Stay at Home Mom.com

The Thanksgiving decorations are down and the holiday decor is going up. We have a big basement and so a few years back we invested in a few different color rubbermaid bins. Black and Orange for everything from Halloween to Thanksgiving - Green for Christmas - Purple for Easter - Blue for hand me downs or keepsake clothes. Inside of those tubs things aren’t so organized but at least we can quickly visually identify the holiday stuff. Another one of our regular contributors uses clear bins and labels them in her basement. That works great too but I sort of like not being able to see that everything is just tossed in the bucket. There is still a long way to go before our basement is totally beautiful and organized but it’s a start.

Theme for the season: slow down / keep it simple / focus on the magic for the kids.

Every year I buy at least 5 magazines featuring holiday ideas, tips and time saving recipes. Each year there is at least one article or tip section in each magazine that recommends we take time for ourselves during the holiday season to ensure the maintenance of our sanity. This is a great idea but how do you really do that?

When my kids were very little it was hard enough to take a bath because that would have to be coordinated with naptime which was fine when there was only one baby in the house but once our second was born it seemed that neither one of them ever slept at the same time as the other. And even when they did go down for a nap there was so much confusion as to whether to let the baby sleep on his back, side or stomach that I would spend most of nap time watching my babies breath. Even today, 10 years later, I love watching my kids sleep. They are so peaceful and calm.

Besides the sheer mechanics of what to do with the small kids to make sure they are safe and entertained while we take time out for ourselves there are so many other distractions. Laundry, meals, holiday gifts to buy - wrap - ship, bills to pay, house to clean, story time and a million other distractions keep us from that time to ourselves.

I don’t have any answers to finding time for ourselves other than keeping the holiday schedules simple and keep expectations realistic.

The holidays are magical for everyone but especially kids and I want to make sure that my kids enjoy the magic of the season. But every year I find myself starting out the holiday season struggling with this. Every year, for the past several years that I can remember, the lead story on the news on the day after thanksgiving has been about shoppers being trampled trying to get to the best deal at the local discount store. It is so discouraging. We do want to give our kids everything - but how is waiting in line for 7 hours to save some money on a big screen tv going to benefit them?

Again, no answers provided to this heartache but it does make me want to spend more time than money on my kids this season.

Hi! We are back from a little hiatus. Thank you to everyone who kept the discussions going on the discussion board. We are looking forward to even more lively exchanges this next year. Somehow when we updated computer servers and changed settings our blog went back to 2004 - and so it makes our hiatus look even greater than it actually was but we’re not going to worry about that too much tonight because all the kids are finally asleep. And that leads to the reason for the hiatus.

When Stay at home mom (the newsletter) began, pre-world wide web, our group of editors all were just becoming stay at home moms and all was right with the world. We had small children, we were staying at home and, in a way, niavely, believing that this would become easier - especially if we shared ideas and supported each other in our efforts to stay home with our kids as opposed to going out into the world and building our “careers”. In the late ’80s and early ’90s the first thing we were always asked when, on the rare occassions, we were able to go out with our husbands, the first thing we were always asked by other people was “and what do you do?”. The response “I’m a stay at home mom” was usually met with an “oh” with a tone of voice that implied (in a sarcastic manner) - oh, really, how nice for you - I understand - you stay home all day and play while your poor husband struggles to support all these people. And then they would, on most occassions, not so subtley, look away to the other people and carry on an “intelligent” conversation with the people that had “real” jobs. Some people would even seem to be mildly supportive and respond to our job titles with an “oh, really!? That’s great.” And then they would go on to their other conversations. This led many of our moms to try and come up with other euphamistic and creative “job titles” for what they did all day long - such as domestic engineer, Chief Financial Officer (most of us paid all the bills at home), Manager in charge of distribution (aka laundry expert). And other such silliness.

All the while we were thinking that this was going to get easier. Most of us were even thinking thoughts of possibly re-joining the working world once our kids got older. Of course the stay at home mom’s job was obviously most critical when the babies are first born and are in those early years of development. They are becoming the little people they will become and the job of stay at home mom is at its most important time (that was the thought). I had two boys that were almost 2 years apart in age and they were great kids and alot of fun. So, when my youngest son went off to kindergarten I thought to myself “ok, now it gets easy. They don’t need me so much anymore. They can do alot for themselves and it will become easier every day.” So, I decided to have two more kids - which we did - and extended my stay at home mom status officially for another 6 years. Because at that point, my job would be done and everything would be easy. I could even go back to working in the real world at that point if that’s what I wanted to do.

So, now 16 years later from the original and very first stay at home mom newsletter, alot has changed. We have moved from typesetting to blogging and our original group of editors and contributors have….. teenagers.

That is the true reason for our latest hiatus. Teenagers.

And here is the big shocker (at least to most of us here) - This job has not gotten any easier. The first afternoon that one of my boys confessed to me that he had a broken heart from a girl that didn’t want to go out with him made me think to myself “This is not easy”. The first time I walked into a room that smelled like a sweat shop I thought to myself “ugh, this is not easy”. The first time my husband and I had to have THE talk with our boys (when they were 10 - because we had heard that a little girl in our town who was 12 had become pregnant) I thought “this is not easy”. Actually, that one was pretty easy - I just looked at my husband and said “tell them honey”. And he did a beautiful job. Very age appropriate but effective.

I want to let my kids “go”. I want them to grow. I want them to go out into the world and discover new and exciting possibilities. But none of that is easy. I sat with another mom the other night at 7pm waiting for her teenage daughter who had been out skiing with friends, and another supposed responsible parent. They were supposed to be home by 5:30 and it was going on 7 and still no word. The snow on the mountain passes was beginning to come down hard as reported on the evening news and by the weather maps and road condition websites we had been visiting. Finally at some blurried point after 7 the phone call came in that they were almost home. They had all been having so much fun they lost track of time. Finally, after the sick to our stomachs feeling went away from worrying about all the possibilities and having pictures of cars in ditches run through our heads, along with pictures of this darling baby who was just crawling across the floor and falling asleep in our arms in what seemed to be just days ago, finally after those thoughts had cleared we were able to have a conversation about something else. Although today just a couple of days later neither one of us can really remember what we talked about but we both remember clearly the relieved feeling of having this darling child safely tucked in her bed for the night. Not easy.

This is nothing new. My mother worried about me. It may or may not be true that there are more dangers out there in the world today that our kids are exposed to. But it seems to me that even one danger out there in the world is enough to make a moms job Not Easy. When I was in college Ted Bundy had just left my college campus for new killing adventures in Colorado and then after a narrow escape onto Florida. Today, our kids face internet stalkers, world wide terrorist attacks, and child molestors who are getting increasingly random as in the case of the monster who took a little girl from n. idaho, killed the rest of her family and abused her.

Our teenagers are starting to drive. Driving fatalities and other accidents are the number one killer for this age group. This is not easy.

None of this is easy. For some reason I thought it would be. I remembered being a teenager. I cleaned my own room. Took care of my own hygiene. Got an after school job. What is so tough about that? I also made both my parents hair turn grey which I am only beginning to understand now. Not easy.

Some nights I want to just crawl into bed exhausted and go to sleep, even though there are still a million things to do and the laundry is piling up and it would have been nice to wash my face with that special facial soap that was recommended by the lady who cut my hair almost a year ago. Remember to put on the to do list tomorrow to make an appointment for another hair cut soon. And then one of the teenagers walks in and clearly would like to talk about something. Tonight it doesn’t seem to be about anything important but maybe he is just testing us to see if he can come in and talk about anything. Tomorrow it might be a more important talk about some life altering decision he may have to make and he is just making sure that he can come talk to us.

It is easy to listen to your kids when they are saying Ma ma… Da Da. But listening to a teenager and trying to truly listen and hear what they are really telling you is not always easy.

So, holiday greetings and thank you for hanging in there with us. We are all on to new adventures every day in this great adventure of being a Stay at Home Mom.