Saturday, January 7, 2012

Do I Love Being a Mom?

Someone asked me recently if I loved being a mom, and I said, "I love the kids..."

But when I pick up Sam and he kicks in delight, and Henry excitedly says, "Mom-mom!" to me, I guess I love being a mom.

I read women's magazines and they annoy me to no end. I won't go into this now (see realwomenanonymous.blogspot.com). According to them, "having it all" is having a partner, children, a social life, and a good, fulfilling job. The implied part is the money, expensive clothes and handbags, and great sex.

So can we have it all? What does it really mean? For me, there are lots of things I want, but I'm staying away from the temporal things, and going for the quality of life things. I wanted a husband, a couple of kids, and a job. That's pretty standard. I got the husband and we had a great couple years together while we both worked. Then came the kids, and I gave up my job. Why? Because as I told my husband, "I do not intend to send my kids to daycare." His mother was a stay-at-home mom, and my mother was a stay-at-home mom, and I respect other stay-at-home moms. Then I found that I liked the financial fulfillment and personal satisfaction of having a job. I miss my job. I miss bringing home some bacon. I miss buying nice things for myself, and being able to donate money to (mainly local) charities and non-profits of my choice. I made a sacrifice, and I chose giving up the job (something good) for something better (staying home with the kids). This was a personal decision between my husband and me, and not necessarily the "right" decision, and certainly not the "best" decision for many.

So do I feel like I have it all? No. I want to go to school so I can get my Masters and work at the job I want to retire from someday. I also want to stay home with my kids because I know they will never be these ages again. I already missed Henry being a baby, and Sam is going to be a year old in a few weeks. People always say it goes so fast, but I literally feel like it's slipping away even as I watch them. It's kind of how I feel about Christmas. I love Christmas so much, that once it's December, I am depressed because it's almost over. It's hard to enjoy the moments, so with Christmas as my guideline, I try to snuggle with Henry as much as possible while I still can, and allow Sam a little more flexibility in his naughty baby ways, because soon enough he'll understand what the time out chair is really for.

I chose to make these sacrifices, in part because I waited so long for these babies to find me, and now that they have, I don't want to miss a moment.

4 comments:

  1. I am glad you are entering the blogosphere with such a real post. I still need to write our "Christmas letter," where I'll discuss being a graveyard shift wife and what we've learned in our first months of marriage. You know my story, so it'll be like "yeah yeah, heard all this."

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  2. I'm very anxious for your Christmas letter. I think some of the best learning in marriage comes in the first year, and then you forget as time goes by.

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  3. I agree Andrea. I remember once when Kiel was 2 he found the roll of garbage bags and started unrolling it. My first instinct was to get annoyed and take it away, but instead I just watched him. He was fascinated by how it just kept going. So I told him how cool it was and when he was done we rolled it up. It's much better to enjoy being with them at their level, even though it's hard to do sometimes.
    By the way, happy Elvis' birthday!

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  4. That's a great story, Becky. I wish I could do that more. And I can't believe I missed Elvis' birthday! I always do (I even have confetti cake in the pantry! And my mom used confetti frosting on the cake we had at family dinner!), even though on the 4th or 5th, I"m like, almost Elvis' birthday!

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