When Wesley started kindergarten in September, I made the heartbreaking (for me) decision to go back to work, full-time, after 5 years.\u00a0 The ‘work’ part wasn’t so heartbreaking, it was the full schedule part that weighed the heaviest.<\/p>\n
I feel lucky.\u00a0 Five years ago I was able to adjust my schedule to fit our needs.\u00a0 The first two and a half years were spent at home, every day, with my kids.\u00a0 The last two were spent working part-time in the office, where I could maintain a bit of my sanity, get prettied up twice a week, have adult conversations and uninterrupted coffees but still spend most of my days at home.<\/p>\n
But this full-time work business is no joke.\u00a0 How have my mommy friends been keeping up this ridiculous schedule for all these years?<\/p>\n
The last few months have been hard for me.\u00a0 Being back at work means missing out on breakfast every single day with the kids.\u00a0 Every single day.<\/p>\n
I miss them.<\/p>\n
Evenings are spent running the kids to swim practice, soccer practice, swim lessons, and activities galore.\u00a0 In between we are making lunches, making dinners, tidying, trying to squeeze in a load of laundry now and then.\u00a0 And with a 7:30 bedtime, I have almost no time to actually be with my kids – the exact thing I stayed home from work to do in the first place.<\/p>\n
I miss them.<\/p>\n
Staying home was also no joke.\u00a0 Anyone, ANYONE who thinks being a stay-at-home parent is the bees knees ought to give it a try.\u00a0 It is HARD.\u00a0 It is thankless.\u00a0 The days can last weeks.\u00a0 But you are WITH your kids.\u00a0 You can snuggle, talk, feed, teach, play, read, chase, scold, laugh, nap, clean, love on, hug them any time you want.<\/p>\n
I miss them so.<\/p>\n
Last night, with dishes piled up in the sink, a red light flashing on my work Blackberry, a to-do list a mile long, I chose to slow down.<\/p>\n
We didn’t rush after Jaia’s swim practice and Wes’ swim lesson.\u00a0 We took our time.\u00a0 Blow-dryed their hair instead of throwing a toque on.\u00a0\u00a0 Walked to the car instead of running.\u00a0 Ate dinner together, sitting down, instead of standing to save time.\u00a0 At bedtime, I read to Wesley, and snuggled him for awhile instead of tucking him in and ducking out quickly.\u00a0 I turned off Jaia’s light and crawled in with her for awhile to talk about her day and get excited about the upcoming weekend.<\/p>\n
I left their rooms and walked downstairs, continuing to ignore the now angrily flashing red light, and spent some time hanging out with Dan.<\/p>\n
I did not prepare in advance for today.\u00a0 Messages were left unanswered.\u00a0 Tasks were not completed.\u00a0 Laundry sat untouched.\u00a0 Plans to go to the gym were changed.<\/p>\n
Yesterday I slowed down.\u00a0 And the world just kept on turning.\u00a0 But instead of collapsing at the end of the day feeling stressed and overwhelmed, I crawled into bed feeling happy.\u00a0 Mission accomplished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Wesley started kindergarten in September, I made the heartbreaking (for me) decision to go back to work, full-time, after 5 years.\u00a0 The ‘work’ part wasn’t so heartbreaking, it was the full schedule part that weighed the heaviest. I feel lucky.\u00a0 Five years ago I was able to adjust my schedule to fit our needs.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[61,26,28,51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7905"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7905"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7907,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7905\/revisions\/7907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}