Learning (the hard way) to be a mom!

A warm welcome to my new friends from the Ultimate Blog Party!  I love any opportunity for fun, and especially when the word “Ultimate” is involved! 

For those of you who have been following me for a while, the Ultimate Blog Party is an opportunity to introduce new people to me and my crazy adventures with the Trifecta.  It’s also a chance to relive where it all began. 

If you’re new to Recovering Working Mom, here’s some background.  I found out my job was eliminated in October 2010 and I cried. Partly because a job that I absolutely loved was no longer available to me, but mostly because I was terrified of being a stay at home mom.  The first words my husband said to me were “honey, it’s ok, if you eat one of the children, we can always make more.”  (and we make some pretty cute ones too)

Although I was terrified, I decided I was going to enjoy every minute of my stay at home motherhood, and also follow the advice from a calendar that my mom had given me for Christmas. It's entitled "Life is All About How You Handle Plan B". Well, I can now say I've taken full advantage of this Plan B thing (and no, I have not enjoyed every minute, but I have managed to find the humor in most of those minutes).

When I’m not looking for the humor or a reason for a cocktail, I search for ways to create easy family fun.  In my first year home with my three girls (nicknamed Id- 5, Ego- 7, and Super Ego- 9) I attempted to have 365 days of Family Fun.  Little did I know how much work “fun” can be, and that “fun” is a relative term.

 I quickly discovered that there’s a reason they don’t actually offer a formal education in stay at home motherhood – who would sign up for classes entitled “Cleaning up vomit 17 times in 3 days” or “How to take gracefully being screamed at by your boss in the middle of a crowded grocery store”, or my personal favorite “How to get your children to 3 different activities that start and end all at the same time, without needing a drink to survive.”  Despite my post graduate education, I found out that I didn’t know sh*t! 

Here are the top 7 stay at home motherhood lessons I’ve learned the hard way (or what I affectionately call “The Sh*t my stay at home mom friends never told me)”:

 1) Girls Night Out is code for "essential therapy without which I would actually eat my young."

 2) "Stay at home" mom is code for "at the gym, grocery store, dance studio, soccer field, insert child's activity location here, child's classroom, and any of the other 15 places I'm needed other than home".

 3) Hurry up and wait is a way of life.

 4) Sitting down is not an option. The time you actually sit down when you're "at home" is less than 45 minutes, and all of those minutes are spent in the car on your way to the activities you decided would make your kids "well rounded". No wonder my nannies were so exhausted.

5) Those closets you thought you'd clean out are still as cluttered as ever, and might be more so because you are home now so you can stuff a bunch more crap in them.

6) The exhaustion you feel is because you have just been verbally poked for hours straight by miniature versions of yourself.

7) If the CIA wants an effective form of torture - they should put terrorists in a minivan at 4pm with three children who have not had a snack or a nap.

And I’ve now added a #8 – L I C E is a four letter word that should be preceded by f*&#ing!  When your kids come home with it twice in two months, you’ll be cussing in languages you never knew you knew.

As a result of the hardest lesson learned - that there is just no way to keep up with “365 days of family fun” - I now owe one of my friends a drink.  Don’t tell her that was all part of my plot to get a girls night out - See #1.

Despite all the insanity, and lots of b*tching along the way, I wouldn’t change a thing and I really have enjoyed this gift that I didn’t even know I wanted.

What are some of your stay at home mom lessons (I’m always looking for the best way to keep myself out of trouble)?