"Discipline" Success!

I mean, my kid is 22 months old, so there's really no such thing as discipline right now. I'm still figuring out how I feel about the whole "discipline" thing with a toddler. I've been reading up and I guess I fall somewhere in the middle: I don't think he "gets it" all of the time, but I do feel that in my home it's important for us to start laying the foundation of what is acceptable and what is not early.

I have a few friends that are all about the "redirection only" methods and to be honest, it just sounds like they live in households centered around their child and what he wants. For me, that feels like it would create a kid a few years down the road that would have a really tough time accepting rules and boundaries and other people's wishes.

So far, discipline has been frustratingly exhausting, mentally, physically, and emotionally. Jacob either doesn't realize he's being punished and sits in time out chattering to himself and playing with his shoes until I come over to have our "follow up", where he looks me in the eye and tells me what I want to hear so he can go play, or I get all-out tantrums complete with hitting, kicking, screaming and wailing. Neither is fun, or feels like we are getting anywhere.

But yesterday, I MIGHT have had a breakthrough!

Lately he wants us to carry him ALL.THE.TIME. He has begun refusing to walk on his own to/from daycare or anywhere, and just whines and tries to block our way until we cave. So I didn't cave. The process looked a little like this:

"Mama, hold again," while reaching up.
"No, we're going to hold hands and walk today," so I take his hand, and he instantly becomes a sack of potatoes, throwing himself to the ground and trying to wrench his shoulder out of socket. So I let go, let him tantrum, and say "I'm going to keep walking now".
"Bye," he screams at me through tears, until I get too far for comfort, then he runs towards me crying hysteerically as if I have just dropped him off at a baby insane asylum, never to return.
I stop, let him catch up, say, "are you ready to hold hands and walk now?"
"No, hold again," and lather, rinse, repeat.
This was our process all the way from his classroom to the front door. It took over 10 minutes.

I finally carried him outside and we sat on the bench. We had a nice chat while he was sitting in my lap about how I needed him to be a big boy and walk, and how I was never going to leave him behind, but I couldn't always carry him. And then I made a deal. "How about you hold my hand and we walk all the way across the parking lot, and if you can walk with me like a big boy, we'll go look at the bus up close?" THAT got his attention. And then we did...walk all the way across the parking lot. He was awesome, and I told him so.

And then I picked him up and carried him to the car. As a reward for both of us for staying calm (me) and listening to mommy (him).

WMW: I Challenge Myself to Enjoy a Holiday

People keep asking me "How was your Christmas?" And I'm not quite sure how to respond. I think mostly I feel guilty, and I must move past that, like yesterday.

The truth is, I didn't enjoy Christmas this year. I tried to force myself to, and I had my moments like the Friday night date shopping with my husband and stopping for cupcakes at a downtown shop afterwards that were absolutely memorable, but overall, I felt so stressed, so overwhelmed, and so let down by the weather that I just couldn't move past it.

I think I set up a lot of expectations for my son's first "real" Christmas (he was 4 months old last year) that I forgot all about just letting myself enjoy the season, no matter what traditions we accomplished. I really wanted to take my son to go see lights this year, but every weekend it rained or snowed, which is in no way normal for NC and really thrw a kink in our plans. I'm sure we could have figured out a way to go on a weeknight, but December was a tough month at work as well. Demands and goals and expectations have changed, and lately it has not been the kind of job where I can "take off early" one afternoon on a whim.

I also was excited to put our Christmas tree up, but again, with the weather, we never got around to it and the last weekend we were left staring each other, saying "it's not worth it to go through all that effort for one week". So my sweet toddler did not have a tree in his own home. Santa had to leave his presents laid out on the couch. My husband at least managed to dig out our stockings, so that was a tradition left unharmed. (Sidenote, kind of gross: apparently at some point in Dec 2009 my son spit up on a corner of his stocking...ewwww...what a surprise!!!)

We also started some new traditions of sorts: we attended the Christmas Program at our church, and invited our closest friends and their kids over for a spaghetti/Festivus gathering. I hope that these will be added to our busy Christmas event season, because I actually enjoyed them so much.

Jacob's nap schedule threw a kink into our plans as well: we ended up showing up anywhere between 30 minutes and 2 hours late for our family events. I'm not even kidding: we made it to exactly 2 out of 6 actually on time. This is not what I want to be known for. I also stress-ate my way through the holidays. I am not lying when I say I gained almost 10lbs since Thanksgiving.

Despite all of this, I feel very blessed to have a healthy, loving son who was the life of the party all December, a wonderful husband who has been my equal partner the last few months when it comes to childcare and getting everything done, amazing family on both sides of our marriage, a home, two jobs, two cars that run, and plenty of good food.

And my challenge this year to myself is to let these things go. I have to get past trying to get everything perfect. I stress so much, that I spend valuable time worrying about stress and what I have to do next that I forget to just live in the moment and enjoy it. Even if the kitchen is dirty. Even if I don't have a plan for dinner. Even if I shouldn't be taking a 10-minute break to blog because I have a deadline at 5PM that I cannot miss today.

To quote my friend Candy, this year, I will own you.

(Prompted by Working Mommy Wednesday. Please join us, it's FUN!)

Honest Confessions of Motherhood

After my "time off" from my blog, I am so excited to rejoin my friend Julia at Work Wife Mom Life. (I can call her my friend now because we email and she knows where I work, isn't that enough?) Her Working Mommy Wednesday blog hop provides the exact kind of support and camraderie that I strive for in this blog. Before I continue with my post, I would humbly like to request that if you enjoy my blog, please click that little pretty Picket Fence button on the right and vote for me today. The moderators just did a reset and this is my chance to move up in the world and achieve Picket Fence Mom-Blog Domination!

As for my confessions about Motherhood, I only have one today, but it's a doozy. I get really stressed out by being the parent of a toddler. I snap at my husband, get frustrated at my son for, well, acting like a typical 14-month old who likes to bring me a new diaper when he knows he has pooped but then squirms away when I actually lie him down to change him. Dinnertime is never easy, and while some days, like Monday evening, I can remind myself to just take life as it is and enjoy every moment (instead of trying to rush into dinner when we got home, I spent a good 10 minutes on the kitchen floor with a nearly naked child who was laughing with nothing other than glee because he was putting a bowl on my head), most of the time I spend my whole weekday evening just tapping my foot impatiently at my husband while thinking of the next ten things I must do in an hour.

Halloween night was a fine example of how I get: dinner took longer than expected to cook, even though I was lucky enough to have my mom over to occupy Jacob while we got everything ready. The baby didn't eat well, I couldn't get everyone to sit down and start eating so we could get going, I barely ate my own food because I was anxious that there were already Trick or Treaters coming to our door and for some reason I had it in my head that we would be one of the first, I kept thinking about how we needed to hurry up and get Jacob re-dressed so we could go. The whole time, I swear my husband moved as swiftly as a moped on a superhighway, and before we even got out of the driveway I was yelling at him and rolling my eyes at my mom and saying ridiculous things like "How many times can I give him the same instructions?" or "How slow can HE MOVE?" I eventually calmed down, held my husband's hand, apologized for my frantic behavior, and enjoyed the event the way a family should.

I think the most pathetic part of this mom-freak-out mode is knowing that my grandmothers, mother-in-law, and mom had many, many more responsibilities and shouldered even more of the child-care burden than I ever will because the times have changed and my husband is expected to step in and parent right along with me. The guilt that hits me after one of my anxiety "episodes" is almost worse than the stress itself. I know this is a recurring theme in my blog, but I keep coming back to "how can I think this is so hard and let it get to me when I have it ten times easier than any of them did?"

That is my confession. I need a reminder that this is normal, that this phase passes just like clusterfeeding passed and just like 2AM wakings passed (well, for now, I know the molars are coming eventually), and that something that seems so stressful right now will seem small and insignificant in a few months. And I need a swift kick in the behind and someone telling me now and then "get it together girlfriend".

My mom did that last week. We were cleaning up after dinner at their house and I yelled at my dog to get out of the kitchen for the 14th time and muttered "I'm gonna blow a gasket."

Mom's reply? "I think you already did." Moms know just what to say at the right time, don't they?

The Inevitable Halloween Post

Well, after a 1 week + hiatus, I am back and blogging again.

I suppose I've had some combination of writer's block and well, real life, pulling me away from the computer screen and focusing more on work and home. It used to be that something funny would happen or I would make a wry observation and immediately think "oh, I have to remember this for my blog later". Now, I think I'm just trying to live more presently and not think so much about what I should be sharing with "outsiders" but what I should be sharing with my family! Not that I don't love this blogging community, just that I still need to find that balance.

Without further adieu...some observations from Halloween weekend:

1) Our daycare expected us to follow a "theme" when we dressed our little tyke up on Friday. Um, no, we've been planning his costume for over a month, we're poor, and we give you nearly half of my salary, so he will be a Cowboy, and not anything related to Peter Pan, thankyouverymuch.

2) Surprisingly, more of my Dollar Tree candy was swiped last night instead of the pricey Snickers/KitKat/3 Musketeers. I guess the novelty of candy sticks (what we used to call Candy Cigarettes before America got a conscience) trumped chocolate for once.

3) I am way more high-strung than I ever thought. We were running 14 minutes behind my Trick or Treating "schedule" and I was literally about to explode. I yelled at my husband, along with serveral eye-rolling episodes, before I finally calmed down enough to enjoy the evening. Luckily, he forgave me.

4) My son makes the cutest Cowboy EVER. (Pictures later, I promise I'll update the post.)

5) In this politically correct society, it is impossible to find a toy gun anymore.

6) I love Fun Dip. Enough that I was internally disappointed when one of our kind neighbors took the pack my son swiped from her bowl and exchanged it for toddler-friendly pretzels.

7) Old people are great. We have one older couple in our neighborhood we've spoken with once or twice, and Jacob walked right into their house. The lady thought he was the sweetest thing and wanted to take pictures with him. She also didn't just have a bowl of treats, she made treat bags with lots of little items in them.

8) My kid, lying on the floor with his mouth stained by M&M drool, acting like a crazy guy, is a really fun sight.

9) Jacob can now identify his first Sesame Street character: El-bow.

10) The expression on a Target employee's face when your husband asks "don't you have any guns for kids?" is absolutely priceless!

WMW: Me, Overwhelmed?

I can't believe I went a whole week without blogging. I've missed it, I have to say, but this prompt is right on time because, honestly, work has been a little overwhelming lately. Like anything else, my job ebbs and flows and sometimes I have 50 things I'm working on at once, and sometimes I resort to cleaning out old files in my office or in our storage room because I can't find anything else to work on.

Now is one of the more overwhelming times, so when I saw the prompt for Working Mom Wednesday today, I thought "wow, life is coming full circle"! Because honestly, this is what I do when I need to take a break.

I am a planner and a delegator, so it's not that I have anything pressing that is just stressing me to my core, I don't have that kind of job. I have the kind where I am happily plodding along in my planned tasks for that day when BAM! a problem falls from the sky right onto my desk and the rest of my day is spent cleaning up the mess. That's part of the reason I love it, for the change and flexibility and excitement of it all. But until recently, I've never been a person who can sit in an office and look at reports and do paperwork and make cold calls all day, so even on the best of days I need a break to liven life up a bit and get out of my slump.

And that's where you ladies come in! Blogging to me is a stress reliever. It's my cigarette break, coffee break, get up and stretch and stroll around the office chatting with my co-workers break. Other people may go get a snack or talk about Dancing With the Stars when they need to "take 5". I come and check on my fellow mom-bloggers, enter giveaways, share a little piece of what happened in my life recently. I think the other reason I turn here is because I am selfish. I'm just going to be honest: I am not a friend you want in real life. I don't send letters, I don't like to talk on the phone, and I am way too busy to make a lot of time even for the people I care about most. I communicate by email and Facebook more than anything, and I have a very good friend who can probably tell you about the time she asked how I was doing and I actually responded with a link to a blog post. Now, that's sad.

But what's not sad is the last 10 minutes I've spent typing this, and the excitement I feel by knowing at my next breather I will be checking out all my fellow WMW poster's thoughts! I am returning to what I was working on feeling refreshed and ready to work again instead of burnt-out and ready to go home. And for that, ladies, I thank you for allowing me to share!

Working Mommy Wednesday: I AM a Good Mom!

So the prompt I will go with today from my friends at the Working Mommy Network, since I can't do the picture thing from work, is a good one: Does being employed full-time make me a better or worse mother? Wow...talk about thought provoking. I've had to sit here for a few minutes (my accompanying Smart Ones Vegetable Lasagna, the best lunch TV dinner EVER, doesn't hurt) gathering my thoughts and contemplating how I really want to answer this question.



My first instinct was: HELL NO. I would be SUCH a better mom if I were able to Stay at Home with Jacob. But the more I've sat here and really examined myself head to toe, including my history, the more I've decided that, in fact:



I AM BETTER BECAUSE I WORK FULL-TIME!



This is honestly a very refreshing revelation. I think most of us working moms worry about this question frequently! Here is why I feel this way:



I am more patient with my son because at 5:15 I can't wait to start my commute and know that he is on the end of my drive, ready to smile and say mama and let me tickle his belly and stick his finger straight in his eye when I ask him to 'show me your nose'. If I were at home, by 5:15 I would be counting the minutes until my hubby got home so I could pass him the baby and say "your turn, sucker" while I frantically tried to finish dinner.



I think I actually do more housework as a working mom than I ever imagined. Trust me, there are still "how will this ever get done and be presentable?" moments, especially when it comes to stuff like hanging pictures (another reason I can't show you my house, there are 10 frames stacked against the wall waiting for us to hang them...they've been there since Mayish) or vacuuming the stairs or cleaning out the baby's closet. But I know if I were home all day, I'd likely be in pajamas until J's nap instead of doing all the things I say I would do, like going to the park or mommy playgroups or library story time. Then while he was napping, thinking I have all the time in the world as the hours until Daddy gets home stretch before us, I would be at the computer or in the recliner watching Bravo's marathon of America's Next Top Model. So I'd end up doing most of the housework after J's bedtime anyway.



The best benefit I can think of as to why working makes me a better mom is that I work really hard at what I do now. With my family as a solid purpose behind why I work, I do my absolute best to keep my job and keep moving forward. I try to employ the organizational and prioritization skills I use at work in my home life, although sometimes I fall short. I try to be as empathetic and understanding as possible with my co-workers, employees, and clients, so being a mom makes me a better employee, too.



In the end, the other thing that makes me a better mom as a full-time employee is that my son gets the BEST MEDICAL BENEFITS I could ever ask for. Seriously, it's awesome. And I'm sure he will appreciate it one day.



Please feel free to participate in our little blog hop: check out Julia's page here, where you can link to other like-minded moms as we work out our work/life balance. Stay at home moms feel free to read it too, so that we can all get past out "grass is greener" syndrome: maybe reading about our struggled will help reaffirm your decision to stay home with your precious babies!

Working Mom Wednesday: My Morning Commute

This is fast becoming my favorite weekday routine (Working Mommy Wednesday, not the morning commute). I have all but ceased scheduling lunch out on Wednesday because I know I will have something blog about so I just eat a sandwich from home and blog surf. Is it sad that this is one of the highlights of my week? In fact, Wednesday is about to become a favorite day when Modern Family and Cougartown return to the fall line-up.

So today's topic: What do you do on your commute to work - listen to the radio, enjoy peace and quiet, etc.

My morning commute is...interesting...to say the least. My entire commute, including dropping Jacob off at daycare, used to be 7 miles and take roughly 20 minutes each way. Until I got a promotion and started working in the :big city: as opposed to the :Big Country: where I live, as Mema used to call it. Now, I carpool Monday-Wednesday and sometimes more with my husband, which means my one-way commute is now an hour long and over 30 miles. To some people, that's not that much, but to me it is sooooo looong. Some days I love it, some days it's torture, and some days it's just right.

Before I accepted this position but knew a change was imminent, I was actually looking forward to the commute. I felt like I had no time to myself at home, spent some of my lunch breaks visiting my baby, or grocery shopping, and had few lunch choices in the suburban town I live in. I thought it would be nice to listen to more of my favorite morning show (G105 Showgram Shout-Out...Woooo) or talk to my friend in Texas (Jenny McCarthy shout out...woooo...you hate me for that, I know). I also knew I could get Indian food at the buffet around the corner and finally meet my favorite bloggy buddy BA for lunch. And for a while, this has served me well.

But today I am tired. Tired of the grind. Tired of not getting home until 6:30PM every night and only having a homecooked meal if I spent an hour preparing it the night before after JTD was in bed. Seriously...last night DH and I did not even sit down (except to eat) until well after 10PM. I made a lasagna that we can just bake for 15 minutes tonight, he steam cleaned the carpet, we moved furniture, cut up fruit, made bottles, did laundry, etc. I could literally fall asleep at my desk right now.

In fact, I actually DID fall asleep on this morning's commute. (While my hubby was driving.) I'm sure that was a lovely sight to my fellow I-40 traveller's. I'm considering making it part of my daily commute.

On the way home, however, especially on the non-carpool days, I LOVE commuting. I put on a good CD, one that I can belt at the top of my lungs to, and before I know it I'm at daycare ready to pick the little man up. I love Thursdays. So tomorrow if you see me shouting along to some Foo Fighters, you know I'm loving the drive.

I'm Not Much For Country Music

You wouldn't believe it by hearing me speak, knowing my family, or seeing the farmland that lies within a mile of my neighborhood, but I didn't even listen to country music at all (well, other than the Charlie Pride 8-track that I used to catch in my Mema's car when I was little) until well into high school. And only then because a boy I liked was a fan.

Even now, my "love" for country music ebbs and flows like the tide. Some days I like it and it gets me jazzed, some days I think it sounds like a bunch of redneck trash and I just want to hear David Gray or Pearl Jam. But yesterday, country music saved me. Not from anything big, just from a little despondentness. (If that's not a word, it should be.)

I don't know if it's my monthly friend, my breastfeeding hormones continuing to wane, or just being worn down from the daily grind, but I was feeling really down Sunday night. Like, bordering on depression down. It was a long weekend; I got to see family, sleep in, hang out with my baby, spend some quality time with my hubby, and I should have been feeling good and rested and loose Sunday evening, knowing I had a whole other day off work. But instead, I felt like I was still working. I was tired, worn down, emotionally drained, and just feeling like I hadn't really gotten a rest yet.

The worst part of feeling this way for me is the guilt that accompanies those feelings. I have friends with children with major health and developmental issues, who have suffered debilitating PPD, who live 1000 miles from any family or friends that could help out and give them a much-needed break now and then, whose marriages are suffering, who have been searching fruitlessly for a job for over a year and who may have to sell their home, and the list goes on and on (this is not one friend but several, just in case you were confused by my misuse of possesive and tenses). I have a home, a little piece of land, a stable (if sometimes a little too volatile, I mean, passionate) marriage, a supportive family, two incomes, and an amazingly healthy child. I am lucky. I have NO RIGHT to complain.

But sometimes, y'all, the loss of control I feel over my life gets to be a little more than I can handle. And I try to rely on good friends and my husband to bring me through that, but occasionally it takes a little more to escape that drowning feeling. And yesterday, driving along with Jacob babbling in the backseat, I happened to flip to the country station and Trace Adkins "You're Gonna Miss This" started playing. And I lost it. It was just what I needed to break out of the slump I've been in this past week and get. over. myself. Life is hard, right? Some days I need to suck it up and just be thankful for what I've got. Even if that means I have too much laundry to sort, too much paperwork in the office that needs to be filed, and a lack of focus on the details of my life (like where Jacob's shoes may be).

So here's to shrugging off the shadows and focusing on the bright lights in my life. Because if it were not for those dark moments, I wouldn't be able to realize how much joy I get when that little boy grins at me. Or how amazingly successful and together I felt when the first shopping trip with my new Ergo was pure fun, even if people were looking at me like a crazyhippie mama while I talked to my son the whole time I was picking out veggies. I can DO this, y'all!

Year Number Two...Aaannnd Go!

So. I have a toddler. A friend asked me today what it feels like to have a 1 year old, and at the time I wasn't quite sure what to answer, but now that I've had all afternoon to reflect, it feels...strangely anti-climactic.

I was pretty emotional last Wednesday, but not any more than usual. Since having a child, it's as though the pregnancy hormones have never quite left my body, and I can get weepy just at the image of my son stopping halfway across the living room to laugh at himself, for who knows what reason. Everything makes me cry. Especially being in church.

It's hard to explain, but, while I feel like I have far exceeded my own expectations of myself as a mother, I have been a big fat FAIL at being a better wife, homemaker, and caretaker of my family. I do not vacuum enough. I have not mopped the kitchen floor in way too long. I have dropped my 1st 6-months of mommyhood habit of doing a load of laundry each night (including folding and putting away) and now have two or three piles of unfolded laundry in the bonus room upstairs. I still have not unpacked the big suitcase from our beach trip a MONTH ago and just last night put the beach bags back in the closet upstairs.

I have paid bills late because I forgot about them, kept a constant pile of random stuff on the side table downstairs, and completely neglected my herbs this summer. My dog is not current on her heartworm medicine or flea and tick, and hasn't had a bath in over a month. (She did jump in the pool yesterday...that counts, right?) I can't find anything in my house or office because I don't have any kind of organizational system anymore...I am barely treading water when it comes to housework.

The worst is that I constantly nag my husband about every little thing. And I tend to do it quite passive agressively, like this exchange: "I'm going upstairs, can you let Sidney out?" "Well, no, I was going to go up first and take my contacts out." I paused and answered, "oh, that's right, I'm the mom so it's my responsibility." I'm mean to him. And that's just not right. I know he forgets to take his stuff upstairs sometimes and opens the packaging to any new electronic "toy" like a 12 year old at Christmas, leaving the box and instructions just lying on the table or floor. But he also cuts the grass every week and cooks just as much as I do. And I need to give him more credit.

So, given these realizations, instead of making New Year's Resolutions, I'm treating my son's birthday like a new year: things I want to be better at as a mom. Part of being a mom is taking on the extra task of caring for another family member without letting the rest of my life go to pot, and I need to be reminded of the women of the sixties and seventies and eighties, the original working moms who did it all. That doesn't mean I'm not going to stand up for myself when I need my husband's help, but lets face it: he does a lot more than men did back then, and a lot more than the weight I see some men pull. I need to learn to live my life without complaining.

And I'm going to try to start tonight, right after my Fantasy Football draft.

Inspiration! Free from Working Mom Wednesday

So as you can see at the top of my blog, I recently joined the Working Mom Network of bloggers, and by joined I mean that I brazenly slapped my pic and link down on their list of blogs without asking, thankyouverymuch.

Every Wednesday, they give me a break by providing two questions to inspire a post. Based on the fact that I have been trying to worm my way over to this site since my lunch hour at 2PM EST, I'd say that it feels like the answer to question number one today should be the hour of 4-5PM, when I am frantically trying to wrap up a bajillion things at work, lock my desk, and oh yeah, spend 19 minutes banging out a blog post.

But, it's really not the answer...

#1. What is your most stressful time of day and why?

The absolute most stressful time of day for me is from about 6:50-7:20AM each morning, particularly Mon-Wed. Hubby and I carpool those days, and pre-bebe I was the type to sleep until 7:50 when I had to be at work by 8:15. So, getting up at 6:15 is as early as it EVER gets now. Most mornings, this is when I nurse Jacob and spend a wonderful quiet 18 or so minutes dozing, staring into my son's eyes, carressing his tiny little elbow, and in general just being relaxed, preparing to start my day. The instant he is done, I have between 10 and 40 minutes to change a diaper, get him dressed, shower, let the dog out, feed the dog, make a half-ass barricade to keep the dog in the dining room since she's taken to an afternoon crapper recently and I really will scream if I come home to dog poo in the living room one more time this month, make sure the dog is not chasing any of the people that like to run in our neighborhodd, yell at the dog to stay out of the kitchen while I fix bottles, label yogurt (yogurt that will likely get thrown out because they let Jacob fill up on vanilla wafers before snacktime at daycare), find and pack lunch for me and hubs, and run back upstairs to put something on. Sometimes hubby helps, sometimes he spends the entire time getting himself ready only to come downstairs while I'm still in bra and panties with my hair in a towel and say "did you find something I can take for lunch today yet?" (Don't get me started on how Monday morning he looked at me in the car and remarked, "wow, you really do look like you just rolled out of bed.")

Sound stressful? It's much, much worse in person. Put it this way: I actually enjoy the commute because I can sit, finally. And because Jacob babbles the entire 4 miles.

#2. If you could have one day all to yourself, how would you spend it?

As I told my mom group today, AT A SPA. Preferably one with free saunas/steam rooms where I could sit around all day getting a massage, facial, pedicure, and reading gossip mags in nothing but a robe. But one big enough for me, istead of the ones I have to artfully drape over myself with a towel to cover the girly bits.

I Love Guest Bloggers!

You guys know that I love, love, love Anne from AJD+three. She inspires me in so many ways. Possibly the biggest is when I get down about being a full-time working mama and feel stretched to my absolute limit, I can think about her being a full-time working single mama, putting herself through law school. It doesn't get tougher than that, ladies and gents, which is why I feel that this post of hers in particular should not only win some awards, but also be able to be entered as an essay on any job application she is filling out!

Without further ado, ENJOY!

______________________________________________________________

Why “Mom” Should be Considered a Job Asset

First, I want to start off my saying I am honored to guest post for Ali. She is a good friend and a great blogger. I racked my brain for something interesting, witty, funny, and captivating to share with you all today….well, you get this instead, as I have discovered I blog best when I am blogging about what strikes me.

Those of you familiar with my blog know that I am unemployed and I like to keep it real. Reality for me is, I have been job searching for over a year and the “gap” in my employment history has become quite an issue. I am volunteering to plug the hole a bit, but really, employers know that I just can’t find a job.

You know what I think though? I should be permitted to plug that hole with the job title “Stay at Home Mom.” I should be able to write down: “Completed work projects after traditional work hours.” Or maybe: “Mastered multi-tasking amongst multiple high priority tasks with a high rate of success.” How about: “Obtained good results working with high demand clients.” Those are all necessary, useful and impressive job skills, right?

Well, unfortunately, in my profession and in many others, being a stay at home mom not held in a positive light. In my field specifically, as an attorney, many firms consider having a family to be a negative attribute, as that family may take time away from working. Despite working a job that often is done thanklessly and without pay (aside from the unemployment, of course), I cannot say that I have worked during this past year. I simply must leave that year blank.

How screwed up is this? I know all moms, those who work from home, stay at home, work outside of the home, work very hard to maintain their homes, raise their children, be good wives or partners and still keep a part of themselves. I find it really difficult to fathom why work as important as child rearing is often not considered valuable work experience or history to hiring managers out there.

I am not naive enough to believe “you and I can change the world” or anything of that sort. I know that when I wake up tomorrow that my resume will still end in June 2009. But I also know that I appreciate my accomplishments. I have learned a great deal from staying at home. I have gained many hard to acquire skills.

So to me, those skills, my friends, are job assets.

Dear Bewbs...

I am only asking for 6 more weeks. 6 more weeks of pumping twice a day at work, 6 more weeks of nursing 4 or more times a day on the weekend (that will be the hardest to let go), and I know you can do it. After that, you only have to work between the hours of 7PM-7AM, and you will get a break the rest of the day. You can be my little vampires and sleep peacefully all day, if you can just hold out and give me at least 6oz a day for 6 more weeks.

Pretty please? I'm just not ready to give up on you yet, but you are making it really tough to love you right now. I appreciate everything you've done, and I know Jacob does, too, but the last 6 months have been tough and at times, fruitless. As much as I am dreading the W-word and the long transtition we will take with that, I am at least ready to admit that 1 year is enough for my full-time nursing attempts. Things would be different if we were home all day, but this working and pumping...I am so, so over it.

Especially when I spend 15 minutes crouched at my desk, typing one-handed, to only get 2 ounces.

We can do a little better than that, right?

I Used to Be a Night Owl.

Before baby, I was such a late night person. I used to work in retail management, and had a wonky schedule with nice time off during the work week, shifts that started at 1PM sometimes, and being at work before 9:30 was considered early.

I switched to my current career around a year and a half before Jacob's birth, with "banker's hours" and although it took a while, I eventually got used to it. However, I was still terrified of what would happen once I gave birth. Seriously, I could easily stay up until 2AM, sleep until 10AM, and my husband and I never seemed to be able to make it out of the house on the weekends until noon or later. The thought of waking before 7AM was reserved for plane flights, nightmares, and Easter Sunrise Service. How was I going to adjust to having to get myself and a baby ready, take him to daycare, and still be at work by 8 or 8:30?

Part of the solution was to find a daycare that only made my one-way commute 7.1 miles. Mission accomplished, until a recent promotion that puts my one-way commute at over 30 miles. I have to leave home nearly an hour before I'm scheduled to be at work. How has that worked? Surprisingly, exceedingly well. I am usually the first one to my office in the morning. My husband and I will soon begin carpooling three days a week. I go to bed between 10-11PM, wake up between 6 and 6:30, and I actually enjoy it.

This morning, before 8:15, I took a shower, got dressed, put bandages on my heels to prevent new-shoe blister syndrome, nursed Jacob and changed his diaper, played and flirted with him for 15 minutes, took him to daycare, took the dog to the vet/groomer on the way to work, and swung by Starbucks for an Iced Caramel Macchiatto. It felt GREAT! Next up, waking up at 5:30 to have half an hour of "me" time? I used to think that would be impossible, but now I think it can be done. We'll see...

I Rediscovered a Long Lost Love Yesterday

The Crockpot!

Oh my, I finally realized why everyone thinks the darn thing is so convenient. In the past I have always felt like it takes more work for crockpot cooking than just regular. I couldn't imagine getting up early in the morning to cut up veggies, and I am a snobby enough cook that I know that cutting veggies the night before and leaving them in the fridge overnight would dry them out. Plus, at 9PM, after I have been through the afterwork wringer of pick up baby, feed baby, play with baby, bathe baby, get baby down for sleep, wash bottles, fix the next day's bottles, clean the kitchen, cook and eat supper somewhere-in-there, who wants to make ANOTHER meal?

Enter St. Patrick's Day, that holy grail of holidays that involves meat, potatoes, BEER, and pretending to be Irish. I mean, we're all kind of a little Irish anyways, right? And I'm pretty sure that real Irish people don't eat this on St. Patty's Day, but us Americanized Irish do the whole corned beef and cabbage deal. Now, I know from experience dating all the way back to my "college" days that the best way to cook this is for a couple of hours in a big stockpot of water and Guinness on the stove.

But I get home at 6PM and have a household to run. I can't be doing all of that work...we wouldn't eat until well after 10PM (like the Italians) so I decided that I could crockpot it this year. I arrived home on my lunch break with 40 minutes to chop and arrange my meat and veggies in the crockpot, pump, and eat lunch, and I accomplished my goal with a minute to spare. I even washed up the few dishes I used (knife, cutting board, colander). And when hubby and I arrived home after work, our house smelled delicious, and we had a full hour to sit and play with Jacob. No prep, no clean up, just a nice enjoyable evening.

I will be employing this lunchtime trick once a week, for sure. I cannot tell you how relaxed and unstressed I felt to be able to come home to a nice dinner and a clean kitchen. Even if my meat was cooked in Coors Light because I forgot to get Guinness this week. I guess as you get older, the St. Patrick's Day priorities change!

Let me whine about having a job.

So. There's a large argument about whether it's harder to be a working mom or a stay at home mom. I know that each comes with it's own challenges, and that if I stayed home all day every day I would eventually go crazy and revert to speaking only baby talk and saying things like "poopy diapey" and listening to the KidSongs channel on digital cable.

However, this holiday season has been the hardest two weeks of my life. Before December happened, I felt pretty comfortable in my "working mom" role. I think we had a decent routine down. Jacob was sleeping pretty well at night and going down between 8-9PM, which gave me time to get his bottles ready for the next day, clean the kitchen, do a load of laundry, and still spend an hour or so relaxing with my husband. On weekends we enjoyed family time and caught up on housework.

On Black Friday, I spent the slow workday getting about 60% of my Christmas shopping done online. I was feeling pretty good about things. Then all of a sudden, everything happened at once. I realized that we had plans every weekend day of the next 6 weeks, my supply of breastmilk took a nosedive, and the outlet our chest freezer was plugged into tripped and we lost about $600 worth of meat, heat and eat meals, and my precious extra breastmilk. All of a sudden I was spending extra time "power pumping" and baking lactation cookies to try to get my milk back up, and Jacob started going to bed later and getting up earlier, causing my 6AM-11PM days to feel like they were nonstop.

I freaked out. Completely. I spent two weeks so stressed out about how I was ever going to decorate, clean the house, and get all these presents wrapped that I had no time left over to actually do those things. I was a mess...snapping at my husband, crying at the drop of a hat, sleepwalking through work. I felt like I had some kind of late-onset Post Partum Depression.

I don't know how, but one way or another I made it through and just as quickly as it started, I relaxed. I did some more online retail therapy, preventing me from having to make shopping trips for Christmas. I got really excited about my ebates account and the fat check I'm going to receive in February as a result of all this time spent online. My boobs miraculously started producing more milk. And I went to Target, bought a bunch of gift bags, and said "screw wrapping"!

Now, my tree is up, my kitchen is (somewhat) clean, my living room carpet is vacuumed, I actually got cards in the mail for the first time ever, gifts are DONE (except my brother in law's 6 pack of beer. Yes, that's really what he asked for), and I'm going shopping with a friend tonight. Just for fun.

I'm finally able to do what I wanted all along: enjoy my son's first Christmas.