Stay-at-home mommying

It happens to so many of us. Educated, connected, well-traveled women who seemingly have success and well-being written all over their futures begin to show the little baby bump. Which leads to a bigger baby bump, which leads to a baby, which in turn gives birth to a desperate, harried person who barely knows who's president, has looked sloppy for the past 236 days straight and accidentally left her wallet in the other diaper bag today.

That's right, we become stay-at-home moms.

To clarify and recover a portion of my dignity, I'd like to point out that I'm actually a work-at-home mom, which makes me a cross between Superwoman and Pigpen. But that's for another post.

[To further clarify and enable stay-at-home moms everywhere to hold up their heads proudly I'll say that those with good nappers, Grandma in town or magical powers won't be able to identify with this post as much as those without.]

What fun! I get to play with a cute baby all day! Let's discuss.

The main problem with being a stay-at-home mommy is that along with the designation comes the inevitable responsibilities of housework.

Because since we're trained experts in baby caretaking and child psychology, we must also be masters of cleaning and pros at cooking. All on a dime, because we're enjoying the luxury of staying home with the baby which makes money tight.

My goal on a daily basis is to complete a chore and keep the baby alive. Sometimes it works. On these days, Matt returns to a clean-ish house, with the promise of dinner, and is not handed a baby immediately when he walks in the door. I let him talk about his day before I regale him with all the absolutely riveting details of mine.

Sometimes it doesn't. On these days, I usually find myself spending the day thwarting the baby's gleeful, unknowing attempts to harm herself or the cats. Then Matt returns to a house filled with the hallmarks of a really good "try:" a broom sitting out in the middle of the living room or soggy laundry, and a happy, energetic baby who's self-satisfied in the fact that she's secured Mommy's complete attention for an entire day.

Many days, I do everything one-handed and with the baby on my hip grabbing at anything and everything within reach. By the end of these days, I've actually been rendered incapable of doing anything without the baby attached to my hip, so that when Matt tries to take the baby while I'm cooking dinner, I first growl at him like a she-wolf and then wander aimlessly for a few minutes as I recalibrate my center of gravity.

Do not challenge me to an arm-wrestling match, by the way, because you'll lose.

The baby virtually never leaves my side. I'm always within screaming distance. Whenever Matt takes pity on me on the weekends and shoos me out of the house for a while, I don't know what to do--more often than not I take the opportunity to linger over potatoes and grocery shop alone for once. I could call a friend, but they all have babies--what a drag! And then I might as well bring along my own baby and call it a playdate.

As you can imagine, much weekday relief comes from meeting other stay-at-home moms. They add interest to my day, provide an excuse to get out and give me coupons they won't be able to use. More importantly, they can sympathize on the really tough days.

We all ask each other what we did "before." We miss our coworkers and the fact that we actually knew what we were doing and were respected as such. We miss meetings because we could just sit. Sit, and stare off into space. And just sit. In a comfy chair. And occasionally be asked for our opinion--whether on the market's outlook or a new skirt. And sip tea and munch on bagels, and use the bathroom whenever we need to.

We miss the fact that we could go to nice restaurants and be treated well instead of getting escorted/shoved into a corner with our babies and hurried out the door with food still in our mouths. We wish we had any reason to dress up more than for two hours on Sunday morning, and when we decide "oh, what the heck? I'll wear my nice clothes to the playdate--it'll be fun!" we get far too gushed over by women in sweatpants and then spit up on by our children.

But I digress. *sigh*

Stay-at-home mommying is one of the hardest and most important jobs in the world, or so everyone tells me. It's like being the president, or a queen, in that there's no such thing as a weekend, holiday or sick day and we're constantly managing crises. But no one hands us a paycheck and we're certainly never asked to make a speech--what would we have to say?

Maybe that's where all our education and successful work experience comes in: it's what enables us to endlessly make sense of things that don't make sense (the baby's gravitational pull toward glassware) and appreciate Goodnight Moon on a deeper level.

I've found it tough to reach a balance between baby playtime and mommy worktime (we skip over mommy playtime entirely). The baby is happy and likely smarter if I play with her in a developmentally appropriate way for the entire day. But that's mind-numbing, and I kind of feel like I'm too young to be handing over my IQ points so freely.

So what else do you do when you have a baby who's barely fun to travel with and can't yet talk well enough to carry a conversation? And your husband is slaving at work all day? You clean the house and make dinner. The baby learns the value of hard work and you wish you would've worked harder "before" so you could hire a maid.

The highlight of our day is often our errands. Mommy gets to sit in the car and listen to peaceful classical music on the radio while Baby is somehow happy in her carseat (as long as we don't drive more than 12 minutes). I let Kalina play with almost anything in the store and once in a great while she lets me try on a pair of jeans. And people smile at us and complement me on my cute little boy if she's wearing anything that's not pink.

Because sometimes being a stay-at-home mom is like being a baby day camp counselor, we also make time for recreation. Most stay-at-home moms can rattle off every restaurant within a 12-minute drive that has a play area, the peak and quiet hours of the mall's play area and at least 3 small parks. But the true staple of a stay-at-home mom's recreation is the walk. Walks help us lose the calories from all the bonbons we sit around eating, and also gives ourselves and our babies a change of scenery. We're all pretty sure they need it as much as we do.

Most stay-at-home moms wish that, just once, our husbands could stay home with the baby for a day while we headed out the door to work so that they could see what we do all day and why lots of our bank account goes toward ice cream. But it wouldn't work. A day or two, or even a week, of staying home with the baby is great fun--it's the knowledge and mundane reality that most of the time the world is only as big as your house that turns our previously highly regarded brains into Jello pudding snacks.

Lest you get the wrong idea, I could wax poetic about all the wonderful things there are about staying home with the baby--there are lots. But it's been done already by Hallmark, Chicken Soup for the Mom's Soul and sometimes me.

Instead, I'll leave you with this video (one of many cute ones I should be sending your way):