SAHM

My husband's work recently moved us to the Bay Area. After 15 years of working full-time, some of the time as the breadwinner, I am now officially a SAHM (stay-at-home-mom). What a perfect way to continue my beloved dabbling.

My son, Che, is currently 21mo old and has been used to mommy working and Papa working from home since birth. Now that I'm home, I can tell that we've begun a whole new facet of our relationship, a beautiful new role of being the ultimate go-to for EVERYTHING and if you know anything about the history of my marriage and motherhood, you might know that as soon as I adopted the label, SAHM, you know that I just added a great deal of manual labor to my daily schedule. Compared to this, working full-time was a breeze and utterly relaxing, even as a very busy spa director, my previous profession, where I did, well you know, everything. When I worked full-time, I still made the family dinner, cleaned it up, bathed Che, and put him to bed, but now that I'm at home, you can add: prepare and clean up after breakfast and lunch for both Che and Papa, laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning house, pay the bills, set up daycare, tour preschools, change all diapers, and entertain Che 13 hours a day. Yes, some of those things, I also did while working full-time, but my husband helped. Now that he is working, he apparently became like a grandparent. Any of his previous chores have now become "optional" due to the fact that "he had a hard day at work", he's earning all the money, and he has no time to set up his garage, aka Lair of Solitude. In addition, I've started a much more structured schedule with Che since my husband's SAH-D days; he knows that Mama means business and Papa means fun. He'll still come to me with boo boos, but he never goes to Papa with "poo poo? poo poo?", the four words that signify the onset of a major explosion.

Ladies, we did ourselves a huge disservice when we decided that women were equal. Yes we are...however, when we told that to our men, they decided that we could do it all and yes they added to our list of laundry, cooking, and childbearing the following: working, manual labor, and if you own a home, construction, plumbing, yard work and painting. And if you don't look fabulous, they will leave you for a sexy, recently divorced cougar or a hot, young bird. (Good thing I still look FABULOUS!) Enjoy the guilt of living off your husband's paycheck (self-imposed in my case) because as a SAHM, that's what you get. Nope, not me.

Within 3 weeks of becoming a SAHM, I decided that I'm not willing to sacrifice buying the best of the best for myself and my son and explaining that to my husband. Rather than dealing with the money lecture, I decided to get my own part-time job. My husband asked me why I want to get a job when he claims I said all I wanted was to stay at home with our son. He told me what watch what you wish for. Clearly, there was a huge misunderstanding there....all I said was that I didn't want to have the pressure of having to work full-time. In all reality, I'm not cut out for stay at home mommyhood. Yes, I do love and nurture my son like crazy because I'm a good mom, but I'm also an overachiever. I'm a virgo with rising aries, an earth and fire sign, and I can't sit still. I need interaction in the adult world with the stimulation of the hustle bustle, so I've created a balance of working two days out of the house (because who can work at home with a toddler?) and raise Che three days at home. Fortunately, my mother warned me about the trap of dropping my child off at my mother in laws for daycare during my work days. For those of you with mother in laws to an only son, I know you know what I'm talking about. But that's a whole other entry for another day...which will be a fun one because my mother in law still irons my husband's t-shirts and calls him "angel of angels, love of my life". My husband is 45....CUT THE UMBILICAL CORD! And that's only a preview of her realm. More on that later...right now I need to go exchange my husband's shoes and get sexy for date night. Hopefully I'll muster up the energy for dessert...