Back to wherever you came from

On January 25, 1837 the state of Michigan joined the United States of America forever changing how the world would view this country. On Jauary 25, 2006 my daughter Samantha continues to change how I view my work, my life and most certainly my future.
Today was a day that I have been dreading for the past 6 weeks, returning to work full-time. While my wife was pregnant I never gave much thought to going to work, she was still my wife and could take care of herself, she was just a bigger version. Now that our daughter is in the picture, my perception of leaving them alone has really changed. Even though my wife handles most of the day to day, hands-on nurturing of our daughter I still play a pretty important role (at least in my mind). A wise old man told me that if I take care of my wife so she can take care of the baby things will run smoothly. Usually, wise old men turn out to be less than wise, they are just old. In this instance, this bit of advice actually worked out quite well for our family unit.
With me doing all the cooking, all the cleaning (thankful I bought "my wife" a roomba in late November), all the shopping, and all the laundry my wife could focus on doing the most important thing in the house, caring for our daughter. I can always leave the laundry for tomorrow or grab take-out Chinese for dinner but my wife is on call 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. She doesn't get any real breaks, she is always ready to take care of the baby, feeding her or just interacting with her. The funny thing is that although she's working twice as hard as me, I am the one who seems to get cranky and tired. That's why I dread returning to work.
With me out of the house my wife is going to feel obligated to begin "pulling her own weight around here" which to her means doing all the cooking, cleaning, shopping and caring of the baby. If she wasn't tired before she certainly is going to be getting pretty tired trying to accomplish all of the tasks that keep the house running. Some of the tired and cranky she is going to experience is going to filter out of her and wind up on the baby....kind of like a leaking cup of coffee.
Some of the tasks I am happy that she is going to begin doing again...cleaning cat poop pans for instance. I have never had a cat before marriage, never wanted one really but now we have three poop pans that need cleaned and they need cleaned pretty regularly. When my wife first told me that she was out of the poop pan business I was okay with the descision because it was a small part for me to play in the pregnancy experience. After about three weeks I had enough...cat poop pans and the job of cleaning them is one of the foulest things I can imagine having to do on a daily basis. Give me a baby with poop in her diaper anyday. I made it the ten months and all the cats survived but I do not look forward to having to resume this duty again anytime in the future.
Returning to work and missing out on the things that are happening with my daughter are just the way things are. My job is to make sure that my wife is warm, dry and has enough to eat so she can continue to raise our daughter the best way she can. Keeping that small fact in mind enables me to get through the eight hour workday.