3 Years

Three years ago today was the last day I worked outside the home.  Matthew was 9 months old and our only little person and we had Phlip-Phlop the cat.  We had movers scheduled to come the following day to pack us up and relocate us from Montgomery to Huntsville.  We were beyond excited about the move but I was a little nervous about our new life.  I always felt A LOT of pride in being a great employee, decent financial partner and certainly took a lot of pride in my career.  It felt weird scary to not have a plan.  I am by nature a planner.  I also had serious issues depending on someone else for my financial support, I felt like a mooch and it took me a good year to come to terms with that vulnerability. 

I was never one of those people that envisioned myself staying home with kids.  Really, that is what daycare was for, right?  As much money as I spent on undergraduate and grad school, not earning an income was not even on my radar.  Yet here I am, a stay-at-home mom, a housewife, a chef, a CFO for our family.  And you know what, it is a tough job but I am blessed that they think I am doing a good enough job that they keep letting me do it because I love it, most of the time.  Unsolicited hugs from your babies don't hold a candle to an unexpected financial bonus.  Having a little person want to help you make biscuits beats the hell out of training and retraining someone to do a job they don't really care about.  Watching your children explore their big world is a priceless experience.

I know that this scenario does not work for everyone but I am glad that we were willing and able to make the sacrifices so that we could enjoy this reality for a few years.

So 3 years later:

Matthew is fast approaching his 4th birthday, little brother Kimber is 18 months old, we have added a precious pupster named Muppet to our crew and Phlip-Phlop the cat is still hanging around.  We have settled into a fairly stable routine and our reality is good, even though there are days we all need to be reminded just how good it is.

In a perfect world I will be able to do this for a few more years but I accept the fact that our world is constantly evolving and we have to roll with the punches if we want to survive, so we shall see.

In the meantime, there are clothes to wash, worms to dig, vegetables to harvest, biscuits to make, floors to sweep, boo-boos to kiss, boys to bathe, giggles to hear, flowers to pick, train tracks to build, tears to dry laughs to laugh and so much more.