Hello Beautiful Mamas and Ladies!

Please let me start by saying that this list does not in any way help you get your kids ready in the morning. I am also not blind to the fact that unless you get up before them you may still not be able to get ready. I have CRAZY mornings with 4 little kids and one on the way and I do not get to do all of the things I want to get ready every day.

However, I have found these things have been making it much easier for me to feel put together somewhat. So here we go!

Hair Dryer Brush

This thing is a game changer for me. I feel like it cut down dry time by like 15 minutes and if you have ready any other posts, you may know I struggle with postpartum hair loss. So I don’t feel like I have a ton of hair anyway. I have seen other people talk about these things too and they can get great blowout-like hair styling from it. Now I have naturally coarse, frizzy hair and it is hard for me to achieve that kind of smooth without a hot tool to smooth it down. I also am dealing with a lot of little hairs that are growing back in so they are slightly hard to manage with this brush. But all in all, I think it is worth it. I will link the one I have but I think that there may be better ones. Mine seems great but a slightly smaller one might be better for some purposes.

Plaine Products Styling Gel

This stuff is great. It is a clean product and the company has metal bottles so you can return them. It smooths my frizz, helps my hair curl and allows me to leave it without doing anything. A win for days we are running behind and all I get to do is shower.

IT Cosmetics Foundation

Ok like I said before I am really interested in clean products but I haven’t fully moved over to everything clean. This powder covers all my issues on my face. I rarely wear make-up these days (pandemic anyone?) but if I do I feel better when it actually makes my skin look even. I love that it is buildable but also I struggle slightly with getting it everywhere equally. Still a win for a woman who has no time and wants to actually look presentable in the morning!

Sweatpants!

This seems so damn obvious given the state the world is in. Screw pants! Unless you have to go to work then I get it, but working from home and now being a stay at home mom, all I need is a nice, soft pair of sweats. Also if you don’t feel frumpy in them, they can be dressed up a little. In a sporty way. But a form fitting pair is kind of like leggings without them being so stuck to you. Anything you like will do but here are some that I like.

Castor Oil

For me and my mostly never wearing make-up days, oil is great. It cleans the gunk off at night and I just wipe it all with water and a washcloth. I also use it as a base to be add frankincense, tea tree and neem oil for acne and anti-aging. You can get a squalene oil which is excellent for moisturizing or you can do vitamin E also great for that. I love that it is a couple drops and smear it on while running downstairs to make breakfast.

There you have it! 5 things that I think help me a lot. Even if there are days I still get to do none of them in the morning. They are easy enough to do throughout the day and still feel put together. I like it more if I get it all done in the A.M. but I am a realist.

If this helps you out let me know! Do you have any great tips or products to get ready?

Just to be clear, all moms are working moms. And the fact that SAHM, short for Stay at Home Moms, are now being listed as a job in many publications of employment types. That is not only important to me because I might become one, it is important that all moms are recognized for the work they are doing. We are raising the next generation to be better than the last. We are molding humans to be more than their gender, allowing emotions to show of all kinds, appreciating all levels of melanin in the color of skin, showing we are all better together and allowing kids to be who they are. That is the most important job in the f***ing world. Period.

I have always been a working out of the home mom or since the pandemic, a working in the home mom. And I loathe it. I hate being without my babies even though I am pretty sure I would lose my sh** staying home. But I WANT TO. I want to be the person that gets to see all their firsts. I want to be the one to make them a nutritious lunch. I want to be the person teaching them their ABC’s.

It is already too late for a lot of that. My oldest is an adult. I was a single mom with him and would never have had the chance to stay home. The rest of my babies are 6, 5, 3, and 18 months. There is still a lot of time left even if it isn’t with some of them being little. I could homeschool and have even more time with them.

I have always had a decent salary but I work at a financial institution and the benefits were what I really couldn’t let go. Although we needed my income anyway. But my husband can get benefits. They are just not quite as good nor as inexpensive.

How do you know if you can be a SAHM?

That is the question here. And my answer like anything, is you have to jump and just try it. Clarity follows action. However here are the other things I made sure of before deciding to do this because you can’t do it if one income can’t support you.

Make sure one income can support you.

This seems obvious but I mean really, really make sure. Write out your bills-ALL OF THEM. And I mean things you forget too. Haircuts, subscriptions, medical co-pays, when you buy $40 worth of makeup every 3 months. Write it all down. Try to price out yearly items and break them into a monthly item. I did this over days because I knew I wouldn’t get it all in one sitting. I still don’t think I have it all!

Have a back up plan.

What if one income is not working for you? What will you do? You can’t just keep going hoping that it will fix itself. Set yourself up for success. Give your employer the normal time notice or maybe more so if you want to come back you have left on good terms. OR have other options in the pipeline. I had a wonderful interview with a company that I didn’t end up working with. But they remember me and reach out with openings. Maybe neither of those work and you just want to sell things to make extra cash, you could start a blog or e-commerce store. Ultimately be prepared to have to do something else.

Talk with your partner.

Have a deep, difficult conversation about what this will mean. Talk about your roles and what should or should not change at home even though you no longer work outside of it. Ask questions about their feelings about it. Will they feel left out? Will you feel overwhelmed? Will they resent you for not working? Will you resent them for being able to leave the house? There are some things that you just can’t know until you are in the thick of it. But having and keeping an open conversation about what you both need now and in the future will be the most important thing.

Plan your days.

Hahahhahahahha. I know what you are thinking, plan your days with kids?! Lolololololol. I would be thinking that too! I am not suggesting you can keeps kids to a plan. EVER. I mean walking out the door on time for ANYTHING is a feat! No, no what I am suggesting here is that you make a general plan-an idea-if you will, of things to do and accomplish in your days. Maybe just a list of all the things that you could do with the kids in any given month. So when it comes time and you are struggling to keep your sanity, you have a list of things that can occupy them. These are not the chores you need to get done or your household duties. You can make a separate list for those. And let me tell you-I think planning those items out is important too.

Alternatively, maybe a loose schedule of things you can do all day would be helpful as well. It will probably never end up going on the order you planned it. (Like we said above-kids.) But having a itinerary definitely keeps you from running around wasting your days with no idea what is going on or where the time has gone.

Ask someone else for advice.

We all must know someone that is a SAHM. Asking advice is always a good idea. Ask how they do it, what is working and what doesn’t. Are they living a life like you hope to live with your kids? Find out their processes and see what you can implement in your life.

Also find out how it affects their relationship if you are close enough to do so. Are there things they wish they would have thought of or talked about with their partner. Do they have a process in place to keep communication open? Are they still working as a team? You get the gist.

I will soon be answering some of these questions for myself and will become a certified expert in SAHM work. Don’t forget to ask me if you are going to make the switch.

Are you working as a stay at home mom or outside the home?

Look I get that a lot of dads do stuff and I get that they help a lot. I have that husband and he is an amazing husband and dad. But that will not stop the invisible load of motherhood.

This is a term I learned from @happyasamother now @momwell on instagram and let me tell you what an eye opener. I had never had a word that told me what it was that I was experiencing.

The invisible load of motherhood refers to all the things that moms are thinking about that seems to solely be a female thing. And it is in every area of parenting and life really. It is the weight that we carry that no partner will probably ever be able to understand. We carry weight for things that don’t even matter.

Can I tell you something? What I hate most about the invisible weight that my husband does not have, is that, I most often feel it because he simply seems not to care. If I am struggling to get my child or children to sleep and we are out of town for example, but he wants to visit with people or do something more fun. He sometimes simply acts as if there is nothing he can do and leaves me to it. In that moment, I might be on the brink of tears or ready to shoot my rage at all of them. And very often, he knows it but prefers to pretend that it is not happening. Or finally I may get a guilt ridden, do you really need help question. Now I am not an old school woman. I work full time and do most of the child rearing but I don’t think this is solely my job nor does he.

So what is this then? Why are women disproportionately given the work of parenting and household management? Why can’t my husband learn to figure out how to help me?

I DON’T KNOW!! It seems so obvious to me. Also every other woman I know would see it too. I do however have some ideas on what we can do to fix it.

You aren’t going to like this but hear me out. Talk to your partner. I know this is not easy and basically means we are asking for help, ew, but we have to do it if we want anything to change. I don’t mean in broad terms either. I mean lay it out, step by step. There can be no confusion. If you are still waiting for someone to read your mind, you will be waiting for..ever. You must be clear. Dear, I need you to hold this one and keep them out of the room while I get the other to sleep. OR Dear, I need you to do it all tonight because I need a full nights rest. When I realized that in order to get what I need, I had to spell it out, I was a little upset. I mean we are programmed to think that some man is going to understand our every need and complete us. That sh** ain’t real ladies.

What is real is explaining to your partner what you feel like when you are doing ALL. THE. THINGS. Truly telling him the angst, anxiety, depression, sadness, rage, anger and/or helplessness you feel. As well as the complete aloneness for being left to rear children alone. EVEN IF it is not all the time or most the time. Your feelings are valid. There is more to each task for a woman. There just is.

It is no one’s fault. We just think and act in different ways. Women are more all encompassing and men are more singular. Women tend to know, see and be everything for everyone. Men tend to be… not. Women also tend to self sacrifice to the end. I have had days where I don’t remember to go to the bathroom until 5 PM! Tell me a man that doesn’t immediately go to the bathroom the nanosecond he thinks he gets the urge to maybe poop even if he just did that 20 minutes ago! I’ll show you my next husband.

Ok kidding. I really don’t want to do that but that would be some soul mate sh$@.

Please follow happyasamother. She does such a great job showing it in infographics.

Have you gotten on board with speaking to your partner like this?

I always told my mom that I didn’t want kids. I wonder if it was some sort of retaliation from her slinging the phrase ..”when you have kids of your own…” followed by how I would understand. Understand the horrible wrong she was doing me? Yea, right. You know, keeping me from hurting myself gravely, hanging out with a seedy crowd or doing some other activity that was unbecoming of her daughter.

But I was wrong AND I showed her, because I got pregnant at 17! Ok, joking, I did get pregnant but definitely not on purpose and not to spite my mother. Love you Mom! But I must have snuck under her radar because I was surely getting in trouble if I could pregnant.

Well that changed that. Now I was a mom and I loved it. It was horribly hard. My mom bailed me out more than once, more than a dozen times. And I struggled SO MUCH. But I loved and still love being his mom. And now, I love being all of their mom. Because now I have a grand total of 5! Even after the first though, I thought for sure that I wouldn’t have any more. But I am so glad I did. Well I am glad WE did. You know, me and my hubs.

It is the greatest, bittersweet, rewarding and frustrating journey that I think I will ever be on. But such is life right?

And onward to something you can actually do with this post!

What can you do to cherish the time with the little people you have more? Here are some tried and true ideas.

Play with them.

Ooh so simple yet so hard. Do I want to pretend my dollie is the ice queen waiting to be rescued by some dude, again? Or try to do a cartwheel at my age and current fitness level? Not especially. But do I want to look back and think about doing a somersault instead of the cartwheel, executive decision based on my fit test, and seeing their faces light up like it was Christmas?! Hell yes I want that. I want them to remember that when they asked me to play, I didn’t always have something else to do. When they asked me to play I want them to remember me playing.

Write things down.

When they say that funny thing and you don’t want to forget, write it down. Put a note in your phone. Have a notebook. Something. Just save it so you can read it later. Make sure you put context to it. It may not be easy to understand without it. Then it is just the same as forgotten anyway.

Send them emails.

I have currently made all of my children emails. I write them emails sporadically. I would love to be more regular but honestly the stress that induces to think about, I don’t even want to endure. Plus I am busy playing with them and writing down every cute thing they do, remember? Actually sometimes what I write to them are the things I want to remember. I also want them to know what it felt like to me. Someday I will give them the password and they can read all of them.

There are 3 easy (sort-of) things to do to be more present with your kids. Enjoy the time you have a little more with them and hopefully let them remember you.

How do you stay present with your kids?