Though I’ve always hoped that the stories I share here are entertaining to you all, I’ve had a special hope that reading about the challenges and joys I’ve experienced as a mom are helpful to other moms — maybe helpful in showing you that you’re not alone, maybe helpful in sharing interesting lessons I learned the hard way, maybe helpful in giving you a laugh on a bad day. I’ve also thought that reading how our family life has changed over the years might help moms of little ones to see what’s ahead, and moms of older ones to “remember those days.”
Our life as a family feels like it’s changed rapidly and drastically in the past year or so with my oldest graduating high school and going away to college, which you might remember having read about (a few times!). Another thing that’s been a big change for us is that I started working at an outside-the-house job last year, which is what I want to write about today.
When I first started writing this column fourteen years ago and for many years after, I titled it “Saratoga SAHM,” with “SAHM” standing for “stay-at-home mom.” Several years ago I changed it to “Mothering Boys,” in part due to the fact that the “SAHM” part felt a little misleading — though I thought of myself as a stay-at-home mom, I meant it in the sense that I had no outside-the-house responsibilities that weren’t connected to the kids, and that almost any non-mom thing I spent time doing could be dropped in a second to tend to the kids.
But I was starting to feel like “WAHM” was a more accurate acronym for me — “work-at-home mom” — since I had always spent quite a bit of time working on professional things: mostly writing (always writing! Many of which have been opportunities with the Saratoga TODAY family of publications, which I’ve loved), some editing/proofreading, and I even had a small ministry/business for several years doing baby name consultations for expectant parents. These things were all extremely flexible — things I could work on as I was able, in between diaper changes and nursing the baby, school drop-offs and pick-ups and baseball games and swimming lessons, making dinner and doing laundry, while sitting on the couch in the middle of the kids in clothes that had been spit up on.
These were things I spent time doing in large part because I enjoyed them. Knowing that I had the capability of doing non-baby things kept me sane on bad days, and my babies also inspired me — this column, for example, has been such a gift to me, as it requires me, on a monthly basis, to record some aspect of our family life as it currently is, and going back to read through articles I wrote years ago never fails to make me laugh and cry and remember things I’d forgotten. But I also knew that keeping up with these professional pursuits helped me keep a foot in the door for the time when I would almost certainly be going back to work outside the home.
That time came last year — I found a job that was absolutely perfect for me and my family: it’s part-time and flexible, and it’s tailor-made for my professional background and experience. When I started, I was able to work three evenings a week, which worked out really well in terms of continuing to do school drop-offs and pick-ups and figure out after-school sports and other extra-curricular activities, as well as schedule all the kids’ doctor and dentist appointments, and keep them home without stress when they were sick (also: we were still deep in COVID). My job is down near Albany, so three evenings a week I piled the boys into the van and drove there, where my husband would meet me coming from work in Albany; we’d switch vehicles and he’d bring the boys home and take care of dinner and bedtime while I went to work. I was so pleased that I could continue doing all the mom things, and also be able to spend some time working and contributing to the family in a new way. The biggest downside was probably the fact that my then three-year-old would often fall asleep on the drive down at 5:30, which wasn’t great, since he’d then be up until 11:00, but then again, I’d get home at 10:15 so I’d be able to see him and put him to bed. Not too bad!
This year, I had the ability to switch to mostly daytime hours and to work a bit more, which I was excited about. It involved making a switch for my littlest guy’s schooling — his brothers never attended full-day school until Kindergarten, but I took advantage of the option for my youngest for his three-day-a-week program. Fortunately, he seems far readier for it than any of his brothers did at that age, and he has been loving it!
One major challenge we’ve had this year, though, has been figuring out how to deal with our annual months-long Sick Season. Ohmygoodness. Trying to figure out how to properly care for sick kids who need to stay home from school when both parents work at in-person daytime jobs is a task!
Especially now, at the tail end of the pandemic, where even very mild symptoms are still being taken seriously and remote work isn’t as possible as it used to be. My husband and I have found ourselves trying to plan ahead as much as possible for different scenarios that involve little kids who can’t be left home alone for any amount of time (big kids are a bit more flexible this way) and symptoms that are mild enough that my mom could possibly be asked to provide some care or oversight (depending on the severity), while taking into account the demands and preferences of our jobs (which change depending on the day of the week). It’s not even November and we’ve already had several kids home sick for varying amounts of days. Ohmygoodness. If we come up with a good system, I may write about it in the future in case it’s helpful to any of you (and if any of you have good tips or strategies that you’ve found helpful in this regard, please feel free to email me!).
These bumps in the road remind of other such times of often hard and stressful adjustment that we’ve gone through — good things like adding a new baby into the family; sad things like caring for my dying mother-in-law; new things like my oldest going to college — all of it necessary, all of it requiring patience and perseverance, all of it part of the fabric of family life. Things always shake out and settle down again and the “new” becomes the “normal.” It’s sometimes hard to believe that when you’re going through it, but it’s true!
Kate and her husband have seven sons ages 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8, and 4. Email her at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
