a day in the life of a stay at home mom....

Spoiler Alert: This is NOT one of those post where a mom complains about all the disgusting things she has pulled out of her hair or how many times she's been puked on or how she had to fish a random toy out of the toilet with her hand. But yes, all of that stuff happens, daily. 

I've always rolled my eyes when moms complain that being a Stay-At-Home-Mom was the "hardest job in the world". I'm sure it's the same with most people when teachers complain about having a hard job. Those 6 weeks off at summer are really, tough, huh? And all those family vacations together; seems horrible. But it IS tough sometimes being a SAHM (since bloggers shorten everything), but not for the reasons you might think. During my first year, I had to take care of a baby on my own for about 7 hours a day and also try to run errands without a car or family/friends close by. But that wasn't the hard part. The hard part is that your life is completely consumed by your child. You can't eat, shower, pee, think, sleep without first thinking of your baby and that's exhausting. On top of that, most of the day you are spending your time at home with an awesome human being who you love deeply, but has absolutely no social or verbal skills to feed your intellect. And that is draining. So yes, it's awesome/amazing and exhausting/draining all at the same time. I'm thinking about what it's going to be like the second time around and remembering things that helped me. So here's a little advice....

My advice to all new moms:

-Get out of the house. Doesn't matter where you go, but get out of the house at least once a day. I always went on walks. Even when I didn't feel like it and only had 2 hours of sleep. Just go. You'll feel better.

-Make some friends with moms who also stay at home. Who cares if you have nothing in common with these women or you find some of them obnoxious? You just need to have some type of conversation during the day. And really really try to not talk about the baby. Talk about anything else, news, weather, celebrity gossip. I joined 3 new mom groups, maybe that was too much, but I needed it. I remember one day at a cafe with all the other moms, I looked around and realized we were from all different countries/backgrounds and honestly had nothing in common except we had babies the same age. And that's all you need.

-Brush your teeth and wash your face. If nothing else, brush your teeth. You may forget to shower, or put on makeup (ha! makeup.), or get out of your pajamas and wear "real" clothes, but do not forget to brush your teeth and wash your face.

-Get help. Ask for help from friends/family. Get your husband to be as involved as possible. I was very fortunate to have an incredibly supportive hubby who would gladly take the baby the second he walked in the door after a long day of work. I also had amazing friends here who would offer help/advice and I gladly took it. So don't try to be super-mom. And remember "it takes a village....."

Now with all this, I have to be completely honest. Things have totally changed. We have a car that I get to drive each day- meaning O gets a ride to work each day with a super awesome neighbor who we love love love for that.  We also have a Helper, which I feel needs a whole blog post to explain what this is like. Basically, she's our full-time live-in maid/nanny who does an awesome job with Caiden. But I'm still the mom. I'm the one who deals with  cares for my toddler when he's decided to paint the wall with his lunch rather than eat it or throws a massive temper tantrum complete with head-banging on the tile floor all because he's not allowed to watch t.v. So while it's easy/hard to stay at home, it's one of the best decisions I've ever made and I'm very grateful that I even had the opportunity to make that decision.

more books.

How do we have time to read so many books? When baby goes to bed, turn the tv off. 

Pretty hilarious and makes me feel pretty good about our travels so far. This book is a collection of essays written by different women from all over the world who have had nightmares on the road. Caiden hasn't been the best sleeper when we travel, but he's been an awesome travel companion. He loves being in cars or airplanes and will zone out to an iPad indefinitely. (I think the trick is that we never let him watch tv or play on the iPad so when there's a big trip this is a special treat.) Just when we were about to swear off traveling with kids until they are about 18, this quote from the introduction inspired me to keep going: 

Just when you think life can't get more depressing after watching a random world news segment, you find a book like this. Written about life in a slum in Mumbai which apparently is fairly accurate. The author researched the book by living near the slum for a few years and my friends who live in Mumbai said this painted a picture of slum life from what they have seen. I know people live like this because I've seen the slums in India with my own eyes, but it's still so incredibly shocking and just seems like it can't be true. It's really good to read stuff like this to keep things in perspective.

Since SG tv is so crappy here, we only watch the shows that we really want to watch rather than just having the tv on watching nonsense. One of these shows is GIRLS on HBO. I love this show. Her memoir is fairly odd. I think you have to really "get" her sense of humor to really appreciate it. If you like the show, then I'd recommend this read.