Do you read Amalah’s blog? You should, if you don’t.
It is much more lively than mine. Also, she frequently posts pictures of Noah, her extremely cute baby, and you’ll never get that here. Wacky Mommy is much too verbose for pix. When her little guy was born she got approximately 8,052 posts congratulating her and her honey of a husband, Jason. Anyhoo — her maternity leave is up and she’s heading back to work, and of course this opens up the whole “If you don’t stay home with your kids you are evil and suck” discussion. Rilly, does any discussion get stupider than that one? Here’s my input:
re: Kasey, an Amalah reader who is all nyah, nyah, why have kids if you don’t want to stay home with them? She said, and I quote, “You will have what, a whole two hours after dinner to play mommy, right?”
My response: I “play mommy” at home with my two kids and we are lucky if we get two hours of playtime a day. Because I am a busy girl cooking food they refuse to eat (“That is some yucky kind of food, Mommy!” — Wacky Boy. Another WB quote: “You are the kind of bad mommy who never feeds her kids.” This, when I was making him homemade mac and cheese. Little ingrate!), cleaning up puke (dog/cat/kid), washing peed-on laundry, doing yardwork, trying to, maybe, do an hour of g.d. yoga so I can stay limber enough to keep up with my babies, volunteering at school and in the community (cuz I’ve got oodles of free time, right? so of course I’ll do the PTA newsletter, go on field trips, do neighborhood clean-ups, help build playgrounds, spend time in the class, etc.) and…
(this part was a surprise for me) staying at home is like any other g.d. job. Except you go more in debt with just one income. Woo-hoo! I do love the “lovebucks.” (Wacky Boy just came in to give kisses.) But staying home full-time isn’t like when you take a snow day and lie around in your jammies. It’s a job. My kids were mad at me all day long today and it wasn’t cuz I was “abandoning” them. It’s cuz I didn’t let them eat cookies all day in their jammies. I forced them to get dressed and go to the library and Santaland and they howled like I was torturing them. They got over it. Kids can deal, they do it well.
Be supportive, Kasey, would you? We’re all just trying to do our best.
Kisses, Amalah, and all you other mothers, from the whole Wacky Family. Happy Year of the Dog! Aroooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo…