Wow I remember when blogging used to be such a big part of my life! A great way to document what I did with the kids and look back on how they have grown! But most importantly to give the family a place to look and follow while being so far away in our journeys as a military family!
I can't believe I haven't blogged in over a year! I stayed at home for 11yrs and then I decided to return to work and in that year and a half I worked it just seemed like spare time was very rarely something I had! When I did have free time I didn't think to sit down and blog or update because I was to tired or enjoying a nice glass of wine and recouping from it all!
I also didn't feel I had a lot of exciting things to blog about for anyone to really care or follow haha I did lots of fun activities working at the catholic preschool with the little ones daily but I shared those fun crafts on pinterest or facebook for everyone to see and get ideas if they wanted something fun to do with their little ones but not nearly enough interest for a blog! And I didn't have as many pictures to show all the fun since it was of children not of my own haha
Returning to work was fun and man was it nice to get out of the house and feel like someone other than just "mom" to feel that I could still do other things and contribute to the house hold income! It started out very very part time no more then 15 hours a week and wasn't to bad when it was during the time the kids were in school or at first in the mornings when my husband would take them to school but after school quickly became very hard to deal with.
I give a huge props to my husband for holding it all together and playing not only dad holding down a full time job but being Mr. Mom as well! Not just Mr Mom doing pick ups from school but holding down the fort, playing dance mom and carting two girls to dance, one to football, one to wrestling, baseball, whatever it may be! I could see it starting to really put stress on him and that started putting stress on us. It killed me not being able to help him more. It killed me to miss out on so much and not see my kids in dance class, not see them at practice.. or even worse one of them would leave for practice about 20 min before I got home and be gone til 9pm at night. So I didn't see him longer then to feed him and put him to bed.
I know many parents "have" to work and they do what they have to do to provide and that doesn't mean they miss their kids any less then I did and I don't expect a pity party by any means but being the mom that had firmly decided to stay at home with my kids and did for so long it killed me. We had planned for me not to go to work til they were all in school, only during school hours and only party time. But I got stir crazy a the new duty station where I found it hard and felt lost. I was used to a large army family and community where people were searching for things to do, searching for that new army family, searching for playdates and to get out and meet others and stay busy! I think a big reason it's not found here as easy is because a lot of people come here for a year andx then they are gone so they don't have much time to settle before they leave again. And while there are deployments it doesn't seem as ordinary to have so many with deployed spouses here who are looking for people to lean on and the comfort. The few I've met I'm of course not in that situation at the moment so I'm not doing the same type things like getting together for dinners with our kids and keeping each other from being lonely. It's just been all around different. Everyone I seemed to click with all worked. That was something new for me as I was used to having all stay at home mom friends and it was strange to have the friend who worked.
Maybe I was going through some type of mid life crisis all of the sudden? I mean I did hit 30 here which is not that old but I just felt lost. Like something wasn't complete.
So in effort to hope that my youngest didn't get deprived of the social time they all had I put her I a 2 day preschool against my better judgment. I say this because I didn't do it with my other children so young. Heck I had a hard time sending them to preschool and we homeschooled for a long time too. So I cried that she left me so willingly and I was bored and went to work and made friends for myself lol She thrived off it! She loved it! I wasn't used to that! The other kids didn't adjust so well to leaving me so young. Man that killed me! This is the baby! I'm supposed to have more time! I'm not ready for this!
So the last few months I just felt lost in did I make the right choices for our family. My oldest starting middle school and changing so much. Me not being here for him as much as I had hoped and him going through new emotions and changes and just not seeming himself. My youngest no longer a baby. Was it all worth it.
My middle two children have autism and my oldest one with it really transformed from all of his therapy. My daughter was diagnosed 2yrs ago and I beat myself up for not going sooner. For not putting my foot down more while arguing that year trying to get her seen to be evaluated and find a place while Tricare continued to mess up our referrals. I beat myself up for not seeing it sooner. She didn't get the opportunities for help that my son did. We finally get her diagnosed but the closest place was an hour away and that was next to impossible to get her seen for therapy as much as we needed her to be by the time we commuted an hour there and an hour back and me working and her in school. I really hated that she was not getting the same opportunities but then the lady who diagnosed her actually left the center and opened a local place here in town! Yay! We finally have a chance to start getting things on track! So she started therapy and it started helping her some while we waited for an ABA therapist to come locally and now there is one! During this time she seems to be doing worse. She's isolating herself, not wanting to go to school, having problems socially, will skip meals, stemming and hurting herself, very emotional and just over all does so much better at home. She's dropped out of so many activities I've tried to put her in. She has however stuck with dance still! She liked that when she did it last year so that has been a win win so far! But a lot of changes were made and I decided to give up trying to work after school then wound up staying at home with some changes at work and we have decided to homeschool her again even though the two oldest will remain in school.
It's almost like my life went from one big lump of stress to calm again. Everything feels at ease. Even though some of the reasons the change brought us to the choices were very stressful and I shouldn't be so calm I am now.
Maybe it will be my time to return to work in a year or so. Right now apparently this was God's way of saying I needed to be here, I needed to focus on Brooklyn being at home, I needed to focus on what my oldest is going through and feeling and be available to him more, I need to be less stressed for my husband and more available to him for our marriage. Whatever it may be, there's a reason for it all and I don't regret that my life changed for a short time because I think we needed to see that importance of me being at home that was being taken for granted and I needed to financially help while we pulled out of a mess from a bad rental situation and car repairs!
But for now my place is at home again! And you will probably see more blogs from me to keep my sanity where I lack getting to talk to other humans face to face haha
Post a Comment