Thursday, May 23, 2013

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


10 comments:

  1. i know EXACTLY what you mean. i always wanted to be a stay at home (ok, maybe more like, working some kind of cool creative job from home) mom, and i have to remind myself DAILY that thats almost what im doing. its just, being a dad DOES seem really great sometimes.

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  2. Oh good I'm glad you can relate, I'm not a total loner. Although I quite like being the odd woman (mom) out, it's always been a good fit for me ;)

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  3. There are days when I would like to dress up like Pirate Batman and be known as such because hearing the word "mom" every five seconds gets old quick. I think a costume every so often might throw them off.

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    1. I love this idea. I need to bust out my hand made Poison Ivy costume I think... wig and all... that'll throw him for the loop. You always crack me up.

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  4. I'm not even half as creative as you so I put my energy into what I CAN do, that's why I enjoy it. I know those of us who enjoy staying at home also are a bit envious at times that YOU are so creative and funky and stylish. You keep us all young (even though I'm younger than you!) and keep us from being lame out of date moms. You keep us hip (am I even allowed to say that word?). So just keep coming over for dinner whenever you want, and keep partying on. As for wanting to be a dad, I'm sure every mom from kingdom come feels the same way as you more than we all want to admit. However, the thought of waking up to an alarm clock daily, like Josh, makes me want to puke. I'm too lazy for that.:)

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    1. Ok, done... I'm coming over for dinner now. Is 8:00pm too late? You're going to wish you never wrote that. Have I mentioned I love your cooking? Love ya neighbor.

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  5. I can so relate to this after four children I've been there a multitude of times (more than I care to admit). My husband doesn't understand why I'm not happy and content with what he calls the most honorable and fulfilling job in the world. Sometimes you have to admit that being a stay at home mom is enough for some but not for others. Thanks for saying what a lot of us are thinking.

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    1. Thank you Sunny, I am happy to be the voice for a few of us SAHM's ;) I had a stranger tell me she had her husband sit down and read this post. That's always one way to approach it!

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  6. Yes, I hear ya. It's like I know all of that to be true in my head... it's just in the moments Birdie is running away from me up a hill and outside a park that I'm like, "What the heck am I doing.... I can't even keep a 2 yr old inside a park..."

    And I STILL cannot believe we got 6 kids together in April... gosh that was impressive that we even tried! Kudos to us and thanks for the encouragement...

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