This week my wife is out of town in exotic Minneapolis for some business meetings, so it’s just Tucker and I for a few days.

It’s always a strange time, with her gone.

There is a guaranteed extra level of exhaustion, obviously, but time with just Tuck and I alone isn’t really anything new for me. Essentially, it amounts to 2-3 hours each evening where I don’t have my usual “tag team” reprieve, and some slight adjustments to the bedtime routine. No biggie.

The worst part is us both just missing her, frankly.

So this isn’t the situation you see often where a dad is frantic about having to go it alone with the kid(s) for a time while mom is out of town for a few days or even just out for the evening. But what it did do was make me reflect on how often you do see that: friends on Facebook or Twitter, posting about how they’ve “survived Day 1″ or what-have-you.

I want to make clear I’m not saying I’m any better than those dads because this isn’t a big deal for me. I totally recognize that any change to your regular routine can be stressful, particularly if it means having to do things that are out of your comfort zone. But on the contrary what I really want to stress it that this frantic worrying is, in most cases, completely unneeded, because most dads are way more competent than they think…

…and sometimes way more they’d have you think, too.

Last week, Brian over at Dad at the Chalkboard started what is to be the first of a (hopefully) weekly Father Friday – Best of the Week “blog hop”, featuring the bests posts of the week by the ever growing community of dad bloggers.

There are so many exceptionally talented guys out there writing about being a dad that it can be really hard to keep up with them, so this is a great way to catch up with some wonderful stuff that you miss.

If you enjoy my blog I’d greatly encourage you to check these guys out too!

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Best of the Week from Blogging Dads

If you’re a dad blogger and are interested in joining in, you can read all about how to do so here.

It’s Saturday.

9:36AM.

Tucker and Mama hang out while Dada… wait, where IS Dada, anyhow?

I’m still relatively new to this whole blogging thing, so I was a little bit surprised when I got an email from a representative of Chin Music Press asking if I’d be interested in receiving a copy of Jeff Gillenkirk’s upcoming novel Home, Away, explaining that it follows a professional baseball player who walks away from a Major League career to care for his son, so it might be of interest to me as an at-home dad.

I was definitely intrigued!

I won’t pretend to be a professional book reviewer, but having now (finally) finished the book I wanted to share my thoughts on it.

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Home, Away

By Jeff Gillenkirk
Chin Music Press, 2010

“A powerful, stirring novel about family, love and the depths of compassion played out against the dramatic backdrop of professional baseball.”

Jason Thibodeaux is a promising 21-year old pitcher, with a young son he adores and a bright future ahead. Having just taken the year off from college ball to care for his son Rafe while his wife Vicky finished law school, Jason is anxious to return to the field and kick-start his very promising baseball career again. But with the sudden, messy collapse of his marriage, a bitter divorce, and an unwillingness to repeat the mistakes of his own absent father, Jason finds himself forced to fight tooth-and-nail for his son. Sadly, it’s a fight Jason can’t win, even as his career catapults him into the big leagues — complete with $42 million contract…

Sometimes what I need most is a reminder that this special time with my son Tucker is going to be limited, and to make the most of every moment we have.

The other day he and I were playing like we often do with his favorite big green rubber ball (his “BAOW”) in the living room. Tuck loves it. I’ll kick it or throw it, then he’ll chase after it, giggling all the while, and bring it back for more. I’ll encourage him to try throwing it back to me, but his arm is pretty terrible right now so he usually just shoves it at me and then runs away, laughing and trying to anticipate where I’m going to send it flying. It’s a hoot, even if in some ways it’s not unlike playing “fetch” at this point.

We do a lot of running around, and as the old fat one in the game I tend to wear out a lot faster than he does. So this time I ended up eventually sitting down in the desk chair, but continued to toss the ball as he brought it to me.  I’d just watch him joyfully chase after it from my comfy chair is all.

But inevitably, the siren song of the computer called to me, and I started turning away to read snippets of emails/blogs/tweets while he ran around…