S.A.H.M.

6 years ago, if you had asked me if I was going to be a stay at home mom, I probably would have laughed in your face and said why the hell would I do that?!   I was under the misinformed impression that stay at home moms were lazy, soap addicted, playground hogging gangs of women who couldn't cut it in the workforce so they 'stay' home with the kids instead. I know that makes me sound like a jerk, but I was a good bit younger and had always held a job since I was 16 and didn't see why grown women shouldn't do the same thing. And I couldn't imagine not having my paycheck (albeit tiny) in the bank to help pay the bills, as well as {GULP} be dependent on my husband for money.  We learned to break that train of thought when I stopped working full time to complete my degree, but I was always heading back to teaching as soon as I graduated.

  Then the topic of children came onto my horizon and I began to have friends and family who stayed home with their children.  People whom I look up to. People whom I asked why do you stay home and how is it?  So many reasons floated around in my head; why would you have someone else raise your children? These baby years go so quickly so it is worth the financial strain to enjoy them. The majority of the mother's paycheck would go to daycare anyway.  And so on. So much to chew on, as well as that nagging feeling that I was going to be seen as a lazy bum who is just living off her hubby to not have to work.  Hopefully that is just my crazy way of thinking and not the stereotype I am trying so hard to avoid.  Then I had my son almost a year ago.  I knew before his birth that I was going to stay home, much to my chagrin and the two awesome schools that wanted to hire me, yet that is another blog post.  Those first few months home with him were amazing, sleep deprived, and exhausting.  When I got to that 8-10 week period in his life when most mommies have to go back to work; It then hit me: I just couldn't imagine leaving this little guy with anyone else (well except those days when he was inconsolable, I'd given him to a hobo at that point).  As he has grown it amazes me how much he changes day to day.  Honestly at the 10 1/2 month point, each week I see how his little personality is forming and how much he is absorbing through me.  Would he get that in a daycare?  I am sure he would, as I am not here to knock daycare, but it wouldn't be me seeing him clap for the first time. It wouldn't be me hear him try to repeat words after me. It wouldn't be me who gets to enjoy his cuddle time in the morning.  I wouldn't be able to take my time to enjoy each day with him, not feel rushed to making meaningful experiences just because it is the weekend.  I am so lucky to have a husband who is supportive of our decision for me to stay home as each moment is truly a gift to spend with my son.

You knew there was going to be another side to this story right?! I am not that sappy...even though the sentiment is true.  Staying at home is WORK.  Really! Most jobs you can kinda leave at the office, this one wakes you up at 2 am with shitty diapers and puke.  This job doesn't care that you haven't had a shower all day or a 15 minute break to grab something to eat. This job demands all of your attention as well as loads you up with extra laundry, more meals to cook, a never ending clean up of playtime debris, and a necessity that your demeanor remains positive 24/7.  And more patience than I was ever required working with even the most difficult special ed child. 

I love my job and am not ashamed to tell anyone that I stay home with my child.  I even now don't even feel the need to tack on a cute comment about the cost of daycare either.  

Baby proofing

The word alone, baby proof is a word loaded with hidden meanings and insights.   Is anything REALLY ever baby proofed?  Can you really say that your life was ready for the complete and utter disarray that has been placed upon it by your child? What about your marriage? Is the fact that you have very little patience left over in the day to donate it to your spouse a means to attest how much stress is placed on a new family? Can you honestly prepare for each obstacle that you will face as a parent?     
Now let me get away from this deep insight and speak in literal terms of baby proofing.  As I mentioned in a blog about a month ago, life is over as I know it once the wee one becomes mobile.  Lord yes! I feel that I now spend 80% of my day correcting the direction of my son. My new conversations go like this: "No, honey toilets are nasty, stoves are hot, oh crap, what did you just put in your mouth? Why is there poop on the floor?" And that was just yesterday... What is the real gem is that I know this is just the beginning.  I laugh when I first made an attempt to baby proof my house.  Sure sticking some plastic outlet covers and cabinet door stoppers seem like the dutiful things to do when you anticipate mobility.  But who knew that children like (and can!) to crawl under coffee tables and straight to your mess of speaker wires? Or find that tiny speck of paper you left out?  You know that night light that you lovingly placed in the baby's room to keep the boogie monster out? Yeah, that becomes like a literal moth to the flame, especially when you are on an important phone call and feel like a weirdo interrupting your caller to say "No touch!"  I then felt obligated to explain myself. 
And four legged critters beware. My poor dog is the best dog I have ever seen as she should now have had both eyes poked out, a tail that removes itself like a lizard's, and should be bald in some places where she becomes a stable surface to pull up on. He is obsessed with her!  If you come into this house now you may think you have entered this side of a ranch.  I've got enough gates to corral the little one in as well as a herd of sheep if need be.  Furniture is now strategically placed so that one cannot squeeze through.  I feel like the baby is related to an animal in that as long as his head will fit he will take it as an incentive to get through the tiniest space. Until he gets stuck under the table again, and is freaking out for me to come and rescue him.   And decorations? If the knickknack is not 3 feet off the ground, its outta here, or at least stashed in my spare room till I can figure out where to store it for the next 3 or so years.  Yikes! I detest to think about Christmas... 
I am learning that baby proofing your home and life is a day by day conquest that you just have to roll with the flow and maintain that eagle eye for those tiny things on the floor. Thank god I just got a new awesome vacuum with which I love to use on a near daily basis.   

Off the Charts

When you take your child to the pediatrician it is a world full of enormous information and confidence building.  In the early months, as a nursing mom, I was anxious to get him on that scale to ensure that I was not starving him to death.  Initially my little piggy did not disappoint as he was 3 ounces over his birth weight 3 days after birth and a whole pound and some ounces a month after.  Little did I know that the pediatrician's office was also a secret site of information gathering and guilt building for new mommies. 
It goes like this:  The nurse asks you a handful of questions when you get there, which are the same each time (don't they save this info?!) and then pecks in your child's weight, length, and head circumference in the computer.  The doctor then comes in, greets you with a smile, comments on how great X is looking, and then goes over to that screen of shame.  She pulls up the growth charts that look like some evil reminiscent of my research in education class at ODU, whips the screen around to the nervous parents, and points to a little x that marks where you child is.  Consider the lines like a rainbow of percentiles, the top of the rainbow being the 90th percentile, the bottom the 5th.  If I can remember what that means from that evil class, that if you child is in the 80th percentile, that they are growing in the range above 80% of the rest of the children. That being said, my child would basically be sitting in a pot of gold. (which doesn't sound too bad to this stay at home mom..)  His little x just hangs out on the bottom of the screen, where the doctor is always quick to remind me that his parents are not large people by any means so we shouldn't expect him to be on the top there.  Enter my new friend guilt.  After being the sole provider of my child's nutrition for over 6 months, I felt like I was creating milk that must be like air and am leading my child to a life of short jokes and beanpole jabs.  This coupled with so many people looking at me in a shocked manner when I tell them his age and  they say "wow, he's so small"  For a bit there, it was hard to make milk when you have a giant monkey on your back. 
    I took my son for his 9+ month checkup with my head held high and confident that his growth would make that little x climb up that rainbow. We have entered the world of solid foods which my child has taken up a love affair with.  His clothes are rapidly shrinking, as I am realizing that there are things that he has yet to wear! I digress.  My husband and I both just knew our son was going to be at least 20 pounds, where I had visions that we were going to have to go buy all new clothes and that 'big boy' car seat in the very near future.  Alright, so he was more like 17lbs 12oz, but I still held on to hope as the nurse typed the info into the computer.  In strolls the doctor, and as the screen is turned in our direction, shock and guilt quickly push those confident feelings over the ledge as his little x was STILL there on the bottom 5.  
I know that this charting really doesn't matter as he is happy, healthy, and sleeps through the night with a full belly each night.  Maybe this is the start of a set of neurotic parents and a lifetime of competition with the rest of the world. 

I want to ride my bicycle!

We broke down after being influenced by a friend with a baby around our son's age and got him a bike seat.  I painstakingly researched the ins and outs of baby bike safety, got him a sturdy brain bucket as my hubby calls it and off we go!

I have to say that my bike is my chariot of summer that I have been missing terribly, but this bicycle built for two will be seen all over the trails now buddy!

The World is Over as I Know It

My son made great leaps and literal bounds in life today!Looks like I need to finish the babyproofing pronto. 

More things I've Learned....

1.  If baby is happy playing with something or somewhere, LEAVE THEM THERE.
2.  Also if baby is sleeping, see above.
3. Velcro tabs on cloth diapers become interesting for a 9 month old.  
4.  As does their privates.  
5.  Baby will go through a strange period of wakefulness about every 4-6 weeks.      Why? No clue, just roll with the lack of sleep and keep the routine sacred.
6. Yet, routines CAN be broken.
7. Babies eventually get frustrated with their lack of mobility.  
8. A baby can roll across a room in less than 10 seconds.  
9.  Singing louder in the car does not make baby less happy to be in car seat.
10.  Yes, they can STILL be hungry.  

It ain't easy being green

The grass is always greener. Maybe it is our privileged American upbringing that makes us feel that we deserve more and better as well as deal with those pangs of envy when we don't.  I admit that I have been bitten by the green-eyed monster in parenting lately and even admitting so is slightly embarrassing as everything is wonderful with my child.  But this is my blog and I feel that I can vent to it as necessary since I am sure that someone else has also felt these feelings.  
I'll start small.  I am currently surrounded by either brand new babies or folks on the cusp of delivery. The feeling from this is great, as now people can finally understand what we have been going through the past 9 months! All of those fumbles and tribulations can translate into hopefully helpful tidbits for others braving those first few months.  Yet, I am a bit envious of their status.  Let me correct myself, I am NOT envious of the sleepless nights and zombie days, the lack of control over my own body, and the panic stricken doubts of "Am I doing the right thing?" No way. It has more to do with the emotions that encompass your body as you learn about your baby. Nearly everyone that we saw those first weeks said these newborn days pass quickly and to enjoy them, and at that point I wanted to hand my son over to them gladly so they could relive them while I got more than 2 hours of consecutive sleep.  Alas, they were right.  I do miss those floppy days where he was perfectly content to lay on our chests and sleep after eating.  Now I am lucky to get him to sit still so we can squeeze a burp out.  Those feelings of excitement as your baby is finally here and you try to learn every inch of them.  Now there is no learning body parts, we have to practically restrain him whilst giving him a bath, leaving me hopeful that I at least got the important parts wet enough to call them clean. You may read this and say that I am being petty, but I am sure that no matter what age your children are, being in the presence of a new family brings up the whimsical side of you. Even in this nonemotioned momma here.  
Now for the bigger patch of green on the other side of my fence.  The world is full of stereotypical roles that each of us may or may not fall in. I am now entering the role of 'mommy' in which I had envisioned myself as being able to stay on top of each item on my housewife to-do list and being the absolute apple of my son's eye.  Enter my husband and his role; 'daddy'.  My husband is a one of kind father.  When you see someone with their child and think how that person was just made to be a parent, you will think of him. He will change a scary nasty exploded diaper (cloth at that!), he will get up with me when the baby wakes at night so I am not the only one up, will take the baby for an hour so I can get some things done, and most of all he LOVES spending time  with his son. What could I possibly have to complain about here?! Nothing, except my asshole jealous side that crops up when I see my son laugh for his daddy.  Sure mommy can make him laugh, but not so hard he snorts.  I play with him in my own way and sing songs, but in comes daddy and steals the limelight with his dramatic silliness and eagerness to roll around on a dog hair encrusted floor that mommy has missed on her housewife duties.  Sometimes I feel that I have now gained not one, but two children. What is the problem here???  The answer came to me when I was attempting to calm the child down for a nap after a rowdy romp with daddy, without much luck.  The book was about a child getting ready for bed and all the things that were going on around the house while he was sleeping.  And I loosely quote, mommy is in bed after tucking us all in and will arise with the dawn with a great big yawn.  Hmm what about daddy?  The child goes on how he giggles when he hears daddy snore and cannot wait to wake so they can laugh and play some more.  AH-HA! There it was staring me in the face plain as day. Somehow mommy is synonymous to doing all of the child-rearing work and daddy is the super fun guy that swoops in and gets the child all riled up gives the baby back to mommy so that she can try to calm them down to sleep. I know that there are not any handbooks that are emailed to you when you give birth, but somewhere along the way I had thought that I would be the fun one since I was going to be with him all the time.  Until all the business of raising a baby came to light. There are schedules to maintain so that meltdowns are avoided, food prepared in perfect non-choking portions, laundry that is done as certain parts of the day so that a cherished blanket is ready for bedtime, and meticulous bathing and lotioningplaytimes with the baby.  Coming full circle to my point about missing the newborn days, I realized that these baby days are getting away from me and soon my son will want me to drop him off at a friend's house rather than roll around on the floor with me.  I am taking some time away from the hectic home life to just enjoy my son, and I have to say that each moment helps bring me back to my regular shade of light tan.