The Unemployed Harvard Grad

My brother cracks me up every time he refers to me as "the unemployed Harvard grad." Very funny but erroneous because you can only be unemployed if you are actually looking for employment, right? Which I am not, at this time. But he's not the only one wondering what I do all day with "all" my time. My sister is in shock when I tell her I don't have time to clean my car every week. "What?! You stay home. How can you not have time? What do you do all day?" she says to me, partly in jest, but mostly not. I think sometimes even my sweet husband wonders how I spend my time.

So...I decided to start tracking it and here is my "typical" day:

Typical Day in the Life of this "Stay-at-Home" Mom

5:30 a.m. - Alarm goes off. I get up to make breakfast for my kids and husband and feed the dog (I try to get up this early most days.).
6:00 a.m. - Kids and husband go out the door. I empty the dishwasher, put in the dirty breakfast dishes, wipe the counters, scour the sink, and sweep the kitchen floor.
6:20 a.m. - Fold a load of laundry and transfer load from washer to dryer and start new load. Tidy up family room.
6:30 a.m. - Pour myself a cup of coffee. Go upstairs to check email, facebook, and blog for about an hour.
7:30 a.m. - My baby girl wakes up. I dress her and fix our breakfast. We eat together. While eating, I read her several books.
8:00 a.m. - I start getting ready for my morning walk: put on work out clothes, pack snacks for Bella, get stroller ready (need blankets, jackets, etc.) Get Sadie ready with leash, water, and bags.
8:30 a.m. - Depart on our morning walk.
9:30 a.m. - Return from our morning walk. Shower and get dressed.
10:00 a.m. - Make beds and do chores or errands based on day of week: Monday - grocery shopping. Tuesday - drop Bella off at school, work on house project (clean backyard, organize files, clean closets, etc.). Wednesday - deep clean one room in the house, go to library or park. Thursday - drop Bella off at school, volunteer work at home or at school or run errands. Friday - bake for bake sale, plan menus for next week, cook dinner early, need to be at school by 1pm to help with bake sale every Friday and we don't get home until 6pm on Fridays.
12:00 noon - Fix lunch and eat at home (I try eat out only one day a week, now. When I eat out, it normally takes about 1.5 hours.)
12:30 pm - Fold laundry, transfer laundry from washer to dryer, put in new load. Vacuum or sweep, clean one bathroom.
1: 30 pm - Start dinner preparations or continue working on projects (volunteer or house).
2:00 pm. - Start packing after school snacks for the kids.
2:30 pm. - Leave the house to go get the kids from school.
3:30 pm. - Arrive home with kids. Help them get snacks and do homework.
4:30 pm. - Start dinner (if there is an activity that night) or supervise kids while they play outside.
5:30 pm. - Start dinner (or head to activity: soccer, baseball, PTA meeting or other volunteer activity). Kids help set the table or play together inside.
6:30 pm. - Eat dinner and family time.
7:00 pm. - Dinner clean-up and family time.
8:00 pm. - Help the older kids get ready for bed. Read a story.
8:30 pm. - Finish dinner clean-up and get my little girl ready for bed.
9:00 pm. - Get myself ready for bed. I usually read 30 minutes to an hour.
9:45pm. - Lights out.

Sometimes we have playdates after school that turn into dinner. Mondays and Fridays we have baseball. Thursday we have soccer so dinner needs to be early those days. Sometimes I think I need to make my days more "productive," but then again, where do I fit in more productivity?

TTYL.

Bread-winner or Bread-baker?

After much contemplation and discussion, we have decided that I will stay home until Isabella starts Kindergarten which is in two more years. (If the right part-time opportunity arises, I might consider it, but at this point, I am not actively looking for employment.) I just feel I would be missing out on her young years and my older kids are still little, too. I am not ready to put them all in after school care and leave Isabella in daycare 9 hours a day, five-days a week. I remember when I used to work. I dropped Daniel off at 8:15 and picked him up at 5:30. We got home at 6:15, ate a quick dinner, gave him a bath and he was in bed by 7:30. I got to see him a total of maybe 3 hours in a week day. Some people can and more power to them. For me, I had kids to enjoy them and be with them and I'm just not ready to go back to only seeing them a few hours a day. Yes, it would be nice to have the extra income, but do my kids need ski trips more than they need mommy? I don't think so.

At any rate, at the end of my extended "maternity leave," I will have been home 8 years!!!! That seems like a long time, but as you know, time flies especially when you are involved in the care of young children. So with that in mind...

I was at the dentist a few weeks ago because Nati was getting her teeth cleaned. It was snowing hard (the first snow we've had in two years!). I casually mentioned that it was a good day for going home and baking bread. The dentist's face lit up and she said, "Do you bake bread regularly?" I was embarrased to admit that I have never actually baked bread. Then she tells me that when her kids were little, she could only afford to stay home for one year, but that she baked bread every day that year. What the?! Are you serious? Wow. I was so impressed.

Later as I was driving away from her office, all these questions started percolating in my head: What have you been doing in your six years at home, Sylvia, when you haven't been a bread winner? You're not even being a bread-baker? What HAVE you been doing?

More later...

Why I Chose to Stay Home

I had a wonderful conversation with a friend this weekend.  She is considering having children, but has had an amazing career and is currently in an amazing job.  She is not ready to give up the career, but she is really feeling the urge to have children right now.  She asked me how I was able to give up my job and stay home with the kids.  

I have been answering that question for a long time.  Friends who have careers, and sometimes babies, want to know how I can stay home.  Don't you miss your job?  How can it be rewarding to hang out with your baby all day?  Aren't you bored?  Why did you "waste" your time at Stanford and Harvard if you "knew" you wanted to stay home when you had kids?  Friends who have babies, and usually are at home already ask,"Why did it take you so long to quit?"  How could you leave your baby in the care of someone other than family?  Don't you know nobody loves your baby more than you, your husband, and possibly the grandparents (therefore, nobody can take care of them as well as you do)?  How can you trust total strangers to care for your infant?

Choosing to stay home for me was a very difficult decision to make in some ways and not so difficult in others.  I grew up with a mom and dad who both worked full-time. My grandmother who lived at home with us took care of us.  She was the one feeding us breakfast every morning. She was the one there when we got home from school. She was the one who made dinner.  It was awesome. I, in essence, had the best of both worlds. My mother set the example that women can have a job and a family.  For her it was not a choice, she had to work to help support all six of her kids.  But I also had the security of having my sweet grandmother at home catering to my every need.

When I graduated from college, I "knew" that I didn't want to have children.  My view of children was that they are cute, but too much work and they derail careers, especially for women.  I had professional and personal goals I wanted to accomplish and didn't think I could achieve them if I had children.  I was pretty set in my ways.  I was never going to have children. Enter David.

It is amazing how falling in love changes your perspective on many things, especially the desire to have children of your own.  David and I met; we fell in love; we married; we went to grad school.  I couldn't imagine not having children with this man that I adore more and more each day.  My clock started ticking. I felt I was already 30 and should be, at least, thinking about having babies soon.  My mom was getting worried that I was getting too old to have babies at all.  (Of course, this is coming from a woman who had her first baby -- me! -- when she was 21). In 9 years, I went from no kids for me, thanks to I need to have a baby NOW!

I was actually pregnant when I interviewed for jobs and got several job offers.  Before I accepted the job offer I wanted, I did mention to my then-boss that I was expecting a baby; that I would take, at most, six weeks off to have the baby (that's what my mother did - but she had my grandma at home!) and then I would be right back at work.  He said, "No problem. We're glad to have you on board."  Boy, was I naive.

I worked six months and didn't stop working until my due date.  (D was born 10 days late.) Once that little baby was born, I immediately fell totally and completely in love with it.  I wanted to hold him all day.  After a few weeks at home, I called my boss and asked him for four months off instead of 1 1/2.  He was so nice about it.  He was older and had grown children, but said he remembered the days of wanting to hold your baby non-stop.  Once again, he said, "No problem."

So I stayed home for four months nursing my baby, taking him for walks, holding him, playing with him and just plain loving him.  By the time the four month mark came along, neither David and I were ready to put him in daycare full time so we had him going to a local daycare three days a week and David stayed home with him the other two.  It was such a great way for them to bond.

 

Finding good daycare in Boston was very difficult.  We had thought about getting a nanny, but our pediatrician talked us out of it.  She said unless it's a family member, you never know what the person does with that baby all day.  There is no one at home to watch over her.  She can act like the nicest person in the world in front of you, but you don't know what she could do to your baby if she's having a bad day.  She suggested a group daycare where you have several experienced women taking care of babies.  They can take breaks and have lunch on their own and be refreshed when they come back to take care of your baby.  Besides, good group daycare in Boston costs almost as much, if not more, than having a full-time nanny.  That was enough for me.

The daycare we really wanted was in the building where I worked, but they didn't have an opening for Daniel until he was 8 months old even though we had put him on the wait list the minute I started working.  They had an infant room with 4 adults and 7 babies.  While we waited for that daycare, we signed up for a daycare near our house that had a similar ratio, and a very sweet lady running.  I loved her the minute I saw her, but I really wanted to be close to Daniel during the day so I could go visit him and nurse him.

I have that very first drop-off at daycare day engraved in my brain. I remember every minute detail -- what he was wearing, what I was wearing, how my heart was so heavy with guilt, how it took me half an hour to hand him over to the nice lady who was going to take care of him.  I remember crying all the way to work and my sweet boss letting me tell him about it for a whole hour and then letting me leave early that day so I could pick up the baby early. After that, we decided David would do drop-off and I would pick up.  That was much easier, but I still felt guilty.  I kept asking myself why did I have a baby so that other people can raise him while I'm at work?  It seemed so unfair to him. 

Finally, we got a spot in the daycare in my building and it was awesome.  Now D got to ride in to work with me and I got to visit him during the day and during my lunch hour.  I could go and nurse him any time.  It was great, but I still always felt that I wanted to spend more time with him than evenings and weekends.  We lived with that arrangement for 2 years.

When I got pregnant with N, I had a different boss, but just as nice.  He was younger and had three kids at home so he was very understanding.  I asked to go on a part-time schedule four days a week and he was ok with that.  That was pretty manageable and increased the weekend time I spent with D by 50 percent!  

When N was born, I stayed home six months with her.  Then, I went back to work 3 days a week.  That was not working for me.  I was a program manager so I had to check email every day and communicate with my boss every day even on the days I was home.  I could get away with only checking email a couple times a day when I was at work four days, but when I went down to 3 days, it was hard to stay on top of things, but I didn't want to lose responsibility at work so when N was 7 months, I went back to 4 days a week.  I think I could've kept that schedule up. Both kids were in the same, good day care.  I loved the teachers.  David was president of the daycare board.  Life was good, but I still wanted more times with the kids. I kept thinking to myself that they are only this little once and I'm missing it.  It really hit home, when the daycare called me one day to tell me that N had just started pulling herself up. Luckily, I was in the building so I could run down to see it, but still felt that David and I should be the first ones to see that!

It was around that time, that David started thinking about jobs in Texas.  We were lucky that he got a job quickly so two months later we knew were moving to Texas.  Cost of living is a lot less expensive in Texas and our house in Boston had doubled in price since we had bought it five years before.  That was my chance to stay home!  

I was so scared though.  I had always worked and been independent. What would staying home do to my self-image?  I didn't want to be one of those bored, depressed stay-at-home moms you read about sometimes. What would staying home do to my career?  I had 13 years of professional experience under my belt.  I was excelling professionally.  Would I ever be able to get back to where I was professionally?  I read so many books about making that choice.  A few that finally convinced me: Mitten Strings for God; Surrendering to Motherhood; and  I don't know how she does it.  I also talked to a lot of women.

To me, it finally came down to being there to actually see my kids grow up and passing on my values to them from the very beginning.  I cannot get these years back, but I can always get a job back later.  So I did it.

At first, I thought I would do it for only a year.  To my surprise, I found that I loved it and still do.  I love the mundane things we do day to day.  I love playing with them.  I love taking them to the park, going for walks.  I love being able to pick them up after school.  I love just being with them.  

It's now been five years and by the time I go back to work, IK  will be almost 2 1/2 years old.  I will always remember these years with joy.  Not to say that it's all joy.  Like everything, we have good days, and we have bad days, but I am here with them to love them and guide them during these formative years.   For me, that's what it's about.