What I did on Parental Leave

I get this question a lot so wanted to summarize what I've been up to all in one place.

In 2026.01 I started my 16 week parental leave for my first born.

Here's what I did.

Parenting

First and foremost I spent a lot of time parenting.

I did mornings and nights and had grandparent support for most afternoons.

We have a really good setup so this worked out for us but I imagine if we didn't we'd have started experimenting with daycare.

Baby is now 10 months old and can make sounds, crawl, and stand with support. We think they're close to saying words (where they understand their meaning) and standing / walking but unclear how close.

The time away was awesome for getting to know kid more and watching / supporting them grow.

Building

I knew I wanted to build stuff during my time off so joined a 3 month programming retreat at Recurse Center to give myself a bit more structure.

This gave me a lot of freetime to build and explore.

• I learned and started building High-Level apps with Rust
• Overhauled my agentic engineering workflows and built tools like Phase Golem (workflow harness) and Task Golem (task management)
• Moved to a a Linux + terminal workflow
• Launched small games like AI token clicker, Snake with Datastar, and AI-run planetwars

For more details, see What I built at Recurse Center - a 12 week programming retreat

Exploration

Spent a good amount of time connecting with people and local places / events. We started doing some kid-friendly walks and meals which are awesome. Kids definitely pushed us towards more daytime events.

We also took the time to go on baby's first road trip, flight, and a parents-only trip to Japan which has been on my list for a long time.

Next

Overall it was a very restful and successful time off. I'm a little anxious to go back to work as it'll change our schedules a good bit and this'll be the first time both my partner and I are working at the same time but I think we're ready for it.

Thoughts on Parental Leave

Some thoughts on parental leave:

• Very useful. If you've got it, take it. Makes having a kid manageable as you get transitioned.
• I think 4-6 weeks after birth is critical. I only did 2 and was a zombie.
• Can be useful to stagger leave. Like both take first 4 weeks, mother does her full leave, then father does his full leave right after so someone is always doing care taking while the other figures out their work situation.

Overall I think if USA (and the world) wants more population / kids we need more benefits for them. Manadatory parental leave of 12+ weeks, childcare subsidies to make it affordable, food / tax relief on qualifying purchases. Theoretically the economy runs on population growth so it makes sense to invest in the foundation of that growth long term.