Work at Home Mom

I am a Work at Home Mom. Before Dylan was born I had a work-at-home job, now I have a Work-when-I-can-find-a-minute job.

Just in case you need a refresher of what I do. I am the Online Administrator for TourGuideMiKE.com. It is a third party website for Walt Disney World that gives you every piece of detail and advice that you would need to plan a Disney vacation. As you can imagine, Disney makes changes or new announcements every day and my job is to keep the website as up-to-date as possible. My boss and I are basically the only ones who work on content to the site, so it’s a big job. And we each are responsible for certain areas on the website. I LOVE what I do. I understand Disney, I know how to do my job well, and it is stress-free most of the time. I know I am very lucky to have this job - now I just have to make sure that I work enough and do a good enough job that I can keep this great job!

I actually get offended when Josh calls me a Stay-at-Home Mom. That usually happens when I am complaining about the ratio of his and my diaper changing numbers and he says that I made the choice to be a Stay-at-Home mom. What? You think I only have one job??

Let me be clear, I don’t get offended because I think that it would be bad to be a stay at home mom. Being a parent is exactly how it is described on tv -  a full-time job. You get one or two “breaks” at day (during naptime) and finally get to take your focus off of the job after 8pm or so. And unlike some other jobs, your brain needs to present basically 100% of the time. I have had jobs in the past where it was easier to get online and check my email or play around on face book than it is with a kid! I have total respect for all those Stay-at-Home (SAH) parents out there.

I wish that I was a SAH mom! Then I wouldn’t have the added stress of thinking all day long - when am I going to find time to get on the computer and actually work! For example, let’s take last night. Josh had to work over night so it was just me and the little man. I got a series of texts from my boss around 8:30pm to inform me about some updates for the website. I know that they are time sensitive and I am the kind of person that doesn’t like putting off my work. So after Dylan finally went to bed (around 9:30 - I swear he knew I wanted to get to work so he decided to get a second wind!) I finally got time to work. So at 11:00pm last night, you could walk by my window and see me sitting the dark typing away.

But I know how lucky I am to have the opportunity to be home with my son every day. I have seen all the little changes that he has gone through, I’ve celebrated each time he does something new, I’ve seen almost all of his ‘firsts.’ I don’t take for granted how blessed I am to experience motherhood this way. And I feel that I am giving him so much by being able to give him so much one-on-one interaction and teach him as much as I can.

My proud Mama moment of today happened this morning while we were reading a book. Dylan LOVES reading books. He’ll go pick one out and bring it to you reaching it out to you as far as his little arms will go. Today we were reading a 'words' book that has one picture on each page and the word of what it is. The first page is Teddy Bear. So I was pointing to the page saying “Teddy Bear,” and then I would grab his stuffed Teddy Bear and say the same thing. We read the book twice and put it aside. About 20 minutes later he picked up the same book so I opened it, pointed to the picture and said, “Teddy Bear.” He looked at me and smiled, looked at the picture and then crawled about 2 feet to his stuffed Teddy Bear, picked him up and hugged him. I was so proud!

Whatever you do, don’t make me chose between my two jobs because I really like the extra income that we get from my Work-when-I-can-find-a-minute job. And, for the record, I would chose my son any and every day of the week.