Bobby Smith has worked 16-hour days for two and a half years and isn't even tired.

Smith is a full-time father, staying home during the day with his two sons, 2-year-old Xavier and 8-month-old Owen, while his wife heads to the office. When the couple found out they were expecting, it was a combination of Smith's natural patience and his wife's higher salary that made the Gaithersburg man leave his managerial position at Trader Joe's for managing the house, and he hasn't looked back.

"I love it. Just, you get to play with your kids all day and then teach them the right way to live," Smith said last week while the boys napped. "Every day I feel like I stole something and got away with it."

Smith, who still works nights and weekends for the retailer, said he brings a business attitude to the task of rearing his children, scheduling, organizing and budgeting like he would in the business world.

"Whatever I do I just really mentally prepare myself for it and I usually prepare for the worst, and I was pleasantly surprised when it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be," Smith said. "I'm taking more of an approach like I did at work; I have a job to do at home. So I plan out my day, (I) need to do this, need to get this clean."

Harley Liebenson of Rockville said when his son Eli, 6, was born, he and his wife had both recently been laid off.

"She got a job first, so I stayed home," he said, and now spends his days with Eli at free library events, concerts and activities, as well as taking him to day care a few hours a day for socialization.

Many of the other stay-at-home fathers he knows do it for economic reasons, Liebenson said, such as the the high cost of day care, a higher-paid spouse or a recent job loss.

But bumps in the transitional period for him came from first-time parenting and not being out of the work place.

"Initially I didn't really know, from the standpoint of an infant, what to do. I didn't know how to start off," Liebenson said. "It was a process like any other parent, you listen to advice, you try things and you eventually learn what you're doing."

Liebenson spent a lot of time imparting and receiving advice through the Montgomery County Dads, a chapter of D.C. Metro Dads, a local support network for stay-at-home fathers.

D.C. Metro Dads "Head Dad" Mike Stilwell said stay-at-home fathers may be more common than perceived—the organization's five chapters from Northern Virginia to Baltimore have about 500 members combined.

"There's quite a few of us, and I'm sure there's more that aren't in the group," which sets up play dates, outings and provides adult socialization for the dads as well. Stilwell said there is also a faction of non-identifying stay-at-home fathers, adding to the numbers.

"I can't tell you how many stay-at-home dads you meet that tell you they're a consultant, they work from home. But really they're a stay-at-home dad," Stilwell said.

Matt Trebone of Silver Spring said he once tried to get into a mother's group when his 5-year-old daughter Bridget was born, but "they wouldn't let me."

He has since joined a women's play group in addition to Montgomery County Dads, but said he doesn't see much of a difference.

"They (the moms) had the same problems I did, the same experiences," Trebone said.

But Smith said the dads group has made him feel more at home than mother's groups because the interests are more similar.

"It feels good, it feels organic," he said of the Dads group. "Sometimes moms want to go sit at the mall and have a bubble tea, and I'm like, what's a bubble tea?"

Liebenson, who will probably go back to work when Eli starts school in the fall, said he values the time he's gotten to spend with his son, from taking him to see machinery during the construction of Rockville Town Centre to teaching him words from the SAT vocabulary list such as "tepid" and "penultimate."

"Having a parent there through the formative years is something you don't have a chance to do again," Liebenson said.

"One big difference for my son's sake is he has a very different perspective on gender roles," Liebenson said. "Dads cook and clean and mommies are the ones that play with us when they come home and mommies read to us at night."

Liebenson said he hopes that message will reinforce a lesson that any parent wants for their children: that they can be anything they want.

"He won't think this is for boys and this is for girls. Toys you play with? Yes. But not the things they can be. That's a healthy thing for him I think."

Trebone said staying home with Bridget has been a welcome respite from "the rat race," and "one of the best things I think I've ever done."

"She'll always know that I stayed home with her, and that she always had a parent at home," Trebone said. "She'll always know she was put first."