Brent’s Thoughts

I admit I am intrigued by the differences in the thinking patterns of men and women. I find it fascinating that two people can look at the same situation and see things in a completely different way.

I would like to present two scenarios for the readers to ponder. I hope to get a few opinions; I would especially like to get the male viewpoint since I am already pretty sure what most of the women would say.

Family A

Man and a woman with two children. Currently the woman is staying at home with the children, but due to monetary concerns would like to get back into the workforce. The only problem is that the money that she would earn would pretty much just go to pay for childcare. She could work a second shift job, but the husband would have to watch the kids while she was at work. He is not in favor of that option because after work he would like to have some time to just relax at home, maybe play some games or watch TV.

I believe men and women alike, anyone that has ever had a job, can relate and understand the need to relax after work.

Family B

Man and a woman with one child. Both husband and wife work full time jobs and the wife has an additional class that she attends one night a week. Wife is bothered by the fact that when she gets home late at night, husband has not provided any dinner for the child. She would like to relax once she gets home, but instead must make dinner and clean up.

Information on how he has spent his time while she was at class was not provided.

So if we apply the same reasoning as family A above, assuming no bias or double standard between the working husband in family A and the working wife from family B, the response to this situation would be

1. It is understandable that the wife would like to relax after work and class and the husband is equally responsible for caring for his child and making sure that the child is fed.
2. It is not understandable that the wife would like to relax after work and regardless of how much time the husband had to fix dinner while she was at class, she should do it.

Wayne and I got the generator working on it. We took it off and it looked brand new. It says 2002 on it and I think that is the manufacture date on it. The wires leading too it were pretty roughed up, so we redid them and then took the generator apart.

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Well, we went to Julie’s two month appointment today. She is (drum roll) 11 lb 2 oz, in the 70th percentile for weight; 23 3/4 inches long, 95th percentile for height; and her head size is in the 50th percentile. She got 3 shots, her vaccinations. She took it okay, she was upset at first but she settled down pretty quick. I also had some coupons for free formula so I got 3 more cans of Enfamil. She will have her next appointment Oct 24th.

After the doctor’s appointment we met Coach and Joey for lunch at Toots and then we went to see their new house. It is huge. They were planning on a main floor with an attic and it turned into a main floor with a full finished basement and a finished bonus area upstairs. The place is crazy big. They have 25 hundred sq feet just on the main floor. Oh well, it is nice.

Hello all, I just thought that I would write in with an update on Julie. She is precious. She is sleeping less during the day and better at night. Occasionally she is cranky for no reason and she prefers to be held all the time, but other than that she is a joy. I guess I have lucked out with a good baby. Currently, I am spending my days maintaining the house, feeding and tending to Julie, watching TV and working ever so slowly on plans for a thesis. I have emailed a few specialists with questions on something I wanted to try. If they write me back and indicate that it might be worth a shot to try it, I will start my experiments once I get back from maternity leave. Current stumbling blocks include a lack of being able to access older articles online. Most items before 1997 are only available on hard copy at the library.

Currently the plan is to go to work 4 days/week at 9.5 hours/day and try to take Wed off so that I can watch Julie on Wed leaving my mom to watch her on Monday and Tues and Linda to watch her on Thurs and Fri. At least I guess that is the plan… As a fall back I have filled out an application to the daycare at Western. I get preference due to being staff at Western, but I get moved farther down the waiting line since Brent and I aren’t finacially bad off and Julie is white with no disabilities. I don’t know if she would get in at Western, there are only 8 spots for birth-2 years.