The Soul Mate

When I had Lucas I was all by myself with a 3 week old baby. My mom came for 3 weeks, my in-laws for 2 weeks and Armando took some vacation time. Back then he did not have a paternity leave or a bonding leave.

I had a per-diem position so I took 8 months off from work to be with Lucas. I enjoyed every one of those months and cried (a lot) when it was time for me to go back to work and send him to daycare. With Matias, things are different. I now have a full-time position and could only be on leave for 3 months, however, he got to experience something Lucas did not: spend 2 months with Armando.

I feel that when you have kids your life goes by in fast forward mode. One day I was in the hospital giving birth, then I had to go back to work and leave Armando in charge and now I find myself preparing everything to send Matias to daycare and holding back my tears. 

Armando has done an excellent job these 2 last months. He kept his end of the deal: 2 months of no cooking, giving bottles, changing diapers, mid-night waking up to feed, loading and unloading the dishwasher. He has taken great care of Matias and even knows (and this makes me a bit jealous) how to put him to sleep without so much crying better than me.

Without a doubt Armando is an excellent dad to both Lucas and Matias. He was even brave enough to get on a plane with both of them! 

Now we are getting ready for a new routine, one in which both of us are going to be working and will have to organize our time to the last minute. However, we are not afraid of changes. We came to this country 7 years ago with our lives packed in 2 suitcases (like most Venezuelans) and have accomplished a great deal of things. 

Life with two kids is hard, but we are in this together. Right compañero?

The Summer of Armando

My name is Armando, a Venezuelan living in Massachusetts and I work for a company that offers a few great benefits. One of them is what they call "bonding leave". The policy consists of giving a new parent eight weeks, fully paid, to spend with a new born or newly adopted child the first year of his/her life. So basically for a man it works as paternity leave and for a woman eight extra weeks added to the maternity leave. The US is not characterized by their great child bonding policies so it is probably close to the best you can get. In my opinion it is actually better than what my wife got. Even though she had to go through the whole child birth effort all she got was a fully paid week of vacation, four weeks of 75% pay and another 4 unpaid weeks. All I did was stand there next to her saying breathe a couple of times and I get fully paid 8 weeks??

So my wife, Alegna, is getting back to work tomorrow, after three months of great childcare, and leaving all the baby responsibilities for the next two months to me. These past three months since Matias was born I have been mostly a tourist. I helped with some diapers and bottles but most of the work was done by my wife. It has been tough on her and she has taken it like a champion. Now, it is my turn to keep my end of the bargain. Two months off work with the responsibility of all house chores, late night feedings, cooking and all that my wife has accomplished until now. I have been practicing the past couple of nights to get used to the schedule. It's going to be tough! But my plan is to make the most of it: the Summer of Armando!

My plan is to have short daily posts with some interesting details of what might have happened on that day. Is it going to be interesting? I have no idea. I'll try to mix it up a little, I'm a big movie buff with a DVR full of TCM movies that I expect to watch. I'll be taking walks around the neighborhood to see if I can catch some Pokémon in Pokémon GO. Go into the twitter black hole every once in a while trying to filter real news from fake news coming from the Venezuelan protests. But mostly, I'll try to survive doing something I have a little experience doing (I also have a 3 year old named Lucas) and try to enjoy it as much as I can.

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Well that's it for today, wish me luck, for tomorrow begins the Summer of Armando!