Working Mom?

Before Emily was born, I planned to quit my job.  I just knew that I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom.  I was wrong.  I lasted about 9 months before I went back to work, only part-time but enough to give me some balance in my life again.  And it worked wonderfully for a few reasons.  First, I was only working three days per week.  Eric was home with Emily one day each week, and this meant that she only needed childcare two days each week.  I could live with that.  Second, her childcare was four houses down the street with a wonderful lady (Hi Julie!) who cared for Emily along with her own two kids in her home.  She let me bring Emily over in her pajamas and eat breakfast at her house.  Getting out the door was a cinch most mornings!  And third, my commute was about five minutes, and that's if traffic was bad.  So the stars aligned and I worked at this job for over two years.

When we moved to Pittsburgh, I knew that the decision to work again or not would not be so simple.  First, there are now two children, and one of them is still so tiny!  Second, two children are twice as expensive.  Some openings that I've seen would actually cause us to lose money by my calculations.  Can you believe it?  I have a graduate degree people!  And we don't have someone waiting four houses down to watch my babies.  And finally, unless I want to work at a bank or the local YMCA, my commute to work is guaranteed to be quite a bit longer.  All this is to say, working may not be in the cards for me for awhile.  I thought this would be hard, SO HARD.  And some days it is.  But amazingly, it's a lot better this time around.  Maybe it's because Emily is getting older and more creative in her play.  Maybe it's because I have been lucky enough to get a ridiculously good easy to care for infant.  Maybe it's because I don't know how we'd keep our house clean, do laundry or cook meals if I were working while Eric was so busy with school.  Maybe I've changed.  All I know is that right now, today, I'm happy to be where I am, at home with my babies playing duplos and scanning blogs for new recipes to try this week.