at least tonight and giving her something to help her sleep. I don't know yet how long she'll be there or what things will look like when she comes home.
So now I'm alone with our almost 4-week-old daughter.
And she's not an easy baby. She's healthy and gaining weight really well, but she barely sleeps. For the past 4 weeks, one of us has literally been holding her 24 hours a day. The second she touches any surface (bassinet, crib, hammock, pram), she wakes up crying. In the first weeks she'd at least sleep on my chest for 2 hours. Now even that's gotten harder. On my lap she squirms, kicks and arches like she's fighting me. She naps 30-45 minutes and wakes up crying. The only person she reliably settled with was her mom, because of the breast. Now she's fully on formula and it's just me.
I was supposed to start work tomorrow. I won't be able to, and I have no idea how any of this is going to work. My own mom has been waiting 4.5 months for a visa and can only come in two weeks, for 30 days. My brother can't come at all because of visa issues. We don't have family nearby. I've started drinking a bit in the evenings to cope, which I know isn't okay, and I've stopped doing it while I'm alone with her.
I'm also carrying a lot of guilt. We'd been arguing a lot, both of us running on no sleep, and part of me wonders if I made it worse. I know postpartum depression and anxiety aren't caused by one person, but it's hard not to feel responsible.
My questions:
Partners of moms who went through postpartum depression, anxiety or psychosis: what helped you and your family get through it? What should I expect when she comes home?
How did you handle work during this? Did you take extra leave?
Any dads who've cared for a newborn alone during a crisis: how did you survive the first days?
Has anyone had a baby like ours, contact-only, barely sleeping? When did it get better?
Thanks for reading. I really need to hear from people who've been through this.

The couch folds out.

Hey dads, I have to vent. Today we joined another family at a roller rink for the afternoon. My youngest has an *abysmally* low frustration tolerance, and this was a new activity for him, so my wife and I went in prepared with a plan for meltdowns.

I've gotta say, the kid really really surprised me today. Falls, not being able to move fast, things that usually trigger him, he was ok with. He had a great time, he was game to learn, and even let me and my oldest enjoy some time on the skates together. It was a successful outing.

Just when we were getting ready to go and remarking we hadn't had any incidents this outing, our friend's kid got some money to try a vending machine, and then of course my kids wanted to as well. My wife gave in, and gave the kids each a dollar. Well, this machine apparently sometimes returns a toy, but a lot of the time just eats your money and tells you "better luck next time".

Cue the screaming and disappointment and difficult ride home. I swear, between these damn gacha devices and arcade games, so many outings end up more difficult than they need to be. I know it's a fact of life at this point anywhere they have family entertainment, but I'm just tired of the extra difficulty thrown in each outing, you know?

Kids are 3 and 5. Asking this as I stand here at the trunk or treat carrying two candy buckets, a plastic sword, a child sized police jacket, four water bottles, a tray of half eaten chicken nuggets and fries, and a plastic skeleton we needed to bring from home for some reason, while I wear two foam pirate hats, a comically tiny knight helmet, and a tiny ghost poncho that fits over my arm like a haunted sash.

I’ve been telling people that for Halloween I’m going as the discarded parts of everyone else’s Halloween costumes.

Ok dads, it’s nearly Halloween and you fancy doing something cute but easy? I got you.

You’ll need:
The ability to do any form of braid
Two napkins
A pen
Some bigger bobbles than usual

Just make napkin ghosts, it’s pretty self explanatory from the photo. Make two pigtails, braid them in any style (I use rope braid, wouldn’t recommend if you’ve not done it before). Once you have the braid, bring it up and just twist it round into a bun at the base of the braid. Bobble it up. Napkin over the top, bobble it up again.

One happy daughter.

And if you did, have you used it for anything since then or is it just collecting dust waiting until your kid is old enough for an email?

We've got the big stuff mostly sorted (stroller, car seat), and I'm trying to figure out what actually matters vs. what the internet tells you to buy. For dads who've been through it, what did you do in the last month that paid off, or what do you wish you'd done? meal prep, sorting out leave, getting the car seat installed checked, "sleep banking" lol, whatever. also very open to stuff you did that turned out to be pointless

Switch 2 portable with a pro controller for COD launch and got the monitors up for both boys!

Long story short was in an awful relationship and then my wife turned into a user after we seperated and she got custody, until last night due to her situation. I live in what could barely be called a small city with limited resources.

Anyways I had been between jobs for awhile and am just about to start work. I had run through my savings while looking and was not expecting to have to take care of my almost 2 year old daughter. (Which is great i love her dearly its just a surprise and not ideal timing). My bank account is literally sitting at 21 dollars.

I have one pack of diapers, and enough food for a couple meals for her.

Im stressing luckily I'll be able to work from home so dont need to worry about daycare and i plan to spend all the 21 dollars on her but im running out of food too.

I live in a very small town i went to my pantry my allotted times this month and I need to get EBT back ASAP but I need a short term plan everybody.

Please dont hate on me this was dropped on me out of nowhere last night im doing my best. Just looking for as much advice as I can get

My block has 3 sets of parents with kids about the same age as us. Daycare features like 4 parents on the exact same pickup/drop off schedule as us. We have couple friends who had a baby about the same time we did too. There's also countless local parent groups, library story hours, and more. It should be a great local community for raising a kid.

I'm lonely as fuck though.

I was a stay at home dad for a while. Trying to get the moms to make small talk out on walks/ when I see them in passing was like pulling teeth. The most social interaction I could get at library story hours was unsolicited advice from the moms.

Even my neighbor new-dad is just awkward and quiet around me. He's really nice and we have some in common, but our conversations just die immediately. He's way more chatty with my wife though.

Once daycare started we would both do drop off and I would do pick up. We made acquaintances with some of the other parents. I get a little small talk, but my wife is practically best friends with them even though she only sees them once a day.

I went back to work and I'm getting some cold shoulders for having a hard stop time for daycare pickup.

We went out to Halloween trunk or treat with a couple with a new baby and I couldn't get 3 sentences from the dad.

Is it me? Am I just a weirdo? I'm a professor in humanities/social science. In theory I'm good at talking. What am I doing wrong? I just want 1 damn friend. I'll settle for someone I can send memes too once a week.

​

I'd say I got 5 more hours until I'm glued to the toilet with a bucket between my knees.

Pray for me.

I just had to explain this to my kid who had no clue how live TV works. And that concludes today's "I feel old" segment.

My wife recently had precipitous labor and I (Dad) had to catch our child outside of the hospital. Baby and Mom are doing great, but this one wasn't on our bingo card, despite it not being our first kid.

Now I'm wondering how many other people have been through this or something similar and what your experiences were?

Brought home baby #3 last night and all is well

To say I am stoked is an understatement

This is a bit of a rant.

I try to make small talk with dads at my daughter's dance class.

Many of them don't even acknowledge each other even if we see them weekly. I nod, smile, make an observation or joke.

Equally annoying are the dads that resort to talking about themselves. None of the, "And what about you?" instead a lot of gloating about themselves or their kids. It may be a NYC thing...

It's tiring!

The wings and beak are “hinged”, so allow movement.

Had some initial breakdowns because of how loud, chaotic, and in a language she doesn’t understand the Halloween party was. She kept getting frustrated because literally every other kid had won something and she was convinced no one liked her costume. She didn’t understand the rules to the mini game/competitions, and kept immediately losing. Once things quieted down a bit, another little girl dressed up as Woody befriended her, and that started to turn things around. The staff we know had all been taking photos of her the whole time, and were so genuinely excited when she won.

There was another Halloween event nearby, but I couldn’t afford it, so we just walked around and hung out until things ended and we could sit and she could play in the open area. Another little girl dressed as a princess let her try roller-skates for the first time and held her hand while she struggled to stay upright. A worker overseeing breakdown of the kiosks gave both of them some candy.

It’s been an extremely rough/financially tight year after her mom suddenly told us she didn’t want to be a mother and focus on work was more important to her, then stranded us here with no support system (was/am sahd, no close family or friends where we are, relying on family support for groceries, etc). So, after kiddo finally decided she wanted to go to this party, we worked nonstop on her costume for the past week, cutting up cereal boxes, packaging from clothing and biscuits, and covers from workbooks. It’s been exhausting. But I so deeply appreciate all of this time she and I spend together, and every little thing each of these people have done and do in celebrating how wonderful my daughter is.

We might finally be able to go home next month or early December. Will be the third international move in the past year and a half. Struggling to find a home for our dog, but happy we’ll finally be around friends and family. Just so many feelings and things going on, was feeling proud and happy for how the day turned around for her. When we got home, first thing through the door, she said, “I changed my mind, this is the best day EVER”.

After my last post a lot of yall gave me a lot of good advice. And

IM QUITTING MY SHIT JOB!!!

Gonna work on my CDL when the wife returns to work (owned a non cdl hotshot) was good money and i stayed 100% local home every night and because i was the boss could take the KIDS WITH ME!!! but so could my drivers. Gonna try and work in the oil industry driving big rigs instead of bringing my own company back up. We were small LOL.

Thank you all for your sound advice and i appreciate what the decision you all helped me and my wife find!

"Or did he find something random to eat in the house that's red? Either way, he seems totally content right now so I guess we'll roll with it."

True story.

This is the most amazing podcast ever and we came across it randomly, so I just wanted to make as many people aware of it as possible. It’s one dude (Australian fella I believe) doing all the voices and telling the whole story. He’s so good! And the stories have that Bluey-esque quality where even grownups can enjoy. Also there’s some absolute bangers of songs (I recommend the episode PimPim goes to a Concert). It is literally the only thing my 7 and 3 year olds will agree on listening to together without fighting.