Monthly Archives: October 2008

17Oct / 2008

Stay at Home, Work at Home

Ever since before my daughter was born, I’ve had dreams of being a stay-at-home mom. These feelings only grew stronger the day I had to leave my daughter with strangers at daycare and go to work. She was only 11 weeks old. That was one of the hardest days of my life. And every day I struggle with guilt that I must be at work instead of taking care of my baby girl.

I know she’s getting excellent care at her daycare center and her teachers adore her and spoil her. She gets to play all day with other kids her age and do crafts and games and fun things. And I know that if she were at home, she wouldn’t be exposed to nearly as much as she does now as school. But I still feel that as a parent it’s my responsibility to take care of her. Sure, some people would say I am in a way taking care of her by working and making money to provide for her, but I still don’t like it. If my husband could work and make enough to provide for his family, then I should be able to stay home and physically take care of our  daughter. But our financial situation doesn’t allow for that, although I know it’s our own fault for living the way we do.

She turns 2 today and even now, every day, my desire to stay home with her grows stronger. My husband and I want to move back to FL to be closer to family, so every once in a while I search for job opportunities in the state. But lately, I don’t even want to explore potential job opps because I don’t want to go back to work doing the same thing. I don’t even want to go back to work doing something different.

If I could work from home setting my own hours, it would be an ideal situation because then I could keep my daughter at home with me all day and just work when she’s napping, after she’s gone to bed, or when she’s having a down time. So I’ve been trying to explore work-at-home opportunities and even some of those don’t appeal to me if I have to do the same darn thing I’ve been doing for the past 8 years. But if it’s the only thing available that isn’t a scam then I might consider it. Then here is the biggest challenge, finding something that won’t put us in a major financial crisis (I provide 1/2 of our family income) and that gives decent health insurance. Our family’s health insurance is through my employer because it is much better and cheaper than through my husband’s employer. So this is a real obstacle I must figure out a way to get around.

I am exploring a few options, but so far, things don’t look all too hopeful. But I keep searching, because I’m not sure I’ll be truly satisfied again til I’m able to stay home with my daughter.

Posted in Motherhood, Work

Tags: , , , ,

Permalink 1 Comment

17Oct / 2008

Frugality

I’m not the most frugal person, but I do my part in little ways. I’ve been having a fight with my conscious about it, so I need to remind myself that I do make some effort to be frugal, even if it is just little things.

  • I make coffee every morning.
  • I take lunch to work.
  • We eat at home every night.
  • I shop for clothes infrequently and when I do it’s on gift cards or at discount stores.
  • I purchase my daughter’s clothes at consignment sales.
  • Most of our bulbs are CFL
  • We traded in our truck for a more fuel-efficient compact car
  • We don’t travel much
  • We have a programmable thermostat and set it higher/lower when we aren’t there using it
  • We have a new energy efficient A/C unit
  • I don’t get regular manicures or hair cuts
  • DH cuts his own hair
  • We don’t go to the movies
  • I’m working on making my own dish rags so we can stop using paper towels.
  • We use our towels more than once before washing them.
  • I always dry clothes on medium heat.
  • I always wash clothes in cold water, except towels, which we only do a load of about once a month, because we re-use so it takes a while to build up enough towels for a load.
  • We only ever do a max of 3 (sometimes 4 loads) of laundry in a week.
  • I take showers, not baths (I used to take lots of baths)
  • We don’t water our yard (yes our yard turns brown and yucky, but we save a buttload by not watering)
  • We wash our own cars, but not often and when we do, we have a pressure washer so the water isn’t constantly running out of the hose.

There are many things I could do better at, and I’m trying. And then there are some things that won’t change or are not feasible to change, like commuting. Public transportation here isn’t like in many other areas in the country. My job won’t let me telecommute as much as I’d like to. And my DH won’t give up his HD cable and DVR. But we try in other ways.

In what ways do you try to be or are frugal?

Posted in Life and Family

Tags: ,

Permalink Leave a comment

17Oct / 2008

Happy Birthday Amelia

Dear Amelia,

Today you are 2 years old. My tiny little baby is growing up. You are no longer sleeping in a crib, you are officially out of infant sized clothing, you’re vocabulary has increased damatically in the last week, you are your own person and you are my little girl. You will always be my baby, and I can still see the infant you were in my mind. Those images of you crying because of the gas, or because you were sick and scared, or when you were nursing (the little times that you did) will be in my mind’s eye forever. No matter how old and grown up you become.

Although I terribly miss the little infant you were, there are so many things that I love about you now. Feeling your little arms around my neck in a tight hug, the little kisses you give me with your hands on my face. The smile you give me that makes your dimple show. Your big eyes, the way you scream mommy and come running when I come home from work. They way you say goodbye to the dogs when we leave the house in the morning. The way you ask for help when you can’t do something on your own. Watching you sleep still warms my heart and makes me want to pick you up and cuddle you forever.

You are the light of my life and I can’t even remember what my life was like and how I spent my days before you were in it. There are so many things I regret that I didn’t do or wish I’d at least done differently, but none of those regrets has compromised the bond that we share. You are so attached to me sometimes it makes things difficult. Especially when you won’t let daddy help. But I do love that you are so close to me. I hope our closeness never ends and you can always come to me for help or just a hug. I’ll never abandon you, Amelia. I love you so completely, sometimes it makes me cry.

You are the little girl I waited 31 years for and I couldn’t ask for a more loving, adorable, sweet daughter, even if you do sometimes wear on my nerves. ;)

Happy 2nd birthday little one!
Mommy loves you.

Posted in Motherhood

Tags: , , ,

Permalink 1 Comment

16Oct / 2008

Halloween Costumes

Every year I struggle with what to dress up as for Halloween. As I get older, my interest in this holiday wanes increasingly. But now that I have a child, it’s time to get psyched again about trick or treating and dressing up. The one day of the year you can pretend to be anyone you want. You can dress up outrageously and not be looked down upon for it.

I’m looking for costumes for Amelia. I’ve chosen her costume this year, but I can definitely use some creative ideas for the next 5-10 years down the road. So I browsed the web for inspiration and ideas on Halloween Costumes and found Halloween Adventure. They have costumes for everyone: men, women, kids, babies, plus masks, makeup, wigs, etc. And the way their navigation is set up with main categories and sub-categories, I can go straight to the costumes for infants and toddlers. They even have costumes for your pet, so you can dress up your dog as Batman!

Holly Hobby Costume

This Holly Hobby costume has to be one of my favorites. I remember loving this doll when I was little and my room was decorated to match. I love the patchwork of her dress and little girls look adorable dressed like this. It would definitely be my first choice if I hadn’t already chosen Dorothy for this year. May they have a bigger version of this and she can dress as Holly Hobby next year. Or maybe I’ll convince one of my many mommy friends to dress up their baby girl in this costume. I like costumes like this because they look more comfortable than some. And if she has to wear something underneath, or wear the thing all day, I want to make sure she’s not miserable.  But costumes have come along way since when I was a child. You don’t see nearly as many of those plastic gowns with plastic masks. I remember wearing one of those and going as Casper, the friendly ghost…remember him?

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: , , , ,

Permalink Leave a comment

16Oct / 2008

DeCluttering

For some reason, I’ve got a bug in me that my house was too cluttered. I’m sure everyone feels the same at some point in their life. So I told the husband that we need to get rid of our junk. Stuff we don’t ever use, haven’t used in a long time or ever, stuff that we won’t use ever again.

We started last week. I made the emotional decision that there really isn’t a need to keep all of my daughter’s old baby clothes. If they don’t fit, get them out of the house. The whole point is to only keep the necessary, and most loved items. So all of her clothes are going to be sparced out to friends who have younger children that may want the slightly used clothes in the near future. The same thing with extra blankets, towels, burp rags, baby monitor, and toys. I’ve come to terms with the reality that we don’t know when/if we’ll have another child and when/if that ever happens, we’ll get that child new/used items as needed.

We cleaned out probably around 50 DVD movies that we will most likely never watch again. I’m going to sift through the books on the bookshelf that have never been read and if I know I won’t read them, I’m going to get rid of them.

Getting rid of stuff doesn’t necessarily mean throwing it away. Many items will be surely donated to Goodwill, sold to friends and family for a cheap price, given to friends and family and taken somewhere to be traded in for credit towards other items. Who knows, I may even convince my husband to have a yard sale. Gasp!

So back to the decluttering. Last weekend, I managed to clear out the baby’s room of 2 garbage bags full of clothes, toys, and “baby stuff” that was lingering around. I cleaned out her top dresser drawer which had become a junk drawer. We cleaned off the movie shelf and eliminated 1/2 of the toys that were taking over the living room.

I can think of many things in my house that need to go, like the countless cookbooks I don’t use, the casette tapes from another era, the CD collection that is kept in a box in the closet. I also have many other things that I know of that are just wasting space in our house.

Just thinking about purging all that junk is a good feeling. I can’t wait to get rid of it all.

Posted in Life and Family

Tags: , , ,

Permalink 1 Comment

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.