I read an article today about how women are increasingly the primary breadwinners for their families. Though this is largely driven by single-mom households, the numbers are still increasing for married women with kids. Stay-at-home dads are a small but growing segment of our society.
Coondog, Ladybug and I are a one income family. That income comes from me. Our arrangement works for us and is how God set up our lives when we asked for direction. It's not always easy, especially living out here where we seem to be the only family in the entire region running this way. What's hard for me, besides the time away from my little girl, is that I want to do all the homemakery things stay-at-home moms do. I read blogs about women sewing cool things, doing great craft projects with their kids and cooking with fresh veggies grown in their backyard gardens. I lament not having the time to do this.
Then I remember that even when I am home, I have a 1 year old. If I tried to sew, she would "help" me by getting into the pins and moving the fabric while I tried to cut it. Critical pattern pieces would disappear only to be discovered months later inside a shoe at the back of a closet. I would only get things like that done when Coondog was home to watch her so I wouldn't have any more time for it than I do now.
Ladybug and I don't do elaborate craft projects, but only because she's too little. I tried to get her to put stickers on a piece of paper awhile back to make a birthday card. She thinks stickers should be picked off papers, not left on them so we ended up with unadorned paper. Not very celebratory. She has started to color and we do that together sometimes but that largely consists of her spending 30 seconds scribbling on paper then wondering around the room asking to draw on everything in sight. So basically, we're doing crafts to the the level of her capabilities.
I'm sitting at my desk eating lunch as I write this. I'm eating a sandwich on homemade bread. I don't knead it by hand or grind my own flour but I did dump everything in a bread machine and it's delicious. Plus there is a lot less mess to clean up with a bread machine. My garden has a mind of its own right now because Ladybug likes to take off toward high grass (snake territory!) while I'm trying to work in it. I'm okay with that. What grows this year grows. What doesn't, doesn't. Store bought veggies aren't the end of the world. Most of our meals are actually made from scratch (if you count jarred sauces which I do) since we do our best to avoid corn syrup and hydrogenated oils. Since we're mid-remodel, I do this cooking without a traditional stove/oven. We gave our microwave away long ago because we didn't use it. Food tastes better reheated in a toaster oven. I don't revel in doing things the hard way, but upon reflection it is pretty homemakery to do extra work to serve my family healthy meals.
I guess life is closer to what I want it to be than I thought. I asked for God's guidance and this is the situation He put me in. He is working for my best so there is no better. Best always beats better. I need to remember that next time I think things would be better if _____ was different. Knowing me, that will be in about 5 minutes. :P
~MM
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