Work it Momma

ISO full time mother: job requires stamina, even-temper, creativity, ability to juggle VIP clientele with all other responsibilities, ability to perform under tight deadlines, and attention to detail even when sleep deprived.  Responsibilities include cooking, cleaning, laundry, and care for small energizer bunny.  NO vacation time.  NO sick pay.  NO weekends.  BENEFITS:  smiles, giggles, slobbery kisses, and hopefully a pension of a few grandchildren after thirty years of service.  Salary: $0.

Let’s be up front and kick the glamorous hype – staying at home is not about lunching with the ladies, shopping and Neiman Marcus, or watching soap operas all day long.  It means picking up a lot of the household work, and scrubbing toilets and bathtubs sucks.  It’s not the fun part of the job, but then again every job has some not-so-fun tasks, right?  So now I clean, I do laundry, I drop off the dry cleaning, and I cook for my family.  But the household stuff is hardly the most challenging part of my job.  Being a full-time mom requires a lot of creativity, stamina, and patience.

Children thrive on a schedule, and caregivers have to respect that schedule.  Thomas was a natural at sleeping, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t need me to support that habit.  I respect Thomas’ nap schedule and bedtime because it is important for his sake.  Well, for my sake too.  He turns into a little demon if he is sleep deprived, and it just isn’t worth running that extra errand.  That means all of the above activities revolve around his sleep.  His morning naps are getting shorter, so that will offer more freedom, but it still means that we have to time our day so that we are back at the house by 12:00 PM so that I can put him down for his afternoon nap. 

Then, when he is awake, we play.  Play with a baby doesn’t mean plopping him in a swing and walking away.  It means offering him engaging toys and keeping up with his pace on each activity before switching to the next.  Thomas’ jumperoo or playmat might be exciting for 15 minutes, but after that he is ready for the next challenge.  We read books, we go to baby sing-a-long groups, we walk to the park, we play with educational toys, and we keep looking for new things to do to keep life interesting for both of us.  Now that he is crawling, playtime is a physical challenge for me.  That kid zips through the hallway faster than a cat, and if I stop paying attention for even a second he seems to gravitate towards the bathroom where he tries to reach for the toilet.  Why the toilet interests him, I don’t know.  I guess men have a sort of special relationship with toilets.  Even my little man. 

But back to my point . . . you have to be ON when you are a stay at home mom.  Thomas doesn’t understand the concept of a smoke break, lunch break, or bathroom break. When we spend time together Thomas knows if my mind is somewhere else, and he is fussy when that happens. He calls me out whenever I am spacing out with a sort of grunt/scream that means, “it’s rude mommy!”  After a few hours of engaging Thomas and doing activities with him, I am exhausted.  It is the equivalent of giving a three-hour pitch – who isn’t tired after three hours of being on top of your game? 

So, during those couple of hours that he naps, all I want to do is sleep.  But I can’t.  Because I still have an endless to-do list that seems to grow faster than I can tackle it.  Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?  Sounds like a job, doesn’t it?  Only I don’t have a Starbucks in my building to help me overcome the exhaustion.

--Victoria