Images courtesy Dave Pidgeon
My wife, Alison, and I twisted open the spout on a box of pinot noir, sat down in our living room, and after a few sips I got confessional.
“I’m so in trouble come January, aren’t I?” I said to her.
The comment, a plea for help and empathy, was met with shimmering delight in her eyes, even as she choked a little on the wine, coughed, and then laughed. “Now you know how it feels,” she said. “What do you think I’ve been dealing with this whole time?”
I would get my comeuppance when daylight saving time ended and central Pennsylvania began the slow crawl from showy autumn foliage to a rejuvenating spring. When, as temperatures dipped into the are-you-kidding-me-it’s-frickin’-cold part of the thermometer, I would be mostly confined to the four walls of our house. And I wouldn’t be alone. Our two sons, ages 5 and 3, would be with me.
One trepidation hung over the decision to transition me out of working as a corporate media spokesman for a major transportation company and into life as a stay-at-home dad, while Alison left the at-home parent role to devote herself full-time to her small businesses—the impending challenge of figuring out what to do during the winter. Days are short, cold, and usually caught under a lifeless cloudy sky; our serotonin seems to wane, and we grow bored and blue, not to mention a little crazed when trapped in a house with two boys prone to spontaneous combustion.
Stay-at-home parenting during the spring, summer, and fall proved to be quite enjoyable, especially when the solution to just about everything—the boys arguing; watching too much TV; becoming bored; having too much energy at bedtime, thus delaying the few moments during which Alison and I get to enjoy more of that boxed wine before we pass out from exhaustion—was a simple three-word phrase: let’s go outside.
Going outside fits my temperament as a dad who likes to move. We can ride bikes, shoot a basketball, work in our boxed garden, practice hitting a baseball off a tee, use the swings and learn how to use our legs to project ourselves higher in the air. Where I lack as a stay-at-home dad is in what to do inside the house when the weather drives us indoors. Uhhhhh, boys, do you want to bake something? Probably best to keep the three of us away from pans, flour, and an oven for the foreseeable future.
No wonder the TV-as-a-babysitter is so tempting, but that’s not the kind of stay-at-home parent I aspired to be. I didn’t want to arrive at my 70s and sit around the kitchen table with my adult children, reminiscing about their childhood and all the hours I let them watch Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood and (please forgive me, fellow parents) Caillou.
I figured part of the solution to the pending winter blues was to draw up a plan like I did at my old job, when I took note of major upcoming events and developed precise talking points for media interviews.
Planning proved to be one of the most valuable lessons I learned early on when I started life as a stay-at-home dad. The weeks when I plotted the days ahead—when we’d go to the library or pool, bike a rail trail, sit with crayons and markers to color, actually try to follow a recipe and make something—turned out to be the happiest weeks for everyone. They weren’t always perfect. Life interrupts, after all, and rearranges your plans, but my children seemed to be more positive, their personalities more vibrant; it was the same for me.
The weeks I didn’t plan? Well, I was admittedly too tempted to hand over the television remote to the boys, and I’d be washed in guilt for perceiving myself as a bad father. So here in the wintertime, planning seems to be among the best options to keep the winter blues at bay.
I like to make theme days. Mondays are for making something. Tuesdays are library days. Wednesdays we go somewhere, like a park or some indoor activity, and so on. That way, when I begin to plan the week, I have a sense of the direction I want things to go and can make our days together count.
It’s also important in keeping the winter blues away to let loose a little bit. Crank the stereo and have a dance party (although if I have to listen to Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop This Feeling” one more time…). If the kids are finger painting, dip your index finger into those little bowls of color and make your best two-dimensional house with curly trees, too. Build a fort in the living room with them instead of watching them do it. And hallways make for great bowling alleys (do this cautiously, though).
And lastly, there’s a truth about wintertime and parenting that I find fundamental, and to me, it works against the winter blues. We’re fortunate to live in a place with four seasons, and I believe in embracing them all for the good of my children and myself. Life under the sky with lungs full of fresh air is better and healthier than life under a roof breathing HVAC, even in the doldrums of winter. So throw on the coats and hats and get outside. Do it for an hour or just five minutes. Play tag or take a walk, whatever it takes to get some vitamin D from the sun, to get you moving, to feel alive and refreshed again.
Plan like a professional, play like a kid, and enjoy some fresh air.
Dave is a Lancaster-based stay-at-home father, writer, and professional photographer.
Read more at CreativelyGenuine.com and follow him on Twitter, Instagram and NorthArch.