A few weeks ago, shortly after we purchased our new car, I was going over our budget and got a little fire under me that it would definitely be nice to get a little extra income coming in each month. I’ve never felt comfortable pressuring my friends and family to buy things from me, so that ruled out about 89% of the available “work-at-home” mom jobs. Most of the jobs advertised in parenting magazines and on the web turn out to be scams, and I have generally tried to steer clear of get-rich-quick schemes. Even if I just sold my own stuff on eBay, I’d have to spend probably 8 hours of work just to bring in what Nick could do in one extra hour of contracting work in the evening. So that left me only with the prospect of having to get a real job. This is something I’ve rarely considered since Mylie was born. I made the decision in Junior High that I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. But, nevertheless, my Monthly Budget was calling out to me, reminding me of our exorbitant student loan bills (that were primarily for my education) and pleading to me to start contributing to the family assets.

So I did a quick search of job openings at local colleges in the area. And low and behold, I found a part-time job opening at Pacific University – a private university just down the road. Not only did the job description (managing the Campus Information Center) suit me to a tee, it was a part-time position. Part-time positions within the field in which I got my Masters Degree just don’t happen. They just don’t exist. Could it be possible that this job was MADE FOR ME? With a part-time position, I could have the best of both worlds!

So, on a whim, I revamped my resume and cover letter and sent them off that very night. I thought, I might as well throw something out there and see if it sticks. I can worry about the details later.

I didn’t hear back for a couple weeks, and started to put it out of my mind, when all of the sudden I got a call from the managing supervisor for the position. She left a message asking me to call back. So, I got my kids a bunch of snacks to keep them occupied, and returned the call.

“Sure, I have time to answer a few questions.” The sentence was barely out of my mouth when Mylie body-slammed Nolan, who screamed, and sent Mylie shrieking through the house like a banshee before she came back demanding more snacks. It was a great first impression. Nevertheless, she said she wanted to bring me to campus for a 1/2 day interview. So, I pulled out my best non-spit-up-stained grown-up clothes, did my hair and makeup (for once), found places for the kids to stay, and headed out to campus. The place felt like home (it could be my Alma Mater’s long lost twin). The people were great. The job description was perfect.

It took them less than 24 hours to offer me the job. This was something I wasn’t totally prepared for. I was expecting a couple weeks of interviews before they got back to me. But there they were with an offer of employment. The one sticking point was the schedule – I was being asked to come in every day for only four hours. With the cost of child care and the gas for the 20 minute drive each way, the actual take-home pay would be equal to or less what we’d have to pay a babysitter. The arrangement wasn’t working for me.

But then there were the pros – getting to do something with my (very expensive) education, getting back to a campus setting, making new contacts, a perfect-fit job, feeling like a contributor, yadda yadda yadda…

When I mentioned my schedule stipulations to the supervisor, she acquiesced and said she would settle for 3 longer days a week. This seemed to work better, as at least the schedule would be more manageable, and I could trade day-care if I wanted. And the job offer couldn’t have come at a better time. Beside the financial piece, I have been getting really worn out with this mommy-business over the last few weeks. My kids instinctively know how to tag-team me. Once I get one settled in and happy, the other one freaks out. Or they both freak out at once. Or one spends the morning jumping in his poo. Or the other one flat out refuses to put her poo in the toilet, instead preferring big girl panties as the better depository. Or she spends the day arguing with me, and doing absolutely everything she knows she’s not supposed to. And did I mention they’re both Mariah Carey-style screamers? My ear drums are dying a slow and painful death. In general, I’ve been feeling worn down and insufficient. I can’t get anything done, but I’m not entirely sure why not. My once strong and healthy sense of self-esteem has taken an unhealthy beating. Being away for 20 hours a week in a place where I could be sure to get some external praise started to look pretty appealing.

But something kept nagging at me. For all I know, it was just fear of the unknown. It’s been over 3 years since I was in the “workplace” after all. But whatever it was, it didn’t feel right. I struggled against the feeling for a long time. I ignored it. I looked for ways to make it work. I got lots of opinions. I talked it out. I prayed about it. I didn’t want to say ‘no’ only to regret it later. But I couldn’t bring myself to say ‘yes’ either.

And somewhere in my conversations, a wise and now well-traveled friend said something that brought everything to a head, and adjusted my attitude quite well.

“Sometimes it’s just nice to be reminded that being a stay-at-home mom is a choice, and not a life sentence.”

And that’s exactly it.

Staying at home with my kids has recently begun to feel like a life sentence. Perhaps it’s the terrible threes (which, I don’t care what they say – are WAY WORSE than the terrible twos). Perhaps it’s the major adjustment to two kids. Or maybe it was just that summer got started late this year. But for whatever reason, I was feeling like I was not the one in control of my life or of my circumstances. And that led to one crabby mommy….which created a couple crabby kids…. and the cycle continued – and intensified.

But in that one beautiful, glorious sentence, she changed my outlook. This is a choice I made. It’s a choice I made long before I had kids, or a husband or an education. I made the choice because, even at that age, I saw the difference I could make in kids’ lives – in my kids’ lives. I firmly believe that (for me) the greatest work I will ever do will be within the walls of my own home. And amazingly enough, I realized I do use that expensive education every day. And somehow, knowing that I have the choice to do whatever else I want to do, makes me want to stick it out and try even harder to get this right. I only have a few short years of them following after me, hanging all over my personal space and begging for attention, before they won’t want anything to do with me. And somehow, someday, Mylie will get potty-trained. Or else she better find a husband who’s willing to change her diapers (and she sure as heck better plan on changing MY diapers when I’m in the nursing home). Yes, this too shall pass.

I was sad and nervous to have to turn down the job. I felt guilty, as though I’d wasted their time. Hopefully, it will be a bridge built for the future, though, rather than a bridge burned. For now, I’ve had the attitude adjustment that I so desperately needed. This is a choice I’ve made, not once, but twice now, and I’m determined to get it right.

As previously alluded to, Nolan’s middle name is actually “No Fear”. He has been crawling for a couple of months, and now, at the ripe old age of 7 months is starting to tackle climbing. Great. Yesterday he made it up and over and off a (shallow) plastic bin full of toys. Today, he decided to tackle the stairs, in order to keep up with big sister. This week he also taught himself how to get to a sitting position from crawling. This has actually made our lives very nice, as he is much more easily entertained for longer periods of time. He can get where he wants to go, and then he can sit there and play for awhile. Oh, and did I mention he also learned how to open cupboards this week as well? Yes, I am currently attempting to procure baby gates to completely close my kitchen to anyone under 4 feet tall. I have a feeling this one’s going to keep me on my toes for sure.

We attended Nick’s company picnic on Saturday, which was a ton of fun! They had the greatest face-painting clown, and Mylie had a great time getting a beautiful butterfly. For the rest of the day she kept checking herself out in the mirror, and wiggling her cheeks, trying to make it fly. She also proudly showed it off to anyone who would look. She also mentioned that before she was a butterfly, she was a caterpillar and then a chrysalis. When it came time to go to bed, we had to have a ritual “releasing” of the butterfly, telling her that it had to fly home. She’s still talking about the butterfly going home, and asking why it had to leave… so sad!

I’ve been out of touch for a couple weeks. Mostly because I was too shell-shocked to write. And much of that was due to the fact that it was swimming lesson time for the Winters Kids. At some point during the spring, I thought it would be the perfect arrangment to sign both kids up for swimming lessons at the same time. As of June, Mylie was finally old enough to take lessons without me, so I could be free to take lessons with Nolan. And technically, it was the perfect plan.

What I didn’t account for was trying to navigate the locker room with the three of us, all wet and sloppy. Yikes. I have to say that our community pool does NOT have the most, shall we say, accomodating facilities. There are family changing rooms, but only 4 or 5, and with classes turning over with only a 10 minute break, you have sit waiting around for one for quite awhile. It would generally take 40 minutes after lessons just to get us showered off, dried, and clothed… That was with me going as fast as humanly possible, and neglecting to feed my poor starving baby. Mylie and I didn’t do our hair for the entire two weeks .

Other than that exhausting daily ritual, the lessons went over “swimmingly”. Haha, excuse the pun. I had spent a good 2 months preparing Mylie that she was going to have to be on her own with her teacher, without Mom. She’s VERY afraid of getting her face wet, though she loves jumping off the side of the pool and going down the big slide (can you say, contradiction?). But she did very well – much better than the two boys in her class, both of whom spent most of the two weeks crying on the side of the pool. Mylie more or less had her own private lessons. Especially because Nolan’s class started and ended 5 minutes late every day, so Mylie’s teacher just hung out with her in the pool for the extra 5 minutes. Thanks Kelsey!

Nolan, my “No Fear” child, loved the water, and was kicking and reaching from day one. He doesn’t even mind getting splashed, which was a nice change from my last 2 years of mommy & me swimming lessons. He even had a (fairly) good time going down the big water slide twice on the last day!

Unfortunately, good pictures are hard to get in the indoor pool, so we have few to exhibit. If you really want to see them swim, I guess you’ll just have to come with us sometime!

As the title of this blog is “Winters Kids,” I’ve generally reserved it for family related posts. But because I’ve been lazy in pulling the pictures off my camera lately (sorry, Grandma), I’m not in any position to post about swimming lessons just yet.

Instead, I’ve had a little soap box rant percolating in my head for a few days, that is just about to bubble over. So, my “devoted readers” are my lucky recipients.

Last week, John McCain’s top economic adviser, Phil Gramm set off a firestorm by saying we’ve become a nation of whiners, and that we are only in a “mental recession.” I was still trying to form my opinion on these statements when I heard a newscaster on the radio describing how the nation’s “energy crisis” continues to leave citizens in “dire” situations. Seriously. Crisis and dire were actual words used in the newscast. Funny enough, they didn’t do any human interest stories citing anyone in a “dire” circumstance. It was just a general, blazee statement thrown out to see where it would stick.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying things aren’t tight. And I’m not saying things aren’t difficult. I’m not saying that companies aren’t shedding a few pounds, and that there aren’t real people losing jobs or having a difficult go of it. We’ve had many friends and family members who have been negatively affected by their employers scaling back in the last few years. We, in fact, experienced a lay-off in December due to lack of work and a sluggish economy. And even now, we struggle to stay with in our gas and grocery budget each week, because prices are truly high. All that I agree with.

But, “crisis”? “Dire”? As an across-the-board label? I do have to say that I continue to have to wait in long lines for gas at Costco. I still get stuck in traffic jams. People may be driving less in general, but I haven’t seen a whole lot of change in my general areas of patronage. And I see at least 4 or 5 “Now Hiring” signs every single day.

Could it be possible that Phil Gramm had a point? My generation has never really experienced a recession. We’ve never had it hard. We’ve always had more credit than we know what to do with. Heck, I’ve never even put anything on lay-away, like I remember my parents doing. Nope, it’s buy now, worry about it later. So now we’re getting called on to cinch up the belt a little tighter, pay a little more attention. Is that all together a bad thing? Perhaps, but it hardly qualifies as dire.

I keep thinking about a lesson I had on forest fires back in elementary school. Every few years, it’s actually healthy for a forest to experience a forest fire. The forest essentially cleanses itself, renews, and comes back stronger. Of course, the major catastrophic fires are different, but I see this economic slowdown more like one of those “cleansing” fires. Things have to go in cycles, that’s just the way life works. But I sure am sick of the media playing into the frenzy, and in most cases causing the problem, if not just exacerbating it. What goes up, must come down. But I sure don’t think we’ve bottomed out, and I don’t think we’re anywhere close, as some people would have you think.

Unfortunately, to top everything off, it seems everyone is calling on government to bail us out. Excuse me? Since when is it my responsbility as a tax-payer to bail out an enormous corporation like Freddie Mac, who made bad business decisions? I sure hope the government will bail me out the next time I make a bad business decision.

But actually, I don’t. If the government gets in the business of bail-outs, nobody will learn anything from this slowdown. It won’t matter what kind of business decisions or personal decisions you make in the future, because Big Brother will be there to save you! Instead of clearing out all the underbrush, this fire will merely allow it to grow thicker, creating the tender and ripe conditions for a catastrophic fire in the future.

I, for one, stand up and cheer Mr. Gramm for calling it as it is. We are a nation of whiners, and if what we’re experiencing now is such a crisis, I shudder to see what’s down the road, when our mental recession can no longer be controlled by Prozac.

What do you think? I’m open for discussion…