A day in the life of a stay at home mom

I swear I am the most under appreciated wife/mom ever... I just wish my husband could walk in my shoes for a day and see how much work a typical stay at home mom has... Unfortunately he, and many people, seem to have the idea that a day in the life of a stay at home mom is an easy one and most feel that being a stay at home mom isn't "a real job". When you’re a mom and you work at home, most people think that “work at home” is code for watch television and take a nap; however, there are so many things a stay at home mom does during the day that no one sees or appreciates. It's not all soap operas and martinis like they think... Take today for example.

My husband wakes up for work 3 hours late... After I listened to his alarm go off for a couple minutes at 4am I finally kicked him, he proceeded to yell at me and turn off his alarm... 15 minutes later it went off again. I kicked him and told him to wake up, he proceeds to tell me to shut up and turns off the alarm. An hour later his cell phone goes off, I try to push him out of the bed, he mumbled unmentionables to me and shuts off his cell phone. I finally wake up at 7:45 to our daughter knocking on the door... And who is still laying next to me? My husband who should have been at work at 4:30 this morning. This time when I tell him to "get up" he finally listens... And then it's my fault for him not getting up sooner. I swear I can never do anything right.

By the time I got my husband off to work and finally let our daughter out of her bedroom, she had taken off her "poopy" diaper and smeared it ALLLLL over the carpet in front of the door! UGH. And I'm not talkin a little poop, I'm talkin chunkyness embedded DEEP into the fibers of the carpet. I go downstairs, wipe her off, change her and prop her up in front of the TV with a bowl of cereal while I go upstairs to work on the stain.

All I gotta say is thank God we've got a steam vac... I think I went through half a bottle of Resolve and a hour later the stain was FINALLY gone.

I come down stairs only to realize in the excitement of the morning stain that I had forgotten to let the dog out to go to the bathroom... What do I find? He's peed on not one, but 2 legs of our diningroom chairs AND left us a nice (not so little) turd! UGH, all I wanna do is sit down and drink by damn coffee, but noooo... I have to move all the chairs and spray and scrub all their legs... I then have to drag all the dining room furniture into the family room and then mop... Everything... UGH! And just as I'm finishing I hear "Mummy Pee! Mummy Pee!" I shout back to the toddler "You gotta go potty?" Nooooo of course not... WHY? Because she already took it upon herself to use our leather couch as a toilet and just pee there! Yay, one more mess to clean up...

I finally finish everything at like 11:30... Finally get my coffee and sit down to enjoy some Backyardigans with the kid. An hour later it's nap time, so I lay the little trouble maker down for a nap...

She was a little hesitant at first but after two trips in there and spending 10 minutes explaining the importance of a nap to a freakin 2 year old I thought I finally had her down. So I went down stairs to warm up my coffee, reorganize a couple shelves in the cupboard, make a batch of Flan and un-load the dish washer. As soon as I finish (about 30 minutes had passed) I went and sat down in my big cushy chair and started my TiVo'ed 'The View' only to hear stomping upstairs... I peaked up there and saw she was still in her room, so I went and sat back down thinking maybe she was just going through her toy chest looking for a doll or something to sleep with. After 15 more minutes passed and I was still hearing the little foot steps up there I went upstairs and opened the door only to find this...

I think this picture says a thousand and one words! Which was good cuz I was completely speechless. The trouble maker got tossed in the empty tub for "time out" while I pre-soaked the carpet with the remaining half bottle of Resolve from earler today. I went in hosed the chunkyness off her, then washed the tub and filled it with half a bottle of shampoo to create the biggest bubble bath that little trouble maker had seen... And she sat in there and soaked for the WHOLE hour that it took me to clean up that mess she made.

Now she sits on the couch, in time out... Every once in a while she'll look over at me and I just give her that "Don't mess with me" look... She gets it. But anywayz, the point I was getting to... My husband will NEVER know the day I had... As far as he knows the house looks just like it did when he left at 7:30 this morning... He won't look or notice my organized cupboards, he'll never know the mess that Makayla made on the carpet and the walls, he never realizes when I mop or clean our furniture or scrub the tub. What will he see? He'll see a dishwasher that needs to be unloaded and just assume it's the same load that was sitting there this morning, he'll see that there's no dinner on the table and that the dirty pan sitting in the sink I should have scrubbed this morning, he'll see that I've still yet to shower and am wearing the same PJ's that he saw me in at 7am. This is why he thinks I need a job... Because I "do nothing all day". Heh.

I just wish our husbands could spend a day in our shoes and see what REALLY happens in a day in the life of a stay at home mom... They couldn't survive!