Being a work at home Mom can be a teensy bit chaotic at times, no? I’ll give you some examples. Earlier while I attempted to design an opt in page and while my attention was off of my 16 month old daughter for a few minutes (I thought she was playing with her 4 year old sister in the “tea party” doll area.), she thought it would be a good idea to take the bottle of nail polish big sis handed her and paint it all over her thighs like a tattoo session gone very, very bad.
She comes proudly waltzing up to me with her new brands, which happen to be a very fetching shade of scarlet. I of course freak and call Poison Control and the second place I go to when my kids frighten me to death, Google, to find out what to do when your baby gets nail polish all over her velvety soft skin. The former tells me not to worry, and to try rubbing her with oil. I grab the Olive Oil so she’ll at least be getting some antioxidants mixed in with the VOCs. It doesn’t work.
We WAHMS have to make compromises all the time. (Although to be fair, this could just as easily have happened while I did laundry.) For example:
- My 4 children are throwing popcorn all over the room. But they’re laughing and enjoying each other immensely instead of arguing. I mentally calculate how long it will take me to vacuum it up (3 minutes, tops) versus the time it captures their attention, 10 minutes. Carry on children!
- Do I let the toddler carry around the box of whole grain cereal so she can grab a snack at will while I finish up writing this opt in page? Sure, why not? You haven’t lived if you haven’t yet walked across Organic Os in the middle of the night in your bare feet on the kitchen floor.
- Toddler v. Keyboard – Toddler wins! My keyboard is missing so many pieces from my tot climbing up on my desk and flicking them off as only her tiny baby fingers can. Plink! Plink! I hear them hit the floor as I come running. So I’m $15 poorer after getting a new wireless keyboard with the old fashioned keys she can’t remove. It more than makes up for it when she crawls into my lap for a nap and nursing session.
- Do I (gasp!) let my 3 older kids watch 30 minutes of PBS (ok an hour) while I record my podcast? Yeah. It’s not a bad compromise to rot their brains with TV for a little bit so they can have Mommy around all day, is it?
It’s all worth it when my 5 year old comes up to me asking: “How do some tattoos stay on you forEVER?” and I can answer him. And when he asks: “How does that keyboard work without wires?” and I can answer him. And when I can sit here and watch my 4 year old daughter flit around the room in her “dancer” (aka pink flouncy dress) with a doll tied with string around her neck in some makeshift baby sling.
Would you change your crazy wahm life for the world?
