A Real Job

I have a dilemma; a really guilty feeling. The feeling that I am not contributing enough - to my husband, to my family, to society in general. I don't know if other stay-at-home moms feel like this, but I know that I do. And it's been right under my skin for months now. Little comments get to me and start me to wonder exactly how people look at me, what they see and think. Not strangers either - friends, family members, acquaintances.

It's not something I've been bringing up, just something I've been thinking about. Constantly. It's like a buzzing in my ears - I always know it's there, even when I manage to forget about it. Every day, I wonder if I am doing enough. Not for my kids, exactly, although I'm sure I'm NOT doing enough. No, this is a generalized feeling that people think I am not contributing. Not pulling my weight. Not feeling grateful for what others (my husband mostly) are providing TO ME.
I hear comments like,

"Do you think she'll stay home after she has kids? I hope not, what a waste of intelligence." 
"Do you know how rare it is that you are staying at home?"
 "Do you work?"
"I'm so jealous. I wish I could stay at home."

These are innocent. They aren't directed specifically at me, or at least, not in a vicious way - they are just comments. Conversations. Things that we bring up when we talk about parental leave, and salaries, and working moms vs. stay-at-home moms, and politics, and parenting. And yet....

I DO work. It's just not called that, is it?  But am I working hard enough to justify me staying at home to raise my kids. Am I being a good enough mother that society will accept that, yes, staying home was the best decision. Think about those words. Stay-at-home. As though you have decided that you will let someone else, a sugar daddy, (is that still the term?) do all the hard work of earning a salary while you sleep in, eat bon bons, watch tv, NOT WORK. As though being the one to do the day-to-day raising of kids, and the day-to-day cleaning and shopping and any of the other little things that add up in a home, in a family - the stuff that daycare workers and maids and chefs are PAID to do (and not enough, especially the daycare workers and maids!) isn't real work. Isn't really a contribution. Is just staying at home. How much do you have to do at home for it to be a real contribution? If your husband helps you out a ton, does that mean you're not doing enough? That you aren't pulling your weight? If he lets you have alone time, or does the dishes, or cooks most of the meal, does that mean you are being lazy? Not being grateful? These are my thoughts.

This feels like a stream of consciousness, because it is. I don't know exactly where I'm going with this post. Am I ungrateful when I complain about having a hard day? Because I don't work, you see, and so how hard could it have been? Am I allowed to be stressed? To just want a break. I chose stay at home, didn't I? There are certain things wrong with that statement now, but yes, in the beginning I did choose to stay home.

Did I waste my education, am I wasting all the time and effort that went into getting two master's degrees? What will I do later, when the kids don't need me so much. I PLAN on getting a job later on but it's important to me to be at home. I have my reasons and they are only mine, based on my life and my kids and my choices. But are they ENOUGH?!

I really don't want to start a mommy war. Working at outside jobs (and what a clumsy statement, right?) moms are heroes to me for a whole host of reasons. I don't think they're shirking their parenting role or have an easier time of the whole parenting thing. These are just thoughts I keep having...call it insecurity, or guilt. And I have no answers. None at all. I just want the worries and thoughts to stop.

That Third Kid...

Remember how I said I was definitely finding peace with only having two kids?

http://www.hagusandlightbulbs.blogspot.com/2015/12/how-im-finding-peace-with-only-two.html

Anyway, I keep going round and round on the third baby thing. Mainly, I think, because a lot of my friends on Facebook are either HAVING babies or just HAD a baby and a ton of newborn pictures makes my biological clock start dinging again. This is just me - to get my husband on board I'd have to win the lottery or write a bestseller so we could hire a nanny or a maid (or a grandmother - can you do that? Hire a loving grandmother to come over and take the kids to the park and be interfering by cleaning your house)?

Last night, my husband and I were stupid enough to stay up late watching a new series (shout out to Penny Dreadful, because despite the vampire-centric theme, I love anything from literature and history, even if it IS sensational). Clearly, we should know better. We're not newbies, after all. But we did - we stayed up until midnight. I can hear all of you parents tsk-tsk-ing us and shaking your head. "How stupid can you be? Don't you know that you are tempting fate?!" they are screaming at me, much like the audience of a horror movie is screaming "Don't go in there, you idiot! You clearly deserve to die; you're so stupid, that is OBVIOUSLY the house of a deranged serial killer!"

We got 2 hours of sleep and then our oldest woke up and decided she had slept enough. My husband dealt with it and snuggled into bed with her to make her feel better (we assume it was a bad dream and not her trying to drive us into an insane asylum - just makes us feel better as parents). At 4 am, she peed the bed, and I got woken up by a treatise on how he needed to take a shower because he was covered in pee (only it was a far more colorful rant). So I got up, got her snuggled up with me on the couch and sent him back to bed. She fell right back to sleep and I managed 45 minutes before the toddler-who-won't-stop-nursing woke up. I sneaked up, nursed him, stuck him back in the crib and stuck his monitor in with my husband for the fun of dealing with the nurser, and went back downstairs to spend a few more hours trying to sleep and get comfortable on the floor next to the couch (there was no way in HELL I was going to chance waking her up to get back on the couch - I'm stupid, not suicidal). She was quite happy to keep sleeping until 7:30, which is late for her. But then, it had been a busy night.

The boys slept until nearly 9 and then I practically kicked them all out of the house so I could write a blog post about it.

A new baby would kill us. This is a rare occurrence nowadays and quite frankly, we like the sleep. Sure, the toddler won't stop nursing and is almost two but I'm cutting him off any day now and he doesn't wake up all the time anyway. And she hasn't had an accident at night for weeks - clearly, having dad in the bed was just too good an opportunity to pass up. All dads have to have a 'I got peed on in my sleep' story for later on, when the kid is in college and needs to be humbled.

So yeah. No more babies. Commence laughing now.

Random Post People

Some self promotion:

On January 16 (Sunday) my post was accepted and published on ScaryMommy.com. Please, check it out. The title is Yummies With Pink: How It Feels Having a 3 Year Old With a Speech Delay. The link is here:

http://www.scarymommy.com/developmental-delay/

I'm working on several posts in for the next few days and apologize that I haven't written before now. Of course, I'm not entirely sure anyone is actually reading....

So, check back in a few days and sorry for the lame post.

Annoying Motherhood Memes

Is anyone else over the whole "moms can't shower" meme yet? I posted on Facebook that it's a wonder I am clean at all, considering I had two kids in three years and am a SAHM mom. I got back a ton of responses, all agreeing with me. Apparently, it's not lack of hygiene, it's that these babies can't ever be put down, even if you got the amazingly, wonderful swing/bouncy seat/car seat or wonderfully soft playmat/blanket. They never sleep, even for a few minutes?

 I don't know if this is part of the growth in extreme attachment parenting or if I am just doing this whole parenting thing wrong (probably). But I have ALWAYS been able to shower. Sometimes, I showered with my baby, which was a mistake but very, very sweet - you don't get as clean but the skin to skin is delicious. Sometimes, that baby screamed while I had him/her in the bouncy seat and it felt like I was being held hostage...or maybe the shower itself was "I'll let you shower, but I'm screaming through it." When I had a toddler and a newborn, the toddler had toys and the newborn was in the bouncy seat. Or the crib. Or the playpen. Seriously, there are so many baby containment devices, I don't see how you can't at least TRY to use them all. Also, books and Elmo (hey, she'd turned 2 and tv was finally allowed!)

I realize that not everyone has a partner there every day to help them out (they travel, are deployed, are assholes who don't help with the children at all, whatever). But there is NEVER a time in your day, even the exhausted first days home as a new parent, when you could take a short shower?! It's get wet, shampoo, soap off, rinse. My fastest shower was literally 2 minutes long. I might even be rounding UP a bit. I can't imagine how GROSS that would feel. Especially after giving birth and having the longest period of your life happening - you need cleanliness at that time! Or how hypocritical I would feel if I tried to keep the kids clean and then didn't demonstrate that mommy needs to be clean too.

I can't be the only one that thinks this meme should die, so that new mothers don't get an unrealistic view that they can't ever take even two minutes for themselves or put the baby down long enough to maintain basic hygiene.

Kids Birthday Parties

My oldest turned four last weekend. FOUR! I don't know exactly how it happened. She's potty trained and everything! (Wait, does it count as potty trained if the only place she can actually go potty is at home or school, usually only on her own little toddler potty at home - mad holding skills actually; and will not step foot in a public restroom at any point, even if the only person using it is washing their hands? I'm going to say yes).

We waited to have the party until her best friend came home from a winter break trip. The theme was Doc McStuffins. I am pretty sure I lost points because I didn't have any planned Doc McStuffins-themed games for the kids to play. I DID set up a 'doctor's table' where they could use our pretend doctor's bag and heal sick animals. I mean, I did give it SOME effort. There were also Doc McStuffins themed coloring pages that I tacked up on a board and provided stickers and crayons to color. I'm not a total weirdo or anything.

The kids were quite thrilled with the cake. I did NOT make it myself in tiers, with different colors based on the character that was painted on each layer with edible paint (You're ruining it for the rest of it, Pinterest-moms, and I say that as someone who is addicted to Pinterest)! I ordered it from Kroger and decorated it myself however. They used pink and purple frosting and I very lovingly added the figurines. It WAS difficult - do you know how hard it is to add figurines from a preschoolers toy collection without them wanting to play with them?! Of COURSE I re-purposed toys we already had. I care about the environment, after all!

But not enough to skip the favors bags. I gave out kazoos that I am pretty sure don't actually work (you're welcome parents - this was a total accident, but I am going to take credit because I bought them and then realized that kazoos would make the other parents hate me). They also had little figurines (imagination is a beautiful thing - they can use them to play with their other toys). And ribbon dancers, which are awesome even for adults (my husband and I danced around after our two kids zonked out in sugar comas, whipping the ribbons around and acting like idiots).

Quite frankly, it was a lot of work for an hour and a half of a preschool-class worth of kids running around screaming and playing with toys, but there were only fights from my two kids (siblings apparently suck, despite the fact that they are supposed to be BEST! FRIENDS!). I call it a success, especially because I heard numerous times that this was "the best cake I ever had!" The best party I've been to!" and "Thank you mommy, thank you!" Preschoolers are a compliment-filled lot, and very loving. It makes it all worthwhile. Kids - they know exactly what to say to make sure they get invited back for more cake-filled days.