Late last week we made our way home from our great QLD adventure. It was lovely to have some time together as a family, something sorely missing from our hectic lives at the end of last year. It was also a wonderful chance for me to be able to really think about our plans for the future.
Can I tell you a secret? After I finished work and lived the mayhem of Christmas and Mr T's emergency room visit, I had been having second thoughts about our choices... About being a stay at home mum. STOP!!! Now before you all yell at me for being crazy, and telling me how some of you would kill to have the opportunity to stay home with your family, please hear me out. I'm going somewhere I promise.
I have always been a very independent person quite career driven. Owing to a bit of a complicated childhood, I had a fairly skewed view of women who stayed home with the kids. Now naturally after having kids myself and seeing other SAHM's hard at work, I realised that what I saw as a child were two drastic extremes of being a SAHM, neither of which gave a true interpretation of what it means. But I digress. After having my own babies I realised all those things other mothers said were right. It's different when they are your babies, you want to be with them.. And that's true. However neither of my darlings were great sleepers which made for a slightly rocky start to our relationship. Which drove me to feel inadequate as a mother and therefore search out something that made me feel in control again. So I started my own business at home when Mr T was about two months old, thinking I could at least feel as if I was organised in some part of my sleep deprived life. The balance for that was working well, however my business was the sort to take over your life with not a lot of return. We then decided that if I was enjoying the grown up time and the kids were enjoying daycare I could easily go to work full time.
Technically I have never had a moment to just enjoy being with my boys at home as a mum. It's always been a balancing act. Which had worked for us... Until this past year. So now it's time to work on my family and nurture our boys. Give them ( and to be honest me too) some good old fashioned family time. But I'll tell you another secret, it's pretty bloody daunting too. What if we really can't afford this, Sydney is an expensive city; what if I change as a person and my husband doesn't like the new mummy me; what if my career focused non child rearing friends don't want to hang out when all my days revolve around my kids schedule? Did I mention I have a habit of over thinking things :-) ?
With all this chaos in my head it was awesome to get away for a bit and just not over think everything. And you know what? I figured something out...... It doesn't matter! If money gets too tight I can find a new job, I'm not completely unemployable just for taking some family time. The next thing I discovered was that I need to give my husband a little more credit. Both of us have changed over the years we have been together and that's a good thing. If we remained exactly the same our entire lives we wouldn't be where we are now, married with two beautiful boys. And those friends without kids? Well, the true friends will adapt with me, recognising that I don't need to be a mummy 24/7 and understand that when I want some good, night out with the girls fun ( and my time to not be someones mummy) they will always be the ones I call... Those who drift off into the distance; well how good a friend could they have been in the first place?
So you see I am learning...... it just takes me a while to get it sometimes.
XX
Sidenote: it also doesn't hurt that I am doing a little contracting work for my old company. A few phone calls and a day in the rat race always reminds me that this is the best decision for us.
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