SAHM Again!

When they ask me at work, "Why are you leaving?" The answer is simple. I will point to these three pictures.

I will be officially leaving my part-time job on August 6. I'm so excited! Which is strange because when I first got my job in March, I really liked it and I enjoyed the breaks it gave me in the mornings to step outside the home. (It was my first paid job in over 6 years.) But now that I've been doing it for over 5 months, now that Trent has a full-time job, and now that our student loans are finally coming, I'm happy about returning home.

Sophie is growing so fast each day, I miss her terribly, even though I get home by 1pm. Sometimes when I'm sitting at my desk, I imagine her walking around the corner with her pudgy, tanned arms outstretched to me and her unruly blonde curls, and I get all choked up! When I told them my time was up here and I wanted to return home to my kids, they asked me how much I would need to be making per hour to make it worth it. (They knew my daycare costs were the large majority of my paycheck. ) I told them $20/ hour, partly in jest because what company in their right mind would pay an HR Receptionist $20/hour and also because even if they offered that, I still wouldn't stay. Pretty much no amount of money would compensate for missing out on the 17th month of Sophie's life. Or the 42nd month of Hailey's life. Those months can never be re-lived. Once they are lived, they are gone for eternity. Why should my daycare provider get to see those moments, and not me? (Even though Shauna is amazing, like a sister to me, and my girls adore her--they always want her to hold them at church!) But she's still not ME!!

Working the few short months I did was nice because Trent didn't have a job for the first little while, and then I stayed because of the possiblity of helping Trent get a job at the same company. Now that he's working elsewhere at a good place for him, I can leave.

Money will always be there. Or NOT be there. Money is just money. My children's lives are my children's lives. The same children that I was blessed to give birth to, given the trust to raise them, and teach them, and love them. It's not hard to see which one is more important.

Of course we need occasional breaks from our children--a night out with girlfriends, dates with our husbands, or working out a few times a week alone. Even a special hobby we can work on a little each day. All these things make us better moms. But those quiet (or CHAOTIC) mornings when my husband is at work, and I am at home being my kids' mom (as Dr. Laura would say), are the moments that will get me all bleary-eyed when I'm 60 years old, and admiring my clean house and my quiet house, and missing them terribly.

(Unless of course, I'm like my parents, and every few months another one of my kids comes to live with me and brings their kids with them, so I get to see them and my grandkids every single day!)