Staying at Home with a Stinker

Since Porter was born, I have been a stay at home mom. Prior to his birth, I worked as a Title I Para at an elementary school. When I went on maternity leave, I also ended my position because we knew we were PSCing over the summer. I have my license for California now, but the jobs are few and far between here. California is ranked 49th in student:teacher ratio (and also in test scores...go figure), so there just aren't a lot of positions to be had. I applied for a lot of listings, but was disqualified from many because I do not have an English Learners Authorization--a CA specific certificate.

At this point, I have accepted my position as a Stay at Home Mom.

Which is absolutely 100% okay with me.

My husband and I have mutually agreed that this is fine, as we just don't trust people we don't know to watch Porter 5 days a week. There are too many stories. Too many broadcasts. It's just not something we want to do.

However, although I love being here and watching my son grow up every day, I find that I also miss work.

Maybe I'm a rare breed of people who actually LIKE their job, but I really do love my job. It's fantastic. It's hard work, and it comes home with me, and it takes a ton of time and energy. But I love teaching. And I'm finding that being a stay at home parent, though it has great rewards, is often a thankless job. Friday's...are just like any other day. There are no "lunch breaks" or "weekends" or feeling great when you finally finish a big project and can move on to your next project. It's a very monotonous 13+hr work day, 7 days a week. My husband is great and is fantastically helpful in the evenings and the weekends, but he also gets to leave one job and come home to something completely different...where as mine is the same. All. The. Time. Plus, I feel bad spending any money on myself because I'm not making any money. I might need to go do something for myself on occasion, but I don't because I don't want to pay for it.

But I don't want to work because I don't want to miss anything that Porter is doing. When he wakes up we can calmly hang out in bed for awhile for him to nurse and then, of course, climb all over my face. I love playing with him all day and making him laugh and singing to him and laying him down for nap and going on walks and watching him learn new things on his own and figure things out and hit new milestones (it would kill me if he did his first roll over, crawl, wave, pull up, steps, etc. and I wasn't around for it). I absolutely love hanging out with my kid. Being a mother is absolutely 100% what I was meant to do with my life. I've never felt fulfilled in life like I do now.

So, to be clear, what I want is: to go to work sometimes, but also for Porter is just sleep for the entire time I'm at work so that I don't miss absolutely anything.

This is totally doable, right???

I know this is an endless struggle between the stay at home moms and the working moms. The grass is always greener...or maybe there are green patches on each side instead of a full luscious lawn.

But I think I'll stay on my side. Because I just love this kid too much!