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I have always been a free bird, doing something the hard way... a hundred times to get it done, impulse buyer and doer, and I love to organize but hate to follow organization/schedules. So when we had Norah on top of all this, I felt a bit topsy turvy. How do you stay full time mom, full time artist, and full time wife?
Help. Lots and lots of help.
I'm sitting here writing this post as my mom does my dishes. It's something she truly enjoys doing for us on a monthly basis (often times twice a month). And it's AH MA ZING! There are many Fridays where she leaves work early and comes to give Norah hugs and kisses (and books, and play, and animal sounds, and walks), that frees me up for an hour or two. Big help.
On Tuesdays my mother in law, Karen, watches Norah for several hours in the morning. A good chunk of time to get some painting done, and Norah gets a lot of snuggly hugs.Wednesdays I have my dear friend Andi come and watch her for several hours in the morning with coffee and then we all do lunch.
On Thursdays my sister in law, Joni, watches her for a couple hours while I go sit at a coffee shop and breathe. When my niece and nephew get out of school the cousins hang out for a bit together. Great family time.
My sister, other friends, and our parents will help watch her in the evenings so Brian and I can have date nights.
And then there's my hubby. He does so much! After a long day at work he comes home, grabs Norah out of my hands, and he's on daddy duty for the rest of the night. I can get so much done because of his willingness to do the evenings. Same with the weekends, we alternate.
I am always curious as to how stay at home moms who are also artists get their work done with a baby/toddler around. Norah has gotten to a stage where I can get very little done while she is awake and I have to give in to that. I WANT to give in to that and watch her explore, learning about the world around her.I would not be able to get what I get done without the help of others. I know some who do, and that just blows me away. I applaud them with a standing ovation because I know myself well enough I would overheat and give up. My discipline still has strides of work to go in the field of 'getting it done'. It takes a lot of practice!
I have messed up in my business because of the many, many tasks I do, I have allowed Norah to watch tv so I can get a task done, I have even let her stay in the crib wanting out after a nap just to finish up an Etsy listing (I am aware these are very normal events all of us parents do), I have mailed orders out later than intended because I simply got overwhelmed and forgot, and I have checks that have sat around waiting to be deposited from months ago.
I'm not ashamed, and won't be. I will be realistic that life happens, and stuff needs to get done. My daughter has me all of the time, and I give almost just as much into my marriage and business. I think we're good. I say it all the time, but it never seems like enough....
I am SO BLESSED to have the life, the people, the husband, and the time I have today.
Wow. So good!
How do you manage life?
My situation is we can't afford childcare or babysitters, and I understand everyones situation or circumstance is very different from the other. This is how we make it work.
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This is for all the stay-at-home mothers who are exhausted at the end of the day only to be greeted by the words:
All that blogging and twittering in 18 minutes? Like I say, You’re good.
Kathy
NJSCBWI Regional Advisor
LOL! This is, sadly, very true. :0) Thanks for the article! Glad I”m not alone.
Christy
This is hilarious and oh-so-true. The best way to combat this is to develop a medical condition that requires a week’s hospitalization and leave hubby alone with three preschoolers for that time, with no relatives in range to help out. Or was it two? I don’t remember. I do remember that it worked wonders.
A few years before that (pre-kids) he used to complain about how much I spent on groceries. So I brought him shopping with me and let him put whatever his heart desired in the cart. The look on his face when he found out that he had just spent twice as much as I ever did was priceless. And that was the end of complaints in that department. ;o)
You just can’t beat reality therapy.
–*Please note that HPT exists in households where mothers work outside the home as well. In this case, the HPT may be even more distorted–
Oh my-pizza pie, this is sooo true! I was a SAHM for about 13 years, and now that my kids are all in school I am working part time. Hubby seems to think that working “part time” leaves me all sorts of time and energy to tend to house/home/kids/hubby.
My day is MAYHEM! But I gotta give hubby credit. He does take the oldest to show choir at 7:00am twice a week, and the youngest to TaeKwonDo 2 or 3 evenings a week–still in his uniform and with dinner barely stuffed down his gullet!
Absolutely hilarious! tara, you have to try to get this post into a parenting magazine. It’s just brilliant
Absolutely love this - it’s true and hilarious (love the HPT misconception of free time while the baby naps versus the actual time of 37.2 seconds). As a father I think more men need a better appreciation of the chaos and mayhem each day home with the kids brings. Some of my favorite memories revolve around the days home with the kids, but I also remember the stress, the feeling of a clock ticking somewhere in the background with every step I took and the sense of impending doom……I look back on those other times when I would rush out of the office at 5, race like Carl Lewis to Penn Station to catch a train to get home to help with dinner, shuttle one kid to tae Kwon Do, another to Cub Scouts the next night, a third to (fill in the blank) practice on another night…..Great job of capturing the angst so many moms go through each day!
Love this post! My husband actually asked me what I had planned for today and I told him eating bon bons and watching tv!
Thanks for this - it’s brilliant. But I think it applies more to me than my husband (who has a reasonable idea of what it takes). I’m at home with 3 preschoolers. Day after day slips by and I wonder, what HAVE I been doing? Why aren’t my kids playing chess and violin? Why haven’t I completed a novel and started my own NGO? Your tally says it all.
Poop-ready face… LOL! This is so true! Very funny!
I loved this. I remember vividly the look on my husband’s face when I’d ask him to help with dinner or fold laundry and he’d say, “But I worked all day.”