5 months later….I have found a little time and sanity
I was really in over my head when I thought I could take over full-time parenting of two children and maintain a blog at the same time. I was under the impression that handling multiple Fortune 500 accounts with international clients (ok stretching a little here), would certainly prepare me for full-time motherhood.
My biggest mistake was thinking I would have so much more time now. I used to hear stories of the stay at home moms and how their houses would be messy and what could they possibly be doing with all that time all day? None of my friends staying at home warned me that a three-hour block of time where your child is thankfully at some activity goes by in about 30 seconds. Furthermore, no one prepared me for the utter exhaustion I would feel at the end of the day from running the boys everywhere and trying to use my brain to come up with ways to keep them constantly busy. Did you know an hour at the highway Oasis for lunch is comparable to a 4 star restaurant for a 4-year-old? (I do have to admit the falafel sandwich was pretty delic for eating over the highway) .
About two months into my new career, my marriage started to suffer. Perhaps falling asleep on the couch every night by 9 pm hardly left time for my spouse. Then there was the unspoken judgement of the house always looking like a bomb went off (no exaggeration) when I was no longer spending my time working. I found it impossible to do the simplest tasks that I was completing when I was working full-time. Unloading the dishwasher become monumental when in the past I had unloaded the dishwasher, made lunch, and participated in a Webinar at the same time. The laundry situation was not any better and there were several times this summer when my husband could not handle the piles and tried to sneak in a load. This small act of kindness would cause more duress on our marriage as not only did I feel like a complete failure as the mommy maid, he shrunk two of my favorite shirts.
It took a while for me to understand the primary factor in my newfound laziness. It finally hit me, it was TIME. Time became the crux of my whole new motherhood role. First, I thought I would have an abundance of it. Once that proved to be inaccurate, I just went with the flow. Any time I didn’t feel like doing something, I could just tell myself it could wait until tomorrow. It felt so nice, almost in a zen like state to not have the mounting pressures of deadlines upon me. However, my zen like state was not cooperating with the state of my house or my marriage.
Now here we are 5 months later and I am finally starting to adjust to my lifestyle. It did help tremendously that the boys went back to school at the end of August. Of course it is easy for me to write this now almost three months later, but in August I was crying in Target after I dropped off my youngest in the three-day a week preschool program. There I was all alone in Target with no one in the cart and I should have been skipping through the aisles with my “me time”. Instead, I found myself looking at all the babies and toddlers riding along in the cart and feeling envious. Perhaps if I hadn’t tried to cram in 6 years of parenting fun in one summer (This will take up a whole post), I would have handled Target with umm a little more grace. I have since made Target runs together with my 4 year old on the no school days since my mini melt down, but I have grown fond of my alone Target outings where there is no begging for pop-tarts, fruit snacks, or cereal in our cart.
So after five long months of parenting, I have found some sanity and a little time or perhaps that should be reversed? I know the school day has contributed greatly to this cause. As winter break is around the corner, I am sure I will lose all momentum again. However, at the end of the day, I am loving my motherhood career even on the days when I am uncorking the wine at 5:00pm.
AccountExecTurnedMommy 