Life as a Stay-at-Home Mama {Reality Check}

As some of you know, I started my business with Rodan+Fields back in April 2015 with a goal of it allowing me to become a stay-at-home mama. I was also working full-time, juggling parenthood and several freelance projects on the side as I started this business – can you say busy?! I wanted to be at home, so I was willing to put in the work to get there. I continued to juggle my fast-paced, busy lifestyle all the way through the end of 2015, where we had a bit of an extreme life change happening – which was Michael accepting a job in Memphis, TN!

As I mentioned in my last post, I ended up having to say goodbye to my job in order for us to take this leap of faith and move 900 miles away from our home in VA. Which means that I became a stay-at-home mom in the blink of an eye – absolutely NO time to prepare for this huge change! I literally went to work one week, and the next, was lounging in my PJs, relaxing and sipping delicious coffee – NOT. Life with a toddler is none of those things! It is pure craziness from the minute she wakes up (usually screaming at the top of her lungs) until the minute she falls asleep (sometimes for a nap, sometimes not until bedtime…yikes). Sometimes I have to sit back, take it all in and just laugh at the ridiculousness of our days.

To be honest, that girl who had a dream of staying home with her baby was not prepared for what being a stay-at-home mom really entails. Vacuuming three times a day (sorry, neighbors) because there Puffs littered on the floor, cleaning up toys just to have them thrown in the middle of the room again, and reading Goodnight Moon five times in a row in the middle of the day – and that’s just a sampling of our day. No, this was not what an obsessively organized neat-freak of a mom envisioned when I thought of staying at home. BUT….and this is what matters…it’s been even more rewarding than I ever could express. There are hard days, trust me…where all I want is a nice, cold drink and a vacation all to myself, but a hard day at home with Blair is a million times better than a hard day at the office. I always felt like my job was stealing hours of my time away from my family and I wasn’t getting anything valuable out of the time I put in. Sure, I was getting paid, but that was just for survival (okay, and to buy nice things). When I had a bad day, I hated to come home in a bad mood and have it weigh on me, but it did. And it really wasn’t worth it to let it control me. Now, when I have a bad day, by the end of the day, I’ve completely forgotten about the bad. What I remember about the day is getting my sweet girl out of her crib, watching and listening to her learn new things every single day, letting her nap on me (she’s only young once!) and sitting at the table to enjoy not just one meal but all THREE meals in a day with her.