Tag Archives: stay at home mom

The not so Simple…

Posted on August 26, 2012 | 16 comments

Yesterday was a SuperMom day. I went to bed in a freshly painted bedroom. I had two happy children. MQD and I squabbled in the morning but as per usual the conversation we had following was productive. I felt good.

The feeling carried over to this morning. I had coffee with Amy. The kids were good. I bought a mitre box and started a new project. I am framing out the mirror in our bathroom before I paint.  I scheduled a post for this afternoon about how perfect the last day of the Summer with your family can be.

I considered posting about my bedroom makeover but I feared it would sound like I was blowing sunshine up my own ass to compensate. For what? I didn’t know. But I worry when my posts tend towards the “Look at me!! Everything is peachy!!” too awful much.

So if you read and make clucking sounds and think “Damn, that chick must be so full of shit. No one is that happy” then pour yourself a drink!! Kick back!! This post is for you.

Lucy will not stop crying. Neither can I. I cut a perfect rectangle of molding to frame out the mirror in our bathroom. But the glue won’t hold and neither will the tape that is supposed to hold it until it is glued. I painted around the perimeter of the mirror with the color I have chosen for the bathroom and I am not sure I don’t hate it.

I want to open a bottle of wine and drink the whole damn thing but I can’t because somehow I managed to totally forget to buy anything to pack for Emily’s lunch tomorrow. And before you think “what the hell, can’t MQD go to the store?” he already offered but I’m such a control freak I want to go myself. God forbid I don’t pick out my own cheese sticks.

I called my mother when the third piece of molding from the mirror fell in to the paint and what came out of my mouth between the sobbing was not  “oh damn my mirror project looks like shit.”

It’s more embarrassing than that.

I don’t want to be home all alone with Lucy.

I love her with all of my heart. I want to feed her and sleep beside her. I want to console her when she is cuttng teeth. I want to see her take her first steps.

But I don’t necessarily want to hear the song that fucking singing glow worm makes again. I am not really that in to playing with stacking cups. Or putting the tupperware back in the cabinet 87 times a day.

With Emily home I had a plan. Get up. Exercise. Do a project. Eat lunch. Pool. Shower. Dad’s home. Dinner. All the while I am with my big girl. The girl that makes me laugh like no other. It was like a sleepover all day, for weeks on end with my favorite pal.

And I’m a little bit scared of the new routine. Wake up. Make breakfast. Kiss Em and Mike goodbye. Nurse Lucy. Change Lucy. Rock Lucy. Play with Lucy. Repeat ad infinitum until the bus gets here and my sidekick returns.

Who’s going to laugh with me?

I can certainly take care of a baby by myself. I’m not afraid to do that. But I’m a little afraid I’ll be bored. To be honest I’m a lot afraid of being bored.

You can save the well meaning advice about mommy and me activities, all the friends I’ll make, volunteering in Emily’s classroom, the walks in the fall leaves, how quickly the time will pass. Or the snarky comments about how I’m getting exactly what I’d wished for. Because I know all of this.

But right now I’m going to pout. It’s the last day of Summer vacation. Since the second day of break I’ve joked that I didn’t know what I was going to do when Em went back to school.

Well the joke’s on me. Turns out I wasn’t kidding. I’m gonna miss the hell out of that kid.

In the time it took to write this on my phone I have stopped crying. So has Lucy. I don’t give a good god damn if the molding holds on the mirror. I sent MQD a text “Get pizza for dinner.” I am sitting here.

My house  looks like this.

I have a tendency towards being a Perfectionist in the Mom category. Pizza for dinner and a blown up house and a half-ass DIY project do not Perfection make. I am gonna call this Progress.  Nobody likes a Perfectionist.

Fuck it. MQD can go to the grocery store. This is Progress, right? No one likes a control freak. Just one glass of wine. One big glass.

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Posted in Bad Mood, Family, Parenting

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Ups and Downs

Posted on August 23, 2012 | 3 comments

It has been a long time since I sat in the driveway thinking “How in the fuck did I manage to do that?” Perhaps you remember the morning I put my car in the ditch.   Maybe you even remember that I couldn’t figure what to do while I waited for AAA because it was so cold outside.  My patient husband suggested I go INSIDE the house.

So, today while I sat in the driveway wondering how in the hell I managed to lock myself and two kids out of the house I kept thinking fuck it, we can just go inside and wait.   Yeah.  No, I can’t.

We cleaned out the car.  We organized my purse, suspiciously devoid of keys.  We took funny pictures.  And we waited for Dad.

Eventually the funny picture taking began to wear thin and I started to sweat.  I do not care so much for sweating unless that is an activity I have planned on.  I love to get sweaty.  Exercise and get sweaty.  Go to the beach and get sweaty.  Get it on and get sweaty.  Sweaty is an integral part of many activities I love.  Sit in the driveway and get sweaty.  It wasn’t doing it for me.

I started to get annoyed.  “Emily, today might be a shitty day.  I might swear a lot today.  A lot, like more than normal.  I need you to just hang tough.”

Eventually we got our keys.  We headed to the museum for the afternoon.  We ate ice cream BEFORE our lunch.  I was trying to rally.  Really, I was.  But I had showered.  I had on cute shoes.  And now I was fucking sweaty.

We ran our errands.  We checked the teacher lists at school.  Em got a haircut and the teacher she wanted. Things were looking up.  But it’s not easy for me to turn a day around.

So when the nice woman with the baby said “How old is she?” I could  feel myself start to sigh inside.  I can be aloof.  I know it is hard to imagine but I can.  “Just shy of seven months.” I thought I was making the “Don’t talk to me, I was fucking sweating today, god dammit!!” face.  But I must have misfired.

“He is, too.  And she is six months and she is eight.”  I have no idea how it happened.  Have you ever walked in to a bar with a royal hangover  in your flannel pants just to get your credit card that you left there the night before and forty minutes later you are smashed and getting hit on and it is the middle of the day?  No?  That was just me?

All of a sudden I was sitting on the floor with one, two, three other mothers and FOUR babies and it was … fun.  And one of them took my phone number!! And we were Facebook friends within twenty minutes of her leaving.  These people had ruined my bad mood.

And I don’t think I ever said anything about “my job.”  The job I don’t really have anymore.   I just said “Yeah, I will have tons of time when Em starts school next week.”  And I didn’t apologize.  Or explain that I am terribly busy Mod Podging my shoes (I am still so in love with my freakin’ shoes!!!!) and making homemade granola bars and becoming Queen of the PTA.  I just said “Yeah, here’s my number.”

And it felt good.

So, today kind of Sucked.  But then it turned Awesome.

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Everything you need to know about Parenting you can learn in AA

Posted on August 17, 2012 | 8 comments

Time and again I chuckle about the similarities.  This business of raising children is not too dissimilar to that of being a recovering alcoholic.

Yesterday morning  I allowed myself to be overwhelmed with the changes that are happening too rapidly for my tastes. But later in the afternoon I pulled it together and reminded myself that I needed to live today, “one day at a time.”  And furthermore, I needed to accept the things I cannot change.

With the Serenity Prayer going around and around in my head I set off to the store.  If my tiny little baby insisted upon crawling it was time for a gate at the bottom of the stairs.  My compulsion to keep all things kid and baby out of the adult living spaces at night is challenged by the baby gate’s addition.  However I think I succeeded in making it not stick out like a sore thumb.  With the addition of a square baluster I stained to match my hand railing and a round piece of wood I painted to match my trim I was able to get around the uneven surface issues presented by my trim molding and my handrail.  I am available via email for How To Make My Baby Gate Less Ugly consulting services.  I can be reached at IHaveTooMuchFreeTime@stayathomemom.com.

It’s hard to swallow.  This tiny little baby is almost seven months old and army crawling all over the place.  She will be standing at the gate hollering for her sister in a matter of moments.  But today, today is she is still my baby.  Because today I woke to a nursling in footie pajamas.

Years from now you will be able to spot her in a group picture from middle school.  “Which one is Lucy?” someone will ask. “She is the one in the footie pajamas” another mom will answer. And she will lower her voice to a whisper and mouth “Last baby, the poor mother, she has issues…”  You think I am kidding?

GFunkified

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I bet you’re worried.

Posted on August 11, 2012 | 23 comments

Sometimes I worry about whether or not I am doing a good job accurately portraying my life here. If I am honest it is equal parts worry that my readers will think I am insufferable (how often does anyone want to read about how perfectly splendid life is?) and worry that I am somehow failing to see what is right in front of me, fearing that I am not actually as content as I think I am. Both scenarios are troublesome. The first because I certainly don’t want to alienate the masses (heh) (whom I clearly crave approval from on some level because I have been more than upfront about my insecurity.) And the latter because I am always afraid of the monster under the bed. (Lucky for you I do not fear the sentence fragment or the dangling participle. I fearlessly embrace the run-on sentence.)

I worry that if I write about the Good it will be boring. And there is so much Good, so much genuine Greatness in my world right now it is hard to write of much else. I want to tell you about the shoes I decoupaged and how I might be a little bit in love with Mod Podge.
But it really hasn’t been long since I posted about Em’s room and I fear that incessant posting about my craftiness will read as “Look at Me! Validate me! Aren’t I worth something now that I am a mostly stay at home mom!?!”
So I have been quiet this week. Not for lack of things to say but for fear that I am not being authentic.
And then today as I peeled off the sports bra I have been wearing all week (does any nursing mother wear a normal bra unless she is “going somewhere”) I started to laugh. Four nursing pads, a pen, a paper towel, an iPhone cable and a dolphin.
It takes me a minimum of two trips to leave my house. The other day at the chiropractor it was noted my shirt was on inside out. This morning I walked around the house with the plastic cup that lives in the dog food bin in my hand for five minutes. It was not until I went to make a phone call on said plastic cup that I noted that my phone was in the bin. I am drinking a cup of coffee right now and I am reasonably certain that if you went in my kitchen right now the cabinets containing the mugs and the Keurig cups would be open. And apparently I stuff random crap in my bra.
My house is clean. My laundry is folded. The beds are made and the bathrooms wiped down. Because that is the way I like it. I get a lot done during a day. I like doing projects. But all this does not add up to make me a Stepford wife.
Stepford wives do not get squeezed out of their own beds when their husband goes out of town.
I am still me. I can be happy and still not have my shit together. I can get a lot accomplished in a day and still be scatterbrained. I can have a clean(ish) and organized house and not be all Martha Stewart.
The other night I found myself telling someone that I had seen an awesome pin on Pinterest. “You know that smell in Williams & Sonoma? It is lemon, rosemary and vanilla extract!” I could hear myself talking and on the inside I was thinking who the hell am I? Then in my next breath I was saying that my kitchen currently smells like a very clean marijuana smoking device.
Since Lucy has started eating more and is sitting at the table frequently I have been very careful to make sure I only wipe the kitchen table down with Simple Green. I bought my first bottle of Simple Green in a head shop in the mid 1990s to clean the resin from my precious glass. So while 36 year old Kelly peruses the internet trying to figure out a way to make her kitchen smell like Williams Sonoma instead of the inside of a very clean bong 21 year old Kelly would be pleased to know that she has not been forgotten.
I’m kind of afraid of becoming a happy suburban mommy. I am afraid that five, ten years from now I will look backwards and think why did I Mod Podge everything I own? How many front door wreaths does one girl need? I am afraid that my DIY decor will scream single family income and too much free time. But mostly I am afraid that I will get so far away from who I was that I won’t realize that my kitchen smells like a head shop.
If you’ll excuse me I have half a bottle of Chianti to drink while I ruminate on this subject. Lucy is going to start crawling any second. I need to sit on my ass and navel gaze while I can.

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Special bonus points if you know where the title came from!

 
Blog Post Hop

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Posted in Family, Nonsense, Parenting

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This Week in Pictures

Posted on March 30, 2012 | 4 comments

I learned a few things this week.  Some of them more interesting than others.  MQD sent me one of his texts that ordinarily send me on a wild emotional ride.  The kind that start with “I would appreciate it if you would stop XYZ.”   They typically make me defensive and cry-y for a day or two but this week I had an a-ha moment.   I just listened and absorbed.  Put myself in his shoes and realized I am kind of a pain in the ass sometimes.  So, there was that.

Em started soccer and went to the orthodontist.  MQD and I  got our shit together and met with a friend to get our life insurance policies squared away.  Somehow that combination of events made me feel like a real Grown Up.

A lot happened.  And nothing happened.  It was a week, a regular week as a family  where nothing crazy happened.  No big life changing thought processing.  No crying jags.  I don’t know what happened exactly.  But I feel smarter and older than I was last Friday night.

So no big post this week, thought I’d share a few of the smaller things I learned this week via pictures.

I learned that getting your taxes done before April 15th makes you feel like you have your shit together.  And that it is totally possible to get your self and your two month old out the door at ten after seven in the morning to be there before 8 am!   And that getting some exercise after that is the only way to justify showing up in yoga pants and a sweatshirt.  Taxes and exercise in one day? That was a good day.

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Last time I went to Cary it was to get boudoir pics taken for MQD. This trip was not as titillating.

I learned that I need to learn to cut myself a break.   I’m trying to pull off the working a few hours a week, stay at home momming, working out regularly thing.  I don’t seem to manage my stress as well as Lucy.  Next time I am feeling overwhelmed I’m taking a page from her book and I suggest you do the same.  Sometimes you just need to take five.

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Meeting running long? No problem. Take a nap.

For the zillionth time in my life I was reminded that just because a lot of people are doing it… it doesn’t mean I need to refrain, just on principle.  I was never the kid that did something just because everyone else was.  Rather I refused to do it, because it was too popular.  And guys, Words with Friends is good stuff.  I am so down with it.  For now.  Even if Nazis are unacceptable.

Not acceptable.

The last thing that I learned was the most practical. Moms are busy. And if you want to get everything done in a day, including some time for yourself, you need to plan ahead. This week I did just that. I’ve been trying to make it to an exercise class three times a week. And work a little here and there.  Twice this week I ran straight to work from class.  Changed in to a clean shirt at my car, sweaty sports bra and stinky vibrams swapped for a nursing bra and flipflops.  Changed Lucy’s diaper on the front seat and we were off.

Note to self: if you leave a poopy diaper and your stinky vibrams in your car and it is 75 degrees out…. roll your windows down.  For real.

In summary – Pay your taxes, take a nap, play scrabble and clean out your car.  It will make you feel awesome.  I promise.  Oh, and take a shower with a friend.

Happy National Cleavage Day

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Thing 1 and Thing 2

Posted on February 25, 2012 | 7 comments

They say (and in this instance the “they” I speak of is actually my mother) that no two kids have the same parent. I was thinking about just how true that statement is yesterday afternoon while I was in the shower.

Lucy was on the floor, right outside the shower. The sound of the shower generally has the same calming effect as the vacuum (and that kid loves a Dyson almost as much as her mama.) I had just put conditioner in my hair when her wiggly sounds went from cheery to filled with rage. Emily’s mother would have leapt from the shower, conditioner still in her hair, soap in her eyes, one armpit shaved and tears in her own eyes to determine what was ailing her sweet baby.

Lucy’s mother poked her head out the curtain and started down the path of insane nonsense singing “Luuucccyyyyy….. Can you not see I am in the shower???!!! I realiiiize this statement has no poooowerrrrr….. you seem not to give a shit, if i have shaved but one armpit!” and so on. I’ll spare you. She is only a fan of my songs about half the time, there is no reason I should subject anyone but family to these tunes. (Now would be a good time to mention that I actually had a Voice teacher in college fire me. Suggest that perhaps my singing training would be over that semester, I had come to the end of the line.  I was hopeless.)

All my songs bring to the table is my witty and charming lyrics. This I come by genetically. My own mother’s top hits I can still recall. A song penned to horrify my brother “Brassierre!!! Let me whisper in your ear, about my favorite brassiere….”

Not all songs were intended to embarrass us. Occasionally they were delightful, as close as we got to positively sinful. A song popular around Thanksgiving, to be sung at full voice to the dogs. A song perhaps my mother regretted the moment it came from her mouth as it was quickly adopted as an all time favorite. I share with you now, my mother’s greatest hit “Poultry.”

“Poultry gives you gaaaas! You blow it out your…” We rarely even got to the “ass” part as the giggles were convulsive by then.

I digress. Kids. They all have different parents, even in the same family. I was more fearful with Em in the beginning. More doting. Lucy gets a better mother, in some respects. I know what I am doing. But does she get the shaft because I don’t leap to her aid in a nanoseccond? I don’t think so.

It was the first time that we were all home alone without Dad. Just me and Em and Lucy Goose. I was making Em a sandwich. I had put Lucy down for the first time all day. And she started to cry. “Hang tight, little mama, your sister needs to eat, too.” In a family of more than one child sometimes we have to wait out turn. Emily was important, too.

Lightbulb.

So is Mom. I never would have let Em cry for twenty seconds while I finished a shower. But somehow the realization that sometimes Lucy will need to wait a moment so I can care for her sister led me to the understanding that it isn’t wrong to let Lucy wait one moment so I can care for myself. If Emily’s needs are valid, aren’t mine?

It took less than sixty seconds to get a cup of coffee and a glass of water.

As a mother it is unspeakably painful for me to hear my children crying. 60 seconds. I can take it that long and then I crumble and run for them, arms open. But did you know you can eat a hardboiled egg, finish a shower, get fully dressed and brush your hair, make your bed, pee, run a pile of crap up the stairs and put it in the room where it belongs if not actually put it away… you can do any one of those things in only 60 seconds. And when you return, arms wide open, you are forgiven immediately. For taking 60 seconds.

Maybe she forgives me only because the singing stops when I return. You think the one about shaving my armpits is awful, you should hear the one about peeing all alone. Suffice it to say Eponine’s “On my own” from Les Mis was my inspiration.

For the record this message was reviewed and approved by Thing 2. I realize she looks like she is watching a horror show but that is a face of approval.

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Nuts and Bolts

Posted on February 24, 2012 | 3 comments

I hesitated to devote an entire post to my plans to get my ass in shape… only because “getting fit” is such a cliche goal of the post-partum woman. And it goes against everything I have previously said about loving myself as I am, accepting my “tiger stripes” and so on.

But it’s really not all about the outside. Although that is a delicious benefit of getting your ass up and moving. It’s just as much about the way my head works.

The overwhelming sense of awe I had for my body after Lucy was born stayed with me for weeks. And I can feel it fading. And I want it back. I can do impossibly difficult things. Or at least things that it turns out are not so impossible at all.

I am sitting at the precipice of a new Life.

Life is made up of the smaller moments, the moments in between. There is where you find the Joy, the Beauty. The nuts and bolts of Living, the thing that holds it all together, it is Habit. It is Routine.

I started thinking. I have an opportunity to develop a new routine, new habits that add up to this new Life that are for me. I have a chance to let the Life I build through Habits and Routine be one that is made up of who I am and what I see as important.

These years will not be made of fancy vacations and nights out. The months of planning for our Wedding and our Baby are behind us. There will be no new homes, new schools to distract us from the day to day. This is the nuts and bolts.

The next “impossibly difficult” thing I plan to do? I am going to make myself a priority.

For many years I have said two things.

The first – I hope I have a chance to be home with my kids when they are small. Here I am. At home with my kids for today. I will do everything I can to figure out a way to stay here. To support MQD in providing for us.

The second – I hope I’m in the best shape of my life by my 40th birthday. That’s four years away. Not one crash diet and a half marathon training program away. Not three times a week Zumba class and a low carb lifestyle. But four years from now.

Four years in which I hope to rebuild my Life. Make new habits, new routines. The irony is not escaping me. That this decision to stay home and take care of my family may actually afford me the time to take care of myself.

I may or may not be “at home” for the next four years. But I am damn sure gonna try to find away to be more present. And in the meantime, I daresay, I will write a fair amount about how to do this…. to take care of me. And my family. Make new Habits. New Routines.

So far I have a small plan. Thirty minutes of exercise. Every single day. More water. Less coffee. Breakfast for dinner once a week. Keep writing. Make the bed. Every day ask Em and MQD if there is anything I can do for them. Run the vacuum before dinner. That’s all I’ve got so far.

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Two and half miles today. I was sweaty. She was hungry. Until she passed out. It was a good day.

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Posted in Exercise, Parenting

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Seriously?

Posted on February 15, 2012 | 4 comments

I have written numerous times over the last two years about how Emily June has a knack for saying just the right thing.  When I am questioning a big decision or an outfit or cutting bangs, I often look to her for advice.

So, naturally, last week I asked her what she would think if I were to quit my job and stay home with her.  “We can spend the whole summer together, Em.  Get our chores done and work on a little homework in the morning, spend the afternoons at the pool.  I’ll even be able to help out in your classroom next fall if you want me to.  I’ll never miss a field trip.”

So, I was selling it big time.  Trying to anyway.

She stopped what she was doing and looked at me.  Really looked at me.  “Seriously?  Are you SURE you want to do that?”

To say it was not the reaction I’d hoped for would be putting it mildly.

I don’t usually eat fortune cookies unless it is with a meal, but on Friday before I went to work I needed guidance.  Since I did not get the guidance I had hoped for from my six year old, it seemed wise to seek advice from a mass produced dessert item.   I opened the junk drawer and I fished out a fortune cookie.

It was just what I was looking for.

 

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Lucy, the Perfect Sweater

Posted on February 14, 2012 | 9 comments

Have you ever had a sweater that was the Perfect Sweater? As hard as you try you couldn’t find anything wrong with it. You can wear it with everything, blue jeans, sweatpants and a dress.   It is precisely the right temperature no matter what it is like outside.  You show this sweater a lot of love.  Adding to its perfection – it never seems dirty.  No matter what has spilled on it, it smells fresh and clean and remains unwrinkled.

And then one day you decide you should wash it. It’s not even dirty you just feel like you should wash it. So you’re really careful.  No Woolite, no fancy detergent.  Just water for this Perfect Sweater.  No dryer, no washing machine.  Wash that sucker by hand in the sink.

Then after you wash it it’s just never the same.  It is like a kleenex.  Little bits just fall right off.  It’s a disaster.  If someone saw you in your favorite sweater they’d ask you “What did you do to that sweater?”

And if you were say, overtired you might reply “I just fucking WASHED it, okay?  I had been wearing it every day for two weeks, I just thought I should wash it.  I was trying to do the right thing!!!”

Yeah, that’s what I did to my baby.  Lucy is the Perfect Sweater.

Babies have dry skin. Babies have sensitive skin and I know that. And it would not be a problem if it wasn’t that I am psychotic.  I’d just lube her up with olive oil and not bathe her again for a week. 
But I am psychotic.  And I did have The Talk with my boss last Friday.  Not “The Talk” because that kind of chatter has no place in the workplace unless you are a Sex Ed teacher, but the one where I said “I think business is too slow to justify me being full time, so I kind of think you should lay me off.” And he said “okay” and by the first of march I will be a stay at home mom.  That talk.
The same talk that was slightly less terrifying because of another talk MQD and I had before we bought our house.  That one was about how we shouldn’t buy a house while we were pregnant unless we knew we would be okay if we had a baby that needed me full time, a baby that was not perfectly healthy.  Because we were dealing with 35 year old eggs after all.
And so now I am stuck in this awful moment in time where the only way to get unscared is to look for the monster under the bed. Which for me is to say it out loud.  I am scared that since I quit my job to stay at home Lucy will get sick and it will be all my fault.   Breathe.  See?  It is slightly less scary now since I can see how crazy that sounds.
Intellectually, I know there is no reason to google “infant dry skin symptom of deadly illness.”
So, last Monday I had a job and a baby that had new baby smell with milky white skin and a Perfect Sweater.
This week?  I will have no job very shortly, Lucy’s face is rotting off and she smells like old noodles… but I am not ever going to wash this sweater.
Stay tuned for the saga of the stay at home mother and her epic battle against dry skin and what will eventually be a foul milk smelling sweater.

...and the baby, ashamed of her flesh eating disorder.

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