I feel like I have three full-time jobs.
1) Taking care of me and my immediate environment - my house, cars, yard, etc.
2) Being a Mama - taking care of my two wonderful ladies - Audrey and Meredith
3) Work - my job and career
Jobs 2 and 3 really get my full focus right now. However, I would really like to make it so that jobs 1 and 2 get my full focus.
Also, I have been thinking, it is a little crazy that we women grow up helping out and doing a few chores, taking care of siblings, etc., but aside from that minimal training, we spend most of our focus and learning capabilities on academics and then career work. So when a woman decides to stay home and take care of a baby, there is not only the new mother stuff to learn, but there is also the homemaking stuff to learn. We think because we have a quarter of a century experience with life that it will be easy, that all of a sudden we will be able to do the meal planning, using leftovers, budgeting and stretching funds, decorating, organizing, party planning, growing food, keeping a house clean and maintained, raising happy healthy productive children, and coming up with an elegant system to accomplish it all. But there are some real skill involved in each of these things that take time to learn. I think when I first stayed home with Audrey, I did not really think about how to continually improve the work I was doing. Truly, I don't think I appreciated the entire scope of what a homemaking career could be. I tried new recipes and such, but I didn't try to learn to make soap or can food. I kind of caught the homemaking bug after I left to go back to work.
Here we are now, with a sweet baby (who is really a sweet toddler at this point, but she will always be my sweet baby) and a daycare issue. We are considering having me quit my job (or at least drastically reduce my hours) to be with my littles and raise them and take care of the family. This time around, I think I appreciate the scope of the task of homemaking a little more and I am super excited for the challenge.
So perhaps the making of a homemaker is not always a linear path straight from babies to homemaker. Sometimes it takes a few tries to figure these things out. Life isn't meant to be lived linearly anyway, right?
1) Taking care of me and my immediate environment - my house, cars, yard, etc.
2) Being a Mama - taking care of my two wonderful ladies - Audrey and Meredith
3) Work - my job and career
Jobs 2 and 3 really get my full focus right now. However, I would really like to make it so that jobs 1 and 2 get my full focus.
Also, I have been thinking, it is a little crazy that we women grow up helping out and doing a few chores, taking care of siblings, etc., but aside from that minimal training, we spend most of our focus and learning capabilities on academics and then career work. So when a woman decides to stay home and take care of a baby, there is not only the new mother stuff to learn, but there is also the homemaking stuff to learn. We think because we have a quarter of a century experience with life that it will be easy, that all of a sudden we will be able to do the meal planning, using leftovers, budgeting and stretching funds, decorating, organizing, party planning, growing food, keeping a house clean and maintained, raising happy healthy productive children, and coming up with an elegant system to accomplish it all. But there are some real skill involved in each of these things that take time to learn. I think when I first stayed home with Audrey, I did not really think about how to continually improve the work I was doing. Truly, I don't think I appreciated the entire scope of what a homemaking career could be. I tried new recipes and such, but I didn't try to learn to make soap or can food. I kind of caught the homemaking bug after I left to go back to work.
Here we are now, with a sweet baby (who is really a sweet toddler at this point, but she will always be my sweet baby) and a daycare issue. We are considering having me quit my job (or at least drastically reduce my hours) to be with my littles and raise them and take care of the family. This time around, I think I appreciate the scope of the task of homemaking a little more and I am super excited for the challenge.
So perhaps the making of a homemaker is not always a linear path straight from babies to homemaker. Sometimes it takes a few tries to figure these things out. Life isn't meant to be lived linearly anyway, right?
2 comments:
Love you, Plz call me.
I feel like for a second somewhere along the way, people stopped seeing it as a good thing to continue educating women (and men) on home making skills. I know that when I was first married and working full time to help while Pete was still in school, that was the last thing on my mind or I didn't want to be put in that category. I saw it as a shameful or embarrassing trait to be good at or want to improve upon. Hah! I wish someone would have smacked me upside the head and I learned more when I had the time and wasn't trying to care for a child. Now, I feel so inadequate and envy the stay at home moms that seem to have mastered their "job". Honestly, you are one of those moms that I envy because you seem to be so good at it all. I definitely wish we lived closer so you could teach me more of your ways :)
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