Where to start... It has been about 37 weeks since be I left working full time to stay home full time. I would be lying if i didn't say that I was excited to leave a stressful job for a more cushy career as a "Mr. Mom". See I started work at 15, and have worked full time since then (minus a few months unemployed). There were even a few times I had multiple jobs at once. Please don't mistake this for whining, I am just telling my story. So I was pretty much burned out working. My most recent job was a 50-60 hour a week salary position. It had its good points, but more recently it was turning into a do-more-with-less kind of job, and I was doing a lot more, with a lot less, and without a pay increase for quite some time. It was time for a change. So I write this blog post 262 days later. There are a few things I wish were different, but for the most part I am content with where I am at in my life. I will outline a few things that are irritating for me, and a whole bunch of things that are blessings.
1.) I didn't really want to start with a negative thing, but it is what is weighing on me at this moment. I am asked the question at least once a week, some weeks its once a day, "So, when are you going back to work?" I have to bite my tongue sometimes. My wife and I made this decision for OUR family. This decision may not be right for your family, but it was what we thought was best for OUR family. Sometimes I would like to tell people to keep their medieval opinions on who should be the "breadwinner" to themselves. I mean, I fought with this and still do some days; I came from a family where the dad worked, the mom stayed home, and that's just how its supposed to be! But come on, this is 2014 - my wife has more education than I do, her benefits are better and cost less, she works less hours than I did, and she actually likes her job (most days). Don't get me wrong-she would love to stay home as well, and we will hopefully be able to do that in the next couple of years. Bottom line - you may think you are just asking a question, but your inflection tells me otherwise, and I would appreciate it if you didn't tell me how you think I should be running my family!
2.) Okay, now that that is out there, let's get down to the good stuff! We are blessed that one of us could stay home. Truly. Most families can't do it because of their own situations and bills and all the other crap life throws at them. We basically break even with one salary. That means that we can't buy new cars, boats, motorcycles, or go on 349302 vacations a year. I had a very poor attitude this summer as one of my friends were bellyaching about their current job and how much money they had "lost" since they started there, and all the things they didn't have anymore. Part of my poor attitude was that they have children, and all of the things they were missing had nothing to do with the children but with themselves. I would cut off my left arm for my daughter if she needed it for something, and I just couldn't see why this person didn't feel the same way! The other side of the poor attitude was that he switched jobs and very shortly had all of the things he was missing, and oodles more money (or so it sounds). I was coveting those things, and I shouldn't have been. I would love to have a new car, or heck, a second car! But right now, we don't NEED anything else! We have all we need! I don't know any other time in my life that I have realized that, those are beautiful words! All glory due to God here; we haven't always been as faithful as we should be, but He has blessed us anyway.
3.) I now have time to do all of those fun things I have always wanted to do.... Like teach myself guitar? Yeah right. That was just one of the things that I thought I would have time for now that I am not working. As any stay at home parent will tell you, there isn't time to do anything. And most work away from home parents will wonder why you have just sat on the couch all day. My wife is very gracious 99% of the time. If she doesn't understand that I am busy all day with our daughter, at least she pretends to understand. All of the time the dishes are done. Some of the time the laundry is done. Seldom the house is clean when she gets home. Hardly ever do I have dinner cooked for her. Oh well, here's to doing more with less right? At least this time I enjoy it! One of the things I am doing that I have wanted to do for some time is finish my degree. Or, I should say, "a" degree. I truly believe that some people should not go to college right out of high school. I was one of those people- $17,000 in loans, failed out of two different colleges before I couldn't take it anymore. So, 15 years later, I am taking classes again, but this time I LOVE it. Maybe it is the life experience I have so far, maybe it is because I am only taking 2 classes online right now, but I can't stress enough how much I am enjoying it! My degree is going to be in "independent studies", which is probably meaningless to any future employers, but I am doing this for me, and me alone, so who cares!
4.) Being a stay at home parent is easy, right? There are times that it is easy, there are times that I want to pull my hair out. Mostly due to our 2 dogs that are still puppies at almost 2 years old. Emerson (our daughter) is probably the most easy going baby I have ever met. Very seldom is she fussy, very rarely does she not have a smile on her face. She loves her mommy and daddy, and we love her. Maybe my thoughts will change when she becomes a teenager, but in this moment, I can see an example of God's love for us in my love for Emerson. There is nothing she could do to make me love her less. I may be disappointed for a fleeting moment when she poops through her outfit, that I just changed her into because she peed through the last one, but just as I said, it's a fleeting moment. All she has to do is look at me, and I forget all of that. Speaking of diapers, we have changed approximately 2500 diapers. That's crazy! Most of my day is spent either feeding her, changing her, or putting her to sleep. She has just started to play on her own, so I can put her in the pack-and-play and do my homework, or dishes, or use the bathroom. That's something that used to be something that I could do whenever I wanted to, but now I almost have to plan my bathroom trips around feeding, changing, sleeping schedules. I have almost wet my pants a few times so far! (She just falls asleep in my arms, and i just realize that i have to pee!)
5.) Another pet peeve of mine (ours) is when someone tells us how to raise our child. "She should be eating solids by now", "She shouldnt be eating solids yet", "You need to burp her", "She smells wet", and on and on and on. I will address the above mentioned items. Two for one, solids. When Emerson started watching us eat intently, that's when we knew she was ready for solids. She eats some fruit we mill up ourselves, and she has just started eating more solid items. She hasn't choked, and she hasn't lost weight since just after she came home. She was in the 90+ percentile for height and weight at her last doctors appointment, so I think she is going to be just fine. As strange as it sounds, our daughter can burp herself. Just like you and I do, if she needs to, she sits forward, and burps! It's amazing! As far as diaper changes go, if I changed her every time I thought she smelled wet, we would probably be somewhere at 5000 diapers! We change her when we think its needed, and she is just fine! It's amazing! (Hopefully you all can sense my smart assery in this paragraph!)
I want to take this time to publicly apologize to anyone that I may have openly chastised for how they raise their children. Whether they were doing things correctly or not is just my opinion. If there is anything I have learned in the last 8+ months, its that each child needs a different collection of teachings from their parents. Some of us learn what to do from our parents' examples, some of us learn what not to do from our parents' examples. I learned how to live and interact with the rest of the crazy world from a mixture of the two.
My life path has, at times, gone a completely different direction than my sister's, or brother's, or even any direction I would have ever dreamed. My journey has been an epic, true poetry. I started out as a child who probably would have been labeled with ADHD, but luckily our elementary school still had recess. Throughout school, if I applied myself, I did well; if I didn't, I did poorly. After college the first time, I worked at a series of minimum wage jobs, which taught me the importance of staying busy. I thank my father for instilling in me a great work ethic. I thank Mark from Kinneys, and Mark from Burger King for teaching me how to use what my father taught me. I was then given an opportunity to manage a Subway store for a friend; what an opportunity! It certainly taught me what i didn't want to do with my life. Making 100-150 subs in a matter of 2 hours will do things to your body and mind that not many things will! The next job I had was my most recent. I started out at White's Lumber in Pulaski in a sales position. I was then told that I would design kitchens, which meant i had to teach myself a software design program. There were 3 ways to get to the goal of a designed kitchen, all backwards to any other computer program I have ever used (thank you, Canada! lol), but eventually I got very efficient on it-even teaching some of the White's veterans of kitchen design a thing or two. I then moved into the assistant manager role, and was groomed to take over the store when the manager retired. There were many there that despised me, as I was the most recent hire and therefore they felt they were better suited for the job. If it weren't for some of my former employers' teachings, I wouldn't be the go-getter I am, always striving to learn more and take on more responsibility. I have always felt that if I wasn't learning more, and doing more, that I was in the wrong position. I then became the manager. Basically the highest rung on the ladder I could reach there. Most days were good, but some days were bad. My wife can attest that in the 4 years I was manager, there were many times I would come home and want to quit. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to change my name. Maybe it was that I hadn't trained my staff to be self-thinkers, or maybe it was just that they knew they could always rely on me to have the answers. Either way, each day got more and more mentally exhausting. My wife and I had talked for years about starting our own business, we had so many good ideas. The day came that we found out we were pregnant. So many things changed in an instant. One of the nagging questions was what to do for child care. We could send our baby to a sitters, but who do we trust to instill OUR values? One of our family members could watch her, but would that be holding them back from their career? A good friend offered (thank you, Alyssa), but I really felt that the timing was right for me to leave White's. I was under great stress at work; I wasn't sure what my breaking point was, but it was close. The thought of paying a third to half of my salary in child care, while still being as stressed out as I was, was slowly becoming unbearable. We prayed about it, and talked about it, and after a few months decided that I would at least take 12 weeks off after the baby was born. I told my employer about 6 months in advance of our plans. During that last 6 months, things got increasingly stressful at work, I spent more and more time at work and less and less time at home. I really felt the right thing was for me to stay at home with the baby after she was born. Shawna carried our insurance, she liked her job for the most part, and she made enough money for us to at least break even. We discussed it for months. Coming from the family I do, I really felt that i should be the breadwinner and take care of my family. I didn't know how to do that without going insane at my then-present job, and without a college degree (even with the experience I had), I wasn't sure where I could go and make the money we needed. So, despite Shawna being a little resentful, even if it is subconscious, we decided that I would stay home. I told my employer shortly after the baby was born, and he was very gracious. it was a nerve wracking experience. I respect the man very much, and felt he respected me, but I hate letting people down. His response to me was, "If my wife was here, she would tell you that it is more important to spend time with your children when they are young than to do anything else".
