sahm-hood

If ever there was a day made for me to give my blog a little overdue love, today would be the day. I am alone, Mason's at Bible study, Ezekiel's slumbering peacefully, throw in a little "Teen Mom" playing in the background - and it's a recipe for success.

I've been thinking lately about being a stay-at-home mom. I'm not sure how comfortable I feel with that label, since we don't always stay at home. There's alot of work to be done at home, which requires spending significant time there for sure, but it's really a life that consists of going everywhere the average person needs to go to run a household, except with a baby (or two or three or four) in tow. Which makes it harder, I'm not sure how many times harder, but definitely harder. Bringing Ezekiel along makes almost everything more fun, though. A routine doctor appointment becomes way more exciting when a toddler is trying to steal your urine sample and dig through the biohazardous waste cans in the exam room. Exams can be uncomfortable, but not if you have a screaming baby sitting on your stomach distracting you from the invasive procedure happening down below.

As a single grocery shopper I feel bored by the monotony of the task, but Ezekiel keeps me on my toes by sneaking produce stems into his mouth so that I don't realize until we're halfway through the store that he's chewing on something. I've always got someone watching me, and I'm always teaching him. I'm already homeschooling him, and there's never a trip that doesn't have some kind of educational potential. This week I got to see my 14-month-old wince and giggle as he touched a head of broccoli for the first time in Super Target. I also got to spray the garden hose out back while he stumbled through the stream of water grinning from ear to ear as if he were playing at a Disney water park. Little moments like that fill my day as a "stay-at-home" mom, and no matter how they each go down, with stress or with ease, by the end of the day I'm almost always laughing as I relay the stories to Mason. There are many long hours spent at home, I won't lie, and they're not always easy. It's alot of diaper changing, meal preparation, meal cleanup, baby cleanup, stroller walks, safety patrol, accident recovery, snack administration, up and down stairs, interactive playtime, complete lack of privacy, schedule keeping, book reading, toy cleanup, nap giving, quiet chores, silently begging for relief by 4:00 pm, and so much more. When people ask me what a typical day is like, I'm not quite sure how to answer (that was a pretty long answer I just gave). So usually it goes something like, "I'm a full-time mom to Ezekiel, and I love it." Because that's everything right there in a nutshell. As I posted not too long ago, I once desired a high-powered career in engineering, but before I ever desired that, I wanted to marry an Air Force officer and be a mom - when I was 4 years old. They say it's a lucky person who's doing now what they wanted to do as a child, and that's me, ridiculously blessed and not one bit lucky. I decided that though the world would tell me I "could" have it all by pursuing a dream career and a dream family at the same time, I knew my dream family wouldn't be quite as dreamy if I didn't pour my whole life and heart into them, 24 hours each day, 7 days each week. So I choose to pour myself day by day, moment by moment, into my son. I know that my investment won't return void. He knows I'm going to be there with him through each day, and he knows he can depend on me to take care of his needs. I can't imagine paying somebody to experience the precious moments of every day with him while I fiddled with rocket science in a lab, and I'm glad that's not what I decided to do because I have a feeling it wouldn't have lasted long anyway. We're expecting our second, Lord willing, in January, and it's a promotion God's faithfully preparing me for!

Being a stay-at-home mom is wonderful. A gift. Important. Unsung. If you are a stay-at-home mom, my hat's off to you. Chances are you're ahead of me in the journey (I've only just begun) and have endured/enjoyed more, although I'm far enough in to know that it is HARD on many levels and REWARDING on at least as many. One truth that always encourages me as a Christian is found in Deuteronomy 6:4-9, where God had given the Ten Commandments to the Israelites and instructed them what to do with the law He'd revealed to them. "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates." What a blessing to be able to be with my child all day, the constant opportunity to speak God's truth over his life, instruct him in the way he should go, and show him what it means to pray and praise.

While Mason was out tonight, it was just Ezekiel and me for his bath and bedtime. I let him wander around in the buff for a couple minutes before bath as we usually do - good for the bum to get some air, you know. He had a nice bath, although I was halfway expecting him to poop in the water because he only went once out of his normal 2 or 3 times today. Stop reading if you don't like poop - wait, I don't like poop either, but I had to deal with it today anyway. So, just keep reading for a good poop story. Afterward I dried him off and was looking for his hairbrush, so I proceeded to sing Larry the Cucumber's hairbrush song as I searched. I remembered seeing Ezekiel playing behind the office door before bath, so I peeked behind there and sure enough there was the hairbrush! He had taken some items out of new toy box, a train set that my mom bought him for his birthday and that Mason had only opened in search of a renegade roach that had crawled in there in a desperate attempt to save his worthless bug life last week (story for another day). Anyway, Ezekiel had pulled out a few pieces of track and toy logs that were spread around the floor near the hairbrush. So I brought the hairbrush into our bedroom where we dress him at night, and I noticed something sticky and brown on the hairbrush. Naturally, I smelled it to figure out what it was. It smelled like poop. So I washed the hairbrush, knowing full well that LAST time I had held the hairbrush, there had been no poop, and to my knowledge there had not been a fecal expulsion since then - therefore, my powers of deductive reasoning told me that there WAS indeed a fecal expulsion lying somewhere on the second floor. Suddenly I remembered the "toy log" that I saw, and that it didn't really look like it went with the train track. Sooooooo, I hesitantly took a closer look, and sure enough, that was no toy log. It was a real log. I had a good laugh, and after laying Ezekiel down to bed I returned with a rubber glove and a piece of toilet paper. Surprisingly, it was way easier than changing a diaper. Kind of like having a dog, I guess? My day with Ezekiel is over, but an evening with Mason is up now. Mother by day, wife by night, it's like being a superhero!!!