Put on a Happy Face

I am fortunate it enough to have been blessed with the ability to stay home with our children.  When I was pregnant with B, The Doctor and I discussed child care and we both agreed that as long as we could afford it, I'd be a stay at home mom.

Staying home with them has been a blessing and it's not something I take for granted.  We make our sacrifices in different ways, mainly financial, but those are sacrifices we are fine with making.

All of this was brought on by an article I read today entitled "Dear Stay-At-Home-Moms, Please Shut Up" (http://www.lifetimemoms.com/parenting/stay-home-moms-shut-up).  My first thought was, "Great.  Another Mommy Wars article" and then I saw the article was written by a SAHM (stay at home mom).

After reading this article, I must say, I am very torn.  To sum it up, it's a SAHM who doesn't like it when other SAHM's complain about staying home with their kids. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love staying home with The Curly Girlies.  I love witnessing their antics, eavesdropping on their conversations and taking care of them.  However, I'd be lying if I said it was all roses all the time.  Let me tell you, it's not.  There are days I want to run away.  There are days I am so stressed I could pull out my hair.  Enough about me, though. . . Back to the article.

The author writes:
"To the SAHMs who can’t be thankful and instead view life at home with their children as one putrid event after another, I say this: If you despise constantly being in the company of humans who drool, if you are completely unsatisfied and miserable and longing for a way out, then, pretty please with a cherry on top, get a job, volunteer, find a hobby, go out with the girls. Do SOMETHING." 

This is the part I have a problem with.  Every SAHM I know loves staying at home and feels very blessed to be able to so.  Like any job, though, burn out does occur and it can be very difficult to have the same day, every day, without any change.  There are only so many times you can clean the kitchen, tell your kids to put away their shoes and trip over a toy before you need to vent about how frustrating this job can be.

Take this morning.  As she was putting on her shoes, M was coughing her head off and said, "Mommy, I think I'm wheezing again."  She has been coughing all weekend, and we've been making sure she's gotten her puffs from her inhaler.

"Go tell Daddy," I said to her, hoping this was nothing more than a ploy to stay home from school.  No such luck, though.

After The Doctor listened to her breathe, he said, "You need to take her to the doctor, today."

I fully admit, my first thought was not, "Yay!  I get a day to spend with my daughter!"

We happen to be friends with The Curly Girlies pediatrician and The Doctor texted her while I went around my morning routine.  I walked into M and L's bathroom to get a hair band and barrette for L and before I did, I laid my head on the door jam and cried.

At that moment, I did not want to think about having to take my daughter to the germy doctors office.  I wasn't thinking it might be fun to have a day home with her.  All I could think about was how I might end up missing Kickboxing and how my entire daily schedule would be thrown off, because this would not be an in and out visit.  It never is.  Not my greatest moment as a mother, but I didn't cry in front of M and I pulled myself together before I walked back into the kitchen.

One of the things I've learned through The Orange Rhino Challenge (http://theorangerhino.com), is things are likely not as bad as they could be.  "At least it's not the throw up bug," I said to The Doctor as I was getting ready to take the girls to school.  After that, I felt instantly better.

My beef with this article is this: Why are SAHM's not allowed to complain when things are tough?  Does venting to our friends mean we don't like what we do?  I know plenty of people who work in offices and out of the house and they love what they do, but still have moments where they need to vent.  Just because you are having an off day (or week) doesn't mean you don't feel blessed to have what you have.

For the record, once my Pity Party for One was over, I found out the pediatrician didn't want to see M and I still made Kickboxing.  My daily scheduled cleaning didn't get thrown off course and as a bonus, M got to see that I'm not kidding when I point out to the girls how hard I work around the house.  See? Always a silver lining and at least M can go to school tomorrow!

It Has Been Too Long

I apologize for the lateness of this post, but to be fair, I did state that I wasn't very good at keeping up with blogging.  Believe me, I've thought about blogging many times over the last 3 weeks, but something has always stopped me before I could get started.  Actually, it's been 3 little things that have taken over my house and are attempting to take over my life.  Hmm. . . That's not true.  If they wanted to take over my life, they'd take over the laundry, cooking, cleaning and shopping duties, but whenever I offer those up, they go darting off in different directions saying, "No way!"

We have a rotating chore schedule which the girls rotate through weekly.  Every week one of them is on laundry, one on kitchen and one on bathroom.  This week is M's turn for kitchen duty.

"M, when you are finished eating breakfast, please empty the dishwasher and load it up with the dirty dishes," I said to her this morning, while getting ready to make eggs for everyone.

"Aww," she groaned.

"Why does everyone do that when I ask them to empty the dishwasher?," I mused.

"Because," M explained. "None of us like being on kitchen."

"I am well aware of that, M, but think of it like this," I said to her. "All 3 of you take so long getting ready during the week, that ultimately I end up doing kitchen duty after you go to school.  The only time you really have to do it is today."

"Oh!," she exclaimed, with her eyes lighting up. "That's great!  Thanks, Mommy!"

"So, do you think you'll be able empty the dishwasher and load it up again after breakfast?," I asked her while scrambling the eggs.

"I'm getting started on it now!," she exclaimed happily, opening up the dishwasher.

And so she did.  That dishwasher was emptied in a jiffy.  Sadly, breakfast dishes sat out for about 2 hours before she finally got along to loading them, and in reality, her version of loading of them was to stick everything into the sink.

I came into the kitchen in the early afternoon to get my shopping list together and saw the sink was overflowing with dirty dishes, a huge pet peeve of mine.

"M!," I called out, taking deep breaths (I've been not yelling for nearly 11 months now and I'm breaking that over this).

"What??," she shouted from her room.

Sometimes I truly feel like we are the Wolowitz family (The Big Bang Theory) with all the shouting across the house we do.

"Come here!," I called.

"I'm cleaning my room!," she shouted (read: playing with all the toys she took out this morning).

I marched over to her room and said, "Great.  When you're finished with that, please load up the dishwasher."

She gasped and said, "I can't believe I forgot to do that!"

Uh huh.

"Cleaning the kitchen is such hard work," she whined, putting a shoe on her Barbie doll.

"Yep.  Believe me, I know.  I clean the kitchen 3 times a day," I told her, with no sympathy.

"3 times?," she exclaimed.

"3 times," I agreed.  "I love a clean kitchen and I'd love it even more if you would please load up the dirty dishes."

"I will, Mommy," she said examining the now dressed Barbie doll.

I left for my journey to the grocery store, and what a journey that was.  The place was a zoo, my patience was tried several times over and I didn't even have a Starbucks to keep me company since our grocery store doesn't have one (though they should).

I got home nearly 2 hours later and started unloading the car.  Now, normally I put The Curly Girly Trio to work unloading, but B and M had been begging to watch last week's Once Upon a Time before I left.  I had called from the store to tell them if they were both showered, they could watch.  L was sleeping and that girl is a bear when woken up, so she was exempt from helping.  The Doctor was doing some work and the last thing I wanted was to pull him away (have I ever mentioned asking for help is not my strong suit?).  I started to drag in my bags and saw the sink still overflowing.  I ate a Ho Ho to keep from yelling.

After I put everything away, we left for dinner and as we were coming home, I gave out directions to the girls.

"When we get home, girls, B has to shower {because she negotiated her way out of showering before.  This kid is going to end up an attorney, I tell ya!} and M and L have to get ready for bed.  Oh, and M, you need to load the dishwasher with the dirties from the sink."

"Ahh!," she cried out.  "Why do I keep forgetting to do that??"

"Well, you are the one who pointed out no one likes kitchen," I said wryly.

I guess the third time really is the charm, though, because after she was in her pajamas she went into the kitchen and loaded up the dishwasher.

"All done, Mommy!," she said gleefully, after the 5 minutes it took her to load up the dishwasher.  "May I watch some TV now?"

"Sure, " I replied.

It took all day, but at least it's done. . . until tomorrow.