Having been a stay-home mom for almost 2 years, I sometimes forget why I wanted to do it so badly in the first place. I mean, you do something long enough and the grass starts to look greener on the other side. I start to think of how nice it would be to dress up and have power lunches (do people still call it that or am I that outdated) with other non-babies. To not have to start work at 10 at night, after a whole day of manual labor.
I know it is a privilege to be able to work from home and take care of the babies at the same time and I’m not complaining.
Well, maybe just a little bit.
Ok, maybe a lot.
But the point is, at times like these, we all just need a little reminder of why we are doing it in the first place.
Everyone, meet my reminder.
So a couple of days ago, I had one of my nights off to attend an event organized by Pat Law from Goodstuph (more on that later), who as I found out, is a former colleague from my short-lived advertising days at Publicis. 6 years later, she’s now a bad-ass social media guru (I think that means she invented the Internet or something, I’m not very sure), and me, I’ve got two babies. Also, I can make a killer aglio olio, which is like the parenting equivalent of inventing the Internet, obviously.
Anyway, I was getting ready to go out when Tru starts to smell a rat because momma never puts on makeup at 630 in the evening, and that means only one thing – a night out without him. My preemptive strike involved explaining that mommy has to go to work. (which at that time sounded far more credible than mommy had to go chill out over mini sandwiches)
Next thing I knew, he flung his body onto my calfs and proceeded to attach himself surgically to my legs while shrieking “NOOOOOOOO, mommy don’t go work! Don’t like mommy to go work, mommy stay home” about 20,000 times. At which point I switched strategy and tried to explain that mommy had to go for an event, because I figured I might as well confuse him with words he doesn’t know, hoping that it would distract him from the issue at hand.
Except that my kid apparently knows what an event is, and he was all like “Not work, mommy go e-ben.” He ponders for a moment, then goes “NOOOOOOOO, mommy don’t go e-ben! Don’t like mommy to go e-ben, mommy stay home.”
When he realizes that it’s not working, he suddenly remembers that he is more likely to get his way when he asks nicely. “Mommy, can stay home please, please, please?” Now that always gets me, because 3 pleases is a big deal.
I was close to ditching the event because my little boy needed me to tuck him into bed but the husband told me that I needed a breather and he had everything under control, so I went. I was glad to be out for a while but that night, it all came back to me – the reason why I left my job in the first place. Because if I had to hear that many pleases every morning while I left them with a bunch of strangers and went on my merry way, I would be crying all the way to work every day. And honestly, I wouldn’t have lasted a week.
On retrospect, manual labor and a couple of late nights don’t seem so bad after all.
