Fair Play Sneak Peak

As my two devoted blog readers know, Paul will be taking another round of paternity leave starting in two days until the end of August. Our original goal of the leave was to have time together as a couple to "make up for lost time" over the nine years (today!) of intensive parenting. We planned on staying in Berlin and enjoying adult time while the kids are at school and then do some family travel.

However, you don't have to read too much between the lines on this blog to know that I've been having a bit of a rough go of home life this last year (albeit with a nice Kur reprieve exactly a year ago). In general, I built a family workflow that is crushing me. With one child it was pretty even - Paul took care of making money and our IT. I took care of everything else.

Moving to Germany tipped the equitable scales. On the positive side, Paul has made big strides on work-life balance. For starters, he was forced to take 25 vacation days (currently bumped to 30). In the last couple years, I asked that instead of working late nights on big projects he work Saturdays and then reclaim them later as flex days. In summary, would say he works about 20% fewer hours than he did in the US. However, this 20% isn't enough to balance out two more kids... kids that are not Crosby's level of chill.

"Yes, I'm happy to sit still and hang out for this photo in this awesome outfit." 

Also, the language barrier means every doctor's appointment, parent meeting, etc requires my assistance. Paul and I agreed to disagree on the importance of speaking German in Germany. German learning was at the bottom of the to-do list. 

But, now Germany's current government coalition is changing the dual citizenship laws so that residents can become German citizens in a shorter amount of time (5 years instead of 8) without giving up home country citizenship. However, like the US, citizens have to pass a citizenship test. And, they also have to speak B1 level German.

Thus, the scope of the parental leave has changed considerably. The overarching goal is to find a more sustainable family rhythm. Which, is likely more the intent of parental leave in the first place. 

Side note:  Before everyone tries to move to Germany, you should know this period is unpaid after a child's first birthday. This unpaid leave is an option for a total of 24 months for each child between the ages of three and eight. Officially this time is for Hugo. So, we still have another few years if we want to do this for Carmen. If/when we take this time for Carmen, we would like to travel. For now we need to calm some chaos before we take the show on the road. 

Paul will be taking intensive German classes with the hope of passing these two citizenship tests before the start of summer. One on hand it feels like a bit of "scope creep" in terms of not spending as much time together. But on the other, I felt especially validated when reading the intro to Fair Play. One of the author's solutions to make her family life more equitable was to jokingly relocate her family somewhere where only her husband speaks the language. I'll do a separate blog post about the book if we have some success. She doesn't suggest taking seven months off to rebalance, but it can't hurt.