Monday Musings on Motherhood

Here's the problem with parenthood, folks: there is no weekend.  You never get a break from the day- in-and-day-out grind of early mornings and sleepless nights and food being thrown on the floor and bath time and bed time and utter and complete exhaustion.  If you happen to be a stay-at-home Mom there isn't a difference, really, between the workdays and the weekends; you still have to spend all day taking care of your kid, so Saturday and Sunday look basically the same as Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  Trust me, it's as stimulating as it sounds.  The truth is this: spending all day, every day with a child is really damn boring.  I admit it.  It's mind-numbingly dull and the lack of mental stimulation is so extreme that there are times when I just want to sit down and cry.

Look, if you're one of these Mothers who think that staying home with your baby is the most interesting thing in the world, my hat is off to you.  Feel free to judge me.  I wish I shared your joy in the daily grind of Motherhood.  I would love to be fulfilled playing trucks and reading books and making stuffed animals talk in funny voices, but I'm not.  I want nothing more than to get up in the morning, take a shower, put on actual clothes (not leggings or sweatpants), and go to a real job where I get to interact with adults and collect a paycheck for my writing talents.  I love my son.  I feel blessed to have him in my life, but after a little over a year of being a full-time Mother, I can tell you without a doubt that I am not cut out for stay-at-home parenthood.  I'm much better with the whole guest shot thing: some morning cuddles, a little breakfast, hand the kid off to someone else and then return in time for dinner and the bath time/bed time routine.  I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would want to be a working Mother, but there's something about having a child that really makes you examine who you are, and I've really had to come face-to-face with the uncomfortable truth that I don't particularly like just being someone's Mom.

And so here we are back at the age old competition between the Mommies who work and the ones who don't.  I know that if I did happen to be a working Mother I would miss, terribly, being there for all of the Muffin Man's important moments.  I would long for the ability to take him to the museum just because it's Tuesday and we have nothing else to do.  I would probably be nostalgic for the days of old when I didn't have a job and didn't have to take a shower or be somewhere on time, and I'm sure I would question my decision to work every day, the same way I currently question my decision not to work.  What it comes down to is that we're all just trying to do the best we can within the parameters of the people we are and the cards we've been dealt.

So if you're looking for me in the next couple of months, I'll be at home attempting to find mental stimulation in shape sorters and alphabet magnets, and spending my kid's nap time polishing up my writing samples.