Work life balance isn’t always the easiest thing to achieve. You want to do everything you can to provide for the people you love.
With a second child now, my time is split even more than it was before. Balancing between work and family only gets harder as time goes on.
I am very blessed to work in the technology industry. Technology jobs are leading the path for fathers to be able to more easily balance their time, whether it is from working from home or having flexible work hours. At my previous job, I had the option to work from home full time, and I cherish all of the moments I spent with Asher during his first year. Of course, working from home didn’t mean that I spent all day every day with my family - it meant that I didn’t have a commute in the morning and evening and that I could spend time getting snuggles during work breaks instead of hanging out at the water cooler.
I can occasionally work from home these days, but it is usually limited to when we have a doctor’s appointment. That’s alright though - it is much harder to work from home with two kids than it was with one baby. I am able to take advantage of flexible hours at work though. This lets me spend every morning playing with Asher and every evening playing with Addy.
It’s such a fun routine and it brings me so much joy in the morning to hear Asher calling out “oh daddy, where are you?”, knowing that he is genuinely excited to get up and play with me.
This phase won’t last forever and we’ll find new ways to spend time together, but as for now, I wouldn’t trade my 7-9am for anything (except for some extra sleep occasionally - after all, I am a parent of a 4 month old as well.)
Sometimes, you just need to find the extra margin and appreciate the precious moments you get. They are far beyond worth it, especially since you never get them back.