Back to School Blues-Real Mom Life

“Have a great day at school!! I love you!” Then off they go! Into the world of learning, into the world of picking up bad habits, germs and new words! We all have the excitement of school starting again, because the first day of school spells F-R-E-E-D-O-M!!! Stay-at-home moms celebrate everywhere!! We set up dates with our friends to celebrate, plan out our days and all the things we are going to accomplish with all this FREE time! Its common knowledge, more things get accomplished when our kids are around. Its science, the kids aren’t around, no more playing referee, I can clean. The kids aren’t around, I can skip meals and fold the laundry. The kids aren’t around I can finally take a long hot shower and just relax. The kids are around I can get all the groceries quickly and not have to spend extra money on bribery. This is why we love school…..

We’re Moms, Moms are efficient. Mom’s get shit done. Mom’s process things at super fast speeds. Moms take care of business! Here’s the kicker, shortly after week one of back to school our “to-do lists” are done because were not used to having time. Then comes week two, off they go and we are left with all the time in the world. I start by cleaning, but it’s Murphy’s Law that the biggest messes in my house are generally by the TV or in the bedroom. As I start to clean I find maybe a baby toy or a stuffed animal that triggers memories of when they didn’t go away to school, now I miss them, now I need to sit on the couch or bed and feel sorry for myself because my kids are growing up and I miss them. Its only week two and I miss them (truth: it took me two hours to miss them). Now, I’m listening to my dryer buzz (not folding the laundry) while thinking that I spend way to much time cleaning, and organizing and not enough time with my kids. I get the motivation to change and now my long hot relaxing shower has turned to quick shower so I can hurry up run to the store to get back before the kids do so when they get home I can spend quality time with them. My trip to the store was suppose to be inexpensive because the kids are not with me to ask for this that and the other things, but guilty mom conscious kicks in and it turns into “oh they would love this!” or “oh, this is adorable!” So, now my great list of accomplishments has turned into the same thing as my daily routine. Spending too much money at the store, not giving myself enough time to clean, restarting the dryer 15 times to delay the folding. Its all back to normal except the kids are not around to distract me and I miss them.

It’s truly amazing to me what moms are capable of doing in small spaces, small time frames, and small budgets. If only we could keep the kids small to. Now that my girls are in the world of Kindergarten, my partial stay at home mom gig is coming to an end. My partial career retirement has stopped and I am going back to work full-time. Although the job is everything I wanted and worked for, I wish I didn’t have to. I wish I didn’t have to be an adult and work to get decent health insurance, I wish I could get my kids off the bus everyday and go to the 3pm PTO meetings, but I can’t. I can not and will not pass this job up especially when I know that by week three I will be accomplishing literally nothing when my kids aren’t home. The working mom guilt sucks but some of us have to do, some of us want to do, and some of us just do. We are moms we “just do” a lot of things with no questions asked. But me, I am totally the mom, who would be drinking on day one of school, because I miss them and don’t want them to grow up but just like this job you just have to.