The Balancing Act

So I am on the verge of having been a stay at home mom (SAHM) for just about 2 months and it has been WONDERFUL!  I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to spend this precious time with my favorite little man; God has been so good to us in providing us with this opportunity and to give me a hubby who is able and willing to make this lifestyle possible.

That being said, I have to say that staying at home was definitely an adjustment.  I went from spending a snipit of my morning, a portion of my lunch hour, my nights, and weekends with Clay to spending about 24/7 with him.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE being at home with him but when I was working a JCP my mantra was it's quality NOT quantity which I still believe to be true.  But that meant that when I started staying home, I felt that I needed to play with him as intensely as before (but all day, everyday) which meant I felt like I had to stimulate him 24/7 (or at least for each one of his waking hours).  Honestly, that feeling was overwhelming because how do you do that and still keep the house clean, do laundry, cook meals, and do everything else (and guess what, it feels WAY harder to keep a house clean when you spend the majority of your day there than it did when I was working - yeah, don't know how that works out but that's been my experience thus far).  Well fast forward almost two months and here's what I've learned.  It's still quality over quantity (Yes, Clay gets much more time with me than he did before but I don't feel like every moment has to be a teaching/learning moment).  Also, it's okay for Clay to play on his own for a little bit every day.  Bottom line, it comes down to balancing the to dos with the awesome privilege of playing with the munchkin.  I think/hope these realizations have made me a better Mommy. 

That being said, I'd like to share an example of me once again finding balance in my day:  Our first outing to the public library.  Clay enjoys reading and it's a big activity for us each day.  That being said, after 7 months with the same books I thought it may be time to shake it up with someone else's books so off we went to the library.  We got to the library and Clay got loaded up in the Baby Bjorn and we marched up to the reference desk and asked for help.  I had three goals in mind for our trip.

1.  Get a book entitled "Booky Wook"
2.  Get a parenting book
3.  Get a few new (to us) board books

It's at this point that I must confess that while the title "Booky Wook" would lead one to believe that I was in search of a fantastically wonderful iambic pentameter rhyming book for my little love such was not the case.  I was looking for a book penned by gentleman with a, how shall I put it, "colorful past" by the name of Russell Brand - you know... this guy:

From Forgetting Sarah Marshall; aka the "You know, that Skeazy looking guy" as my mom likes to call him (Sidenote, when did my incredibly zen mom start keeping up with popculture AND start doing so through People magazine?  I don't know but I can totally embrace this side of her!)

Okay, okay so not the most educational of reading and CERTAINLY NOT one to read to my child (yes, with a title like booky wook I had to quickly correct the librarian and assure it wasn't a child's book).  After she put me on the wait list for the book (hooray, there are other people in the Metroplex who are also willing to open their minds to written rubbish), I PROMPTLY asked to be escorted to wherever the parenting books were kept (see right there, that's me BALANCING). 

Once there, I picked up a few books (one of different non-toy games to play with baby and another on raising your baby to have a high play quotient - Clay plays PLENTY but the book is about how to take marry play with the changing phases of your baby's cognitive development (something I thought this Mommy could use some guidance in) - yes, who would have thought someone could "utter" the phrase "cognitive development" in the same post as Russell Brand but there ya go folks).  After that, Clay and I sauntered around the library talking about what we saw and finally made our way to the board books.   As you can tell from Clay's picture, he was way focused on taking in all of the sights and sounds of the library:

I think Clay's expression actually reveals that he thinks his mom is a little bit dorky for whipping out the iPhone camera while at the library.  Rest assured little man, Mama felt WAY dorky doing it but how do you NOT chronicle something as momentous as one's first trip to the library?  :)

So I hope that you'll agree that our trip to the library was all about the balancing act of a mom or at least you'll have a good laugh at our recent outing.  Either way, I am having a blast with my little guy and he thinks that having a quirky mom is all the rage (or at least the norm - he's 7 months old and it's the norm that he's accepted).

Word!