Let's start in the wee hours of the morning. If, by chance, we didn't wake up with our kids physically in our bed, feet in our ribs, morning breath in our faces, we would wake up to the sound of them crying, whining, saying they're hungry, tapping us on the forehead, etc. As a stay at home mom, children are our alarm clocks in some way, shape or form. I would love to wake up to the smell of coffee like in the commercials, or to the sound of birds chirping like in the movies, but that is not my destiny. Every morning, my 6am alarm clock goes off, and his name is Little. Following our wake up call, we are greeted with a morning full of needy, tiny humans. All of the sudden, once mom's up, everyone is hungrier, more tired, crankier, more forgetful of their daily tasks, mouthier, slower to get ready, and just all around more ridiculous than any other time of the day or night. This is most especially true when we actually have to go somewhere like school or church. All Hell breaks loose and now we have to turn into the crazy, psychotic, screaming, raging monster mom on a rampage to eat her young, all before we've even had our morning cup of coffee. No one wants to see that.
Lunch time comes and we eat a good, nutritious meal. By we, I mean Little. I feed him his food, while munching on a smattering of string cheese, Klondike bars, Cheezits and dry cereal at some random moments between the hours of 7am and 4pm. Stay at home moms, although located most closely to our kitchens, rarely get the chance to sit and have a peaceful, quiet lunch, much less a moment to look for something in the kitchen to eat that isn't either portable or filled with caffeine, calories, sugar or guilt. Once lunch is over, the fun of earlier that morning continues with me acting a fool for the giggles of my tiny human, and finally the time comes when we have to pack up and go get The Noise from school. I then have to suffer through the Hell of dealing with the mini van drivers in the parking lot, as well as the possibility of running into certain other moms, dare I go inside, who feel the need to look me up and down in disgust just because I refuse to be a stuck up snob and take 12 hours to get ready before I leave my house to come to the school to begin with (I feel no resentment about this at all). Anyway. My giant ball of energetic craziness comes bounding into the car on full volume, and I get to hear all about her day all the way home. Nevermind the migraine that's been creeping in from listening to babytoons on full blast all day, sure honey, shout away. Today she's best friends with the girls who called her names yesterday. I can't keep up. She needs $9 for a field trip tomorrow, and she has to dress up like a pioneer. Ok, first, who carries $9 on them? Now I'm going to have to go to the bank and pull out a $20, stop somewhere and get change, they're gonna give me either two $10s or a $10 and two $5s, and then I'm going to have to ask for $1s. Whose stupid idea was it to ask for $9? Just make it an even $10 and pocket each kid's extra $1. Who cares! Then, she needs to dress up like a pioneer?! And I have one day's notice?! Yes, because I keep a supply of pioneer attire on hand at all times, just for occasions such as this. So now, I'm going to have to stop somewhere and look for something that looks "pioneer-y". I get to hear her whine at me for two hours about how the pioneers didn't wear that, and then I'm going to get mad, and we will have a replay of crazy, psychotic, screaming, raging monster mom from this morning.
The assumption from our husbands, as stay at home moms, is that we are always available and able to make a delicious and well rounded dinner each night without issue. That is usually the case, and I love cooking, so I'm happy to oblige, unless I get the occasional curve ball or have something to do that makes it hard for me to make a nice meal that will be ready by a reasonable dinner hour. When I say curve ball, I mean something like a text message from Hubs asking for some random, off the wall dinner that we don't have the ingredients on hand for, that I need to go to the grocery store to shop for, and will need to wait till he gets home to do. That means that by the time you get the shopping done for the ingredients needed for this curve ball meal, you find the recipe, you follow the recipe and get the meal made, it's now 9pm and half the family is asleep or already ate Ramen noodles because they were starving. It's also difficult to make dinner when everyone else in the house seems to mysteriously need your help at the exact moment you are trying to make dinner. Hey, don't worry about the ground beef burning on the stove, sure I'll help you find that piece of mail you've been looking for all week, while also helping her with her math homework that she mysteriously just forgot how to do the minute I turned the oven on.
Once dinner is made, all the plates are fixed, and everyone sits down to eat, it is inevitable that something will happen to cause mom to have to leave the table. The baby will start to cry (he gets fed before or after dinner in hopes that I can eat a hot meal), something will have been forgotten at the table, someone's food isn't right or needs to be re-heated, cut up or fixed. Whatever it is, as the mom, it's our responsibility to make sure it's addressed. That being said, even when I've tried to take all necessary precautions to ensure I get to sit and eat with my family, something will always come up. It's my mom destiny, just like smelling like vomit. After dinner, the cleaning up of the fallout commences. When you have kids, meal time is synonymous with an atomic explosion. If any beverage that wasn't clear was consumed, now is when you'll start cleaning it from places you never knew red Kool-aid could penetrate. So, after I take the next half an hour to pick up all of the tiny bits of food matter that have managed to find their way into the four corners of the entire universe of my home, I collect everything into the kitchen for The Noise to do in the morning (this is her one chore), or if I'm feeling exceptionally irritated, which I have been lately, I clean the entire kitchen myself just to make myself feel better.
If I were a corporate mom, I would have entered the scene right around dinner time, so being stuck inside the ever-shrinking walls of my home wouldn't seem so daunting. But the fact that I have only left the house on this particular example day to take my daughter to school, pick her up and run to the store for some ingredients to make the masterpiece dinner Hubs requested is driving me a bit batty come bed time for the kids. Everyone gets bathed and tucked in, bedtime routines get executed, hugs, kisses, night lights, and "I love you"s. Then, as soon as I close the last door, with the last child tucked in, my mind immediately turns on full speed. As a stay at home mom, since you've just spent your entire day at your first job being a mom, you don't get any time to use your adult brain for your second job until the kids go to bed. Now, depending on what your second job is, your adult brain can go in any different direction you choose. My second job is actually my real paying job that I do from home. So I immediately have to get to work before my brain cells fall asleep. Once I get some work done, then I can go on to jobs number three (blogging), and four (drawing). Those help me keep my mind from remaining completely in kid land, where everything is made of Playdoh, and the volume is always on full blast.
As a stay at home mom, I am so much more than just a mom. Any mom has a tough job; a corporate mom, stay at home mom, or otherwise. The mom role is a difficult vocation on its own. Now having done both, I can say with certainty, being a stay at home mom is harder mentally than being a corporate mom. What I will say is that not many people, especially if they haven't done it themselves, understand moms who stay home with their kids. That in itself adds to the level of difficulty because there are constantly people, just as the opening statement of this blog outlines, who question what us stay at home moms do all day (yes, with that tone). So here it is in bullet form for those who need to see it in quick form for easy viewing:
- I feed the hungry
- I clothe the naked
- I constantly work to maintain world peace
- I run all of the errands, including the stupid ones
- I do all of the shopping
- I cook all of the meals
- I oversee the order and maintenance of my home
- I do most of the cleaning, with the exception of the chores I dole out to my kids (then I redo the the chores they've done because they do a terrible job)
- I pay the bills and maintain our budget without having to shut down the government
- I am the tour bus, the chauffeur, the taxi and the Ms. Daisy driver
- I kiss boo boos and play nurse, even though I never went to med school
- I am the teacher and the coach when the kids come home from school and practice
- I hold daily therapy sessions at the dinner table
- I try to be enough of a friend for my kids to confide in but not too much for them to take advantage of
- I am the disciplinarian
- I am the advisor and final say on most child related decisions
- I keep a watchful eye over my kids at all times wherever we go
- I dream about all of the things I do or don't do that I forgot to mention in this blog after I published it
