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.
Please feel free to comment on my posts to give me real
feedback like: "This sucks!" or "You suck!" And if you are
really curious you can even sign up to receive email notifications whenever I
post something new by adding your email on the right where it says "Follow
By Email".
Well that's it for today, wish me luck, for tomorrow begins
the Summer of Armando!
