Theo’s job can be very demanding and can have a lot of downsides, let’s be honest. BUT! One of the biggest benefits of his job is that he gets six whole weeks of paternity leave after we have a baby. I cannot even begin to describe how blessed I am to have such a hard-working husband who also steps in on any parenting or household chores that need to be done. He is great about this even when he’s working full time, but he’s was especially a rockstar while on paternity leave.
Before the baby was born, we had some grand plans for his six weeks off. We assumed that the weather would start to warm up and that we would have a lovely time snuggling our baby and getting some major homestead projects done. That did not happen….BUT we still had a lovely time together as a family. With both Theo and I being off work, we were able to spend more time together than we have in a long, long time.
Here was our paternity leave “wishlist” (with a strikethrough on the things that we accomplished):
Butcher hog50 hours outside- Date nights with the big kids
Suzanne back to all household choresRead 8 books- Establish a family devotions routine
- Read a Psalm and pray together each night
Have someone over for dinnerGo to church in person 4xDo an Easter egg hunt on our propertyDig ditch- Dig out pond
- Sunflower field planted
- Plant garden
Prep female pig for birth- Theo work on rental properties
- DeValve kitchen work
- Theo re-roof rental property
Ok, so we didn’t do so great just from looking at that list. But, here is what we did instead….
- Spent two weeks cooped up inside with the absolute worst cold for Tera, Kiah and Ezra (and Pepaw, too). I spent most of those two weeks in the bedroom with Orion while Theo took care of the sick big kids around the clock. It was ROUGH.
- Spent tons and tons of time outside. As much time as we possibly could. It was probably close to 80 hours outside
- Got 25 new chicks! Making our chicken total 59. Chicken math is a real problem around here haha.
- We enjoyed Spring Break as a family. We stayed close to home, but managed to do some fun outings!
- We did get back into the church routine, and it was so lovely to have Theo at church with us, especially on Easter Sunday!
- We did indeed butcher our hog and added about 60 pounds of meat to our freezer
- Theo’s parents visited and my MIL ended up staying for around 10 days! We had a blast with Grandma and got some projects done while she was here.
- Theo shot a very large coyote on our property
- We got our pregnant female pig into the barn to prepare her for birthing piglets. Any day now!
- The biggest thing that happened during Theo’s paternity leave is that he took a second job as our school resource officer two days a week. This had not been on our radar at all, but the Lord literally flung the door open and it happened very suddenly/quickly.
- And, of course, we spent hours and hours snuggling the sweetest and most wonderful addition to our family, baby Orion.
He’s back to work now and while it’s always hard to transition back to more work, we sure are thankful for the six weeks Theo had at home!