The Stay at Home Mom She Was Never Meant To Be

Yesterday the kids were insane. Like a new, more intense insane. Like pull all the cushions off the couch, dump out every lego in the bin, take every pot and pan outside and run up the street 7 houses to a neighbors house I do not know insane. On top of the insane was a layer of whininess. I can almost handle insane, but whiny will send me straight over the edge.

I blame Birdie's whininess on the ol' toddler teething. She is not a clingy child and this week she's been a koala bear. I don't do koala bear well. Her temper is crazy short to where she's developed this loud crazy scream at her brother if he does even the littlest thing to make her mad. This scream is giving me some insight into her tween years and I'm already scared, like totally and utterly frightened of her.... at not even 2 years old.

Cormac is pushing the limits with me daily. He's entering a new "sassy" stage and all I want to do is reassure him, "Son... I WILL out-sass you, you are speaking to the QUEEN of SASS, ok?" He's also just started getting in to daily costumes- which I love the idea of... or at least I thought I would? With these costumes he brings out these alter egos that I can't seem to keep up with. Yesterday he was The Batman Pirate and his voice was in character a good chunk of the day. He was so deep in his imagination I was scared I'd lost him to the one and only original Batman Pirate. I didn't even know how to interact with Batman Pirate, that's how deep he'd gone. I kept reminding him that Batman was a good guy, "But not when he's a pirate, MOM!" Oh, ok...

In the midst of these two driving me nuts I decided to have an old friend over, you know- to try and catch up. Because that's always a wonderful idea when your kids wake up feeling like feisty super villains and are dead set on destroying any plans you had of accomplishing anything for the day.

So my friend and I struggled for 2 hours to talk about adult things while I had Cormac literally draping off of my face, interrupting every minute with a new story about the picture he drew... and Birdie begging/crying for me to hold her. I usually always have a favorite child for the day, but in that moment I had no favorite.

Anyway it got me thinking out loud about Motherhood and the difference between the roles of a Mother and a Father. As I'm sitting with my friend I start telling her exactly how I feel about the 2 roles and I don't even think I knew exactly how I felt... it just started spilling out of my mouth like most of my thoughts do. A stream of consciousness I had not tapped into yet. Scary.

In a nut shell I will tell you what I told her... (and more)

At a pretty young age I figured out I wanted to be a designer of some sort, whether it be in fashion design, toy design, party design... I knew I wanted to be involved in design in some sort of fashion. And I pursued that. And then we had Cormac and my thoughts shifted to, "Now I want to stay at home and raise my kids". I mean, why wouldn't I want to do that? I never really even questioned this- it was just the obvious answer... Until that is- I started doing it. I figured I'd eventually learn to enjoy preparing 3 meals a day and finger painting and singing songs. I figured I'd fall in love with being a mom to the fullest capacity of being a mom.

And one of my closest friends is doing all of these things so contently. And I'm so happy for her because I know she is fulfilling her dream of raising her kids and even homeschooling them for preschool (which sounds about as fun to me as getting a root canal). I read these facebook statuses from woman I know, "feeling so blessed to be able to stay home with the kids" and all I can think is that I'm wired differently and I do not think I have ever had a day where I have said that or thought that... let alone typed it.

I'd love to be successful at something I'm good at which is so far off from preparing 3 meals a day it's not even funny. I want to come home at 5 p.m. and be praised like Shawn is the minute he walks in the door. I'd love to have someone even attempting to make me a crappy dinner when I get home from a day of doing something I enjoy. I'd love for my kids to jump on me because they're that happy to see me. I want to raise my voice at my children and have them respect me the way they do when Shawn raises his voice... they hear me all day, a raised voice is par for the course.

All of this just got me thinking that man I would make a great Dad. The perks seem so rewarding. I mean, I'm a good mom... I don't suck or anything. But goodness I could totally be a Dad. Not to take anything away from Shawn, who is like the ultimate Dad...

Yesterday was a rough day with The Teething Toddler and her brother Batman Pirate and I'm definitely not supposed to be admitting to any of this... But I did. Oh well.

                                                                xo Party or Die xo
                                                                         kenna