If you’re home with your kids, this is your life. In list form.
Okay, lets get it out there first. This isn’t a Stay-At-Home-Mums vs. Working-Mums thing. The fact is there are Stay-At-Home-Mums, there are Mums who work, and there are many who do a bit of both.
This isn’t an us vs. them. This isn’t a woe-to-me. It’s a celebration. It’s for every mum who stays at home (and there is probably one here for the many Mums who head out to work as well).
If you’re a Stay-At-Home-Mum, here are 13 things you’re sure to understand.
And if you’re a Working Mum, your post is coming soon…
1. There is always…
A pile of something at the bottom of the stairs that needs taking up to somewhere at the top of the stairs. Always.
2. There is never…
Anyone else in the household who notices those piles. No one ever.
3. You can tell…
What the time it is by what’s on ABC Kids.
4. There are not…
24 hours in a day there are five. They are 9.30-2.30. By the time you do school drop off and then have pick up the day is gone. GONE I tell you.
5. At home there is…
No water cooler, no coffee man downstairs, no popping out to the shops at lunchtime. In fact, popping out to the shops is now an all out combat mission that involves several bags filled with “just-in-case-items” and those all-important Tupperware boxes of snacks.
6. Checking Facebook is…
Something that has to be done surreptitiously less your preschooler asks you if they can play on your phone. It is now no longer something you hide from your boss – but from your child.
7. You will undoubtedly be asked…
“But what do you do all day?” so many times you will begin to invent answers. (“Oh well today Ryan and Eva dropped by to tell me about the pregnancy”).
8. A lunch out…
Inevitably involves a thermomomix demonstration.
9. For some reason…
Certain people equate stay-at-home-Mum with my-errand-boy and will seem to assume that of course you will be able to pick up their dry-cleaning/ wait for their repair man/walk their dog/ take their child to soccer as you surely couldn’t be busy as a person with a “real job”.
10. You will get asked…
Time and time again what you used to do when you “worked”.
11. You will know…
The exact duration of Frozen and the precise amount of vacuuming and mopping you can do while it is on.
12. The best thing…
That happens after 8pm is going to the toilet alone. And oh the joy!
13. You will have…
An honour that many others simply can’t afford or that life simply has not granted them. A heady, joyful, frustrating, wonderful, all consuming, blessed PRIVILEGE of being at home with your children. For all the hide-in-the loo moments there are embrace it – and know that you are one of the lucky ones.
What would you add to this list?
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