Which is good, because reviewing this page, I see my last post was on February 6. That was 11 weeks ago. The new edition to our family is due in eight weeks. Time is moving quickly.
It has been 20 months since I became an at-home parent, and if I imagine the list of goals I had in my mind when I started this, I'd say I've met about half of them, with the other half, the more nebulous half, awaiting fulfillment.
I figured out:
1) How to be at home all day with a child, without (most of the time) feeling hemmed-in, which was more challenging than I envisioned.
2) How to balance basic household chores with full-time parenting, so that while the house definitely looks like a disaster area several times a day, it looks picked up and cleaned up just as often.
3) The snack/diaper changes/lunch/nap/repeat rotation.
4) The whole running-errands-with-a-baby/toddler thing, although recently I feel I maybe don't have that mastered anymore.
5) Traveling with a baby, and now a toddler, which requires an incredible amount of planning, preparation and flexibility.
So the mechanics I have down. It is the grace that is missing.
The grace is comprised of the extra touches that really enrich the life of a family and make childhood memorable. I wouldn't say this is void in our lives, but I want there to be more. I feel like too much of my time and attention is absorbed in housework, running errands and (*ahem*) time spent online. Time for creativity is lacking. That is where I need to put my focus.
I try not to chide myself for not getting it 100% right from the start. It takes time to learn the basic mechanics of parenthood, or at least for me it did. It took me a solid year to figure it out with Jonas. After that year was up, I started taking on some at-home work: babysitting and freelance writing and editing. Balancing those elements with the basic day-to-day tasks was a whole new ball game. The grace was left wanting.
However backwards this may sound, I am hoping Silas' birth will ultimately be a vehicle to the kind of home life I am envisioning, as much as visions can ever become reality. If I end up taking on more editing work after Silas is born, I hope I can do so in a way that is less invasive. I very much want to find a place for paid work in my life, but not at the expense of providing our family with the kind of life we desire -- the very thing we set out to capture by making the choice for me to stay home in the first place.
