When envisioning my life as a mom, like many other girls when growing up, I thought that I would be a mommy that met their kids when they got off the bus, did creative activity's and be that "cool" mom that was fun, full of life, always had surprises up her sleeve to help entertain the kids, had dinner on the table when the hubby got home from work and had a family life that was more like something you would see on an episode of Leave it to Beaver or the Brady Bunch. Now that I am a mom, own a house, have two car payments, bills bills and more bills, a child that I want to give everything to that his little heart desires, and vacations that I want to take (but can never find the time to take), I am the farthest thing from a "stay at home mom." I work an 8 to 5 job and get to only spent 2 days a week with my son and I HATE IT. I am actually tearing up just thinking about all the time that I am missing with him at this age. Time that I am never going to get back. Time that I pray he will not look back on and think.... daycare teachers spent more time with me growing up than my mom and dad did (That may be a dramatic statement, but it is a true fear of mine). Do I have a ton of guilt in me for being a working mom? You better believe I do. I have guilt that keeps me up at night and makes me emotional to think about. I know that being a mom that gets to stay at home to raise kids is the hardest job that their is, but I want it. I want to see my kids wake up in the morning, eat breakfast with them, have play time in the yard together, cuddle with before nap time, do crafts with and make a ton of memories with. I want to be able to raise him every single day and not be his mommy on the weekend and share his time with someone else during the week. To give you a glimpse of our life, our daily schedule looks like this:
Monday through Friday:
- I wake up at 6:20am, after hitting the snooze button for 30 minutes (I am totally not the girl that jumps out of bed when the alarm goes off)
- Get ready and then grab Harlen out of bed at 6:50 to head to daycare (in his pj's). Harlen goes to an in-home daycare at the most amazing place ever. I LOVE LOVE LOVE his daycare lady, Ms. Kim. She has been an amazing stand in for me while I am away from him working.
- Harlen gets to daycare at 7:30am each morning and I quickly rush in, give him a kiss, wave goodbye and head out the door.
- I return to pick him up around 5:30pm and then we head home for our 30 min ride. Some days he wants to watch a movie and is too tired to be his energetic talkative self and then other days he wants to talk, laugh, point out trucks, planes and birds while we ride home (those are my favorite days).
- Once home, he plays while I prepare his dinner. This is one thing that I need to work on because we do not get to eat dinner with him. He eats dinner before we do because I do not have time to come home from work and cook a meal and still get him to bed when he needs to be. HUGE BUMMER!
- After dinner, he takes a bath and gets ready for bed.
- Once in his pj's, hubby and I take turns reading a couple books to him and saying his prayers and then it is lights out at 7:30pm.
As you can see, I have a total of 2.5 hours a day with him. Within that 2.5 hours, we spend an hour in the car, 30 minutes with him eating dinner, and the remainder getting him ready for bed/bath. The quality time is pretty much zero. Actually, seeing it written down makes me want to cry (tears are starting to well up). I am missing out on so much of his life. What makes it even worse is that the hubs and I are busy on the weekends as well.. We try to catch up on everything that we can not do during the week like keep the house clean, get laundry done, keep the yard maintained, get errands ran and so forth and we really don't get to spend the quality time with him on the weekends that we want to. Ya know, the typical stuff that everyone does when they are grownups. The vision of playing in the yard and watching him run around laughing and being a kid are typically shadowed by carting him from Target, Publix, Walmart, the Bank, and so on. Placing my kid in and out of his car seat every Saturday morning/afternoon and watching him play with his toys while I scrub the bathroom is not the idea that I had in mind when I became a mom. It is what it is and we get it done, but not without guilt.
Moments I have missed out on:
Until next time.......
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