Guest Blogger
By Pamela J. Schultz
I silently groan as I stare at the laundry pile that has now escaped the boundaries of the baskets and is spilling over onto the laundry room floor. “It’s actually able to creep under the door all by itself,” I mutter. Yes, this is what my life has become. Now, I actually talk to laundry! I marvel at the abrupt changes my life has undergone since becoming a full-time “stay-at-home mom” six years ago.
For one thing, I wouldn't have been caught dead in the sweatshirt and torn jeans I’m wearing today. Although I’ve only been dressed for about two hours, my sweatshirt already has juice stains, toast crumbs, and a nice blob of dried oatmeal on it from my 15-month-old’s breakfast. As for the jeans—well, they’re comfortable. As recently as baby number two, I would have changed the stained sweatshirt, but, hey, after three kids, I know it’s a wasted effort. The clean shirt will be dirty within the next hour, and besides, throwing the sweatshirt into the dirty basket would tip the delicate balance of the mountain of clothes already there—and they really would begin to move into my kitchen. I give myself a little pep talk by remembering that I still put on makeup and exercise. Oh, and I wear earrings every day. For some reason, this small bit of “accessorizing” makes me feel in tune with my former, super-organized self.
I have to admit that sometimes I wistfully think about all the designer suits and dresses that used to hang in my closet. I used to be a working professional. As a broker for one of the largest brokerage and mutual fund companies in the nation, I was knowledgeable about stocks, bonds, options, and mutual funds. My conversations used to be littered with phrases such as, “The P.E. ratio on that particular stock is…” and “We’ll set your net credit and debit on your option spread order at…” Now, I spend my day saying things like (to my just-turned-five-year-old in the bathroom), “Please aim it in the water!” and to my 15-month-old daughter, “Hello, pretty princess, Mommy loves you so much! Tell Mommy what the doggie says,” as I proceed to loudly make every animal sound imaginable for her.
When my husband, who is still a working professional—and whom I sometimes secretly envy because he gets to spend his entire day with adults who don’t scream, argue, or throw things—comes home and says, “Boy, what a day!” I stare at him skeptically with raised eyebrows. There is no way that his day, filled with intelligent, reasonable adults, comes close to anything I have experienced with three kids under the age of seven. He, being a wise man who has been married to me for many years, knows he should go no further when he sees the gleam of battle in my eyes.
He has not endured the “exploding diapers” nor suffered the indignity of being hemmed in by cars at the drive-thru bank teller when both our baby and our four-year-old son projectile-vomited all over the back of my head—while my seven-year-old daughter wailed, “Gross, Mom! They’re throwing up all over me! This is a total barf-o-rama!” With nowhere to go but forward, and with my son’s warm vomit dripping down the back of my shirt, I gamely smiled at the teller and said, “Please deposit this into checking.”
In my most harried these-kids-are-driving-me-nuts moments, I often ask myself, What has become of my life? and Have I accomplished anything today? Well, of course I have. What I do is demonstrated in a hundred different ways. It’s my baby laughing gleefully as she plays peek-a-boo with me around the corner of the family room wall. It’s my son, muddy and sweaty from soccer practice, hurling himself into my arms and declaring loudly, “Mom, I love you!” (I secretly dread the soon-to-arrive day when he is “too big” for these displays of affection.) It’s sitting by my oldest daughter’s side as she happily tells me everything that happened during her eventful day in first grade. It’s being able to rock my sick baby in the middle of the day and feel her warm breath on my neck as I gently rub her back. These small moments are exactly why I’m home with my kids, and I’m thankful that I can be.
It’s true that my four-wheel-drive vehicle is no longer the sleek, shiny urban assault vehicle it used to be—it’s now eight years old, with sticky fingerprints on the windows and enough cracker crumbs in the back seat to feed a family of four. My husband and I no longer eat out at all the trendy, “nice” restaurants. A meal out is often the local pizza place, McDonald’s, or the buffet line at the nearest family-style restaurant. And, yes, my wallet is a lot thinner than it used to be. But for all the mayhem and madness each day brings, I’ve come to realize that I’m exactly where I want to be.
As my son opens the garage door and yells, “Mom, do you want to kick the soccer ball with me?” I silently judge the height and width of the laundry pile between me and the door to freedom. Scooping my toddler under my arm, I take a few steps back and, executing a pretty decent split jump over the laundry, I say, “Sure!” As for the laundry—I know it will still be there tomorrow.
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