Stay-At-Home Mom

I've heard the term "stay-at-home mom" for most of my life. My mom was a stay-at-home mom as were both my grandmothers. I've always known that I would be one too. For some reason, I have always pictured myself staying at home with my kids, but also working some of the time too. So,more like a 3/4 time mom and a 1/4 time worker.

Charlotte's baby Converse
are just a little bit too big.
She's still pretty gangsta.

Unfortunately I feel like I'm swimming upstream and it's rather frustrating. Today I had a voice lesson. Years ago, going to my voice lesson was as simple as walking up the park blocks with my music notebook. Now it's a 45 minute drive, pumping, arranging for someone to watch my baby, making sure I feed her before I leave, worrying about how she's doing the entire time I'm gone, and then a 45 minute drive home. Today it even included a stop off to the high school to grab the music that I'd forgotten whilst packing up my baby's stroller to leave last night. I finally feel like I'm in a place where I can grow professionally, it's just 10 times more work because I have a baby to care for.

I keep finding myself rather bitter at my assumed role. I didn't picture my baby needing to be held and played with and changed and fed every second of every day for this long. Surely she should be able to sleep without being held by now! Surely she should be able to play with toys for more than 5 minutes before getting frustrated and worked up into a tizzy. Apparently not.

The thing that keeps me sane is when I stop and enjoy the moments with my baby that I wouldn't have if I was working. Now she's rolling over on a daily basis. Paul finally saw her roll over for the first time today. She's growing and we just switched her into medium sized gDiapers today. She's also much more talkative, and much more responsive to her environment. I feel so conflicted when I send her off with babysitters while I'm teaching. On one hand it's really nice to do something besides cleaning or caring for my baby. On the other hand, it's all I can do not to run down the hallway to console my screaming kid. (She's always returned to me sleeping and happy, so it's really just me being paranoid) The video is of her playing her new favorite game.