The Secret Life of a Stay At Home

My brother in law will tell me quite easily how lucky I am to be able to sit home everyday with my beautiful daughter. He's not wrong, of course, but he also hasn't a clue as to what some days are actually like. He doesn't see the tantrummy Jellybean. As far as he's concerned, she's just an abnormally happy and easy child. Again, he's right, but that's in comparison to what, as far as he knows, since he doesn't have a kid of his own? He once said to me "you're so lucky, you can retire in 10 years after the kids are grown (Jellybean would be 11 and a half in 10 years. I hardly think of 11 being all grown and what if we have more kids, but what do I know?). I see moms out to brunch in the city everyday after dropping the kids off at school. You could do that." - or something to that effect to which I had no reply. What do you say to that? He's forgiven (for now) only because he doesn't have any mini versions of him. I am waiting to shove that in his face come time. He doesn't know that I don't wear sweatpants in the house anymore because I leave the shades open during the day and if I'm cooking and Jellybean wants attention, she'll pull and pull and pull on them and I end up mooning my neighbors (which I have done on several occasions before realizing sweatpants are not okay and if I must wear them, to remember not to open the blinds). I don't think I would have made it as a working mom. I'm pretty certain that if I had to commute to work, do all the cooking, cleaning, washing, cutting, dicing, steaming, laundry, preparing for next day meals for the Jellybean AND ourselves after pulling in a 40 hour work week, I would about keel over so I have tons of respect for working moms, but make no mistake, we stay at home moms don't JUST STAY HOME. You want to know why? I spend my time putting back together our 104 pieces of foam mats on the floor back together because that's her hobby now - to pull as many apart as she can. I cook/wash x5 daily. EVERYDAY from 7am until her last meal at 5:30pm with about an hour and a half between each meal or snack. In between that, I sometimes find enough time to throw something in the microwave that passes as a meal for myself - usually whatever leftover from her meals usually while she is napping. She plays with every piece of toy she can get her hands in or on and all of it falls into a huge pile in the middle of the living room and while she helps clean, well, she's 15 months and still waddles so you figure out how clean, clean actually is. This is while I have the Jellybean wanting attention and doing everything to get it including trying to pull my pants down or look up my shirt until her nightly bath (read: pool party) for the last half hour of her day and then having to clean up after I put her to bed. Somewhere in there, we have our daily hour walk around the neighborhood which really means that she's walking for 15-20 minutes of the hour and being carried the remainder of the time because the stroller, well I use it as a shopping cart now. That's all on a good day without having to be somewhere or do something out of our usual routine. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I CHOSE this. That isn't the point of this post. The point is, I DO STUFFS and don't sit around kissing on my daughter's face all day even if that's really what I would like to be doing so when I hear someone say "it must be nice to be able to sit around at home all day" what I would like is to punch them really hard. In the face. I see why now, the rage and superiority wars between working moms and stay at home moms exist. Sadly, neither is easy any which way you try to look at it. It's called parenting. Why the high horsey? "NEIIIIGH!"


Leah had her first french fry. She didn't much like it, and promptly threw it over her shoulder just moments before we got this out of it. :)