The Ultimate Stay-at-Home Dad: Your Essential Manual for Being an Awesome Full-Time Father

Carpenter, a stay-at-home dad since 2008, offers practical insights and plenty of comic asides in his buoyant debut. His wisdom was hard-won: “For some dumbass reason, my wife and I decided to move across the country during my first month as the primary caregiver.” After his wife moved to their new home, Carpenter’s job was to “take care of the two kids, sell our house, pack our belongings, organize a daily schedule, and provide a clean and loving learning environment.” His success, he writes, stemmed from patience, flexibility, and loads of self-compassion, and led to the practices and strategies laid out here. Among the advice is to establish a weekly routine to help children know what to expect, turn budget-planning and bill-paying into a team activities, and to clean the first two rooms a spouse will see upon their return home from work if one doesn’t have time to do the whole house. Carpenter mixes general advice (parenting should be viewed as an adventure) with quirky anecdotes of things he’s done with his children (visiting the World’s Largest Ball of Twine). The savvy mix of lighthearted quips and straightforward guidance will be a lifesaver for at-home fathers. [em]Agent: Chris Kepner, the Kepner Agency. (Oct.) [/em]