My "Stay at Home" Mentality

If people out here ask what I do I say I'm a full-time mom instead of a stay-at-home mom. This is not to say that moms who hold jobs in addition to raising kids are in some way not full-time moms. They are more like massively underpaid overtime moms I think. It's just a way of pointing out that while I work from home I don't actually get a paycheck and I don't stay home every day watching soap operas and eating Bon Bons (I don't even watch Oprah). Ask me how much of the inauguration coverage I got to hear (the TV was on all day, regardless of whether or not I got to sit and listen to anything) while staying at home and you'll see that life at home can be just as distracting as life in an office. So my rewards and incentives have to come from the little things. The fact that I don't have a dress code--hooray for sweats on a chilly, cloudy day!--counts for a lot when contemplating the benefits of being a full-time mom. While I don't stay at home all the time, there are some days where I just enjoy the "quietude" of our little house and the fact that I can enjoy my kids on their schedule. Today after Norah's morning nap, for example, we walked down to Jupiter Point beach and threw shells into the water. Toby had a blast all bundled up in his snow suit trudging through the dirty snow on the side of the road. He jumped in almost every puddle on the way there and slid across every icy driveway possible.
The other day we baked cookies and took a plate next door to the construction workers. Our neighbor (back from 6 months on a sub) is getting an addition put on and the workers provide a lot of entertainment for Toby (the construction part, not the language part, although they are pretty mindful when they actually see us out and about).
We're looking into preschools for Toby and BJ and I are kind of divided on what to look for. He thinks that Toby should take 2 years of preschool and then start kindergarten reading. I feel like he needs more socialization and organized play time and the reading will come along just fine. Right now he's in his room pouring through a bag of new library books. He loves to read already. (Side note: we're sick of Toby's bed time stretching out until 9 or 9:30 so we're starting the process of dropping precious nap time....more on that later.) We'll see what middle ground we reach by the time Toby's 4 and we actually start him in a program.