My Lifetime Goal: To Raise My Kids Myself

Today I informed Branden how important it is to me that I raise my children. I don't want them in daycare, no family member is going to watch them and I am NOT going to let them just run amok while I work as he likes to say him mom did. (She did NOT. His aunt watched him until he was old enough to know better than to play in the street, etc.)

I've told him in the past that I was going to stay home with my kids. Today I really stressed that I want, no, I NEED to be there for all the firsts and all the falls and all the funny moments. I need to be a mom who provides lasting memories for her children. They need to remember me helping them climb the monkey bars and letting them "paint" with their feet and encouraging them to bring me little treasures. I need my kids to remember reality not TV, remember places we went not places they saw on Discovery Channel, remember made-up games not video games, remember me holding them when they cried not somebody at the daycare holding them. In short, I need my children to know that I loved them and that I cared enough about them to be there.

I know that you can work and still let your children know you love them. I have no doubt in my mind that certain working moms I know have children who feel very loved. But there are also things that those moms miss out on and, though I don't ever hold it against them that they are working, those moms will never get those moments back. I realize that it is sometimes absolutely necessary that both parents work... I have told Branden that we will find a way to make it with one parent working or me only working part time because it is that important to me.

My whole life I've wanted to be a mom and, to me, part of that is taking care of my children myself. He thinks it's stupid for us to be paying off my student loans when I'm not using the schooling. What he doesn't understand is that I'm ALWAYS using the schooling and it will still be there when our kids start school and I can work again. I told him that I wouldn't have even bothered with school if I had thought at that point in my life that I was going to find someone who wanted to marry me. It's true. I liked school and I'm glad I went but this job- and the schooling that goes with it- are just things to pass the time until I can raise a family. THAT is my ultimate goal and it means more to me than money or any business.

I think part of his not understanding is the way he was raised. His mom worked from the time he was born until I made more sense for her to stop... It's a long story involving taxes and trucks. He was with his aunt or on his own when she was working and he wasn't in school. That was just the way it was for him. It's not that his mother didn't ever take care of him or that she loved him less than my mother loved me, as far as I can tell she loved/loves him very much. He is her only child and they are quite close- thankfully not in an interfering way, though. She was a single mother until he was four and almost a single mother afterward as his father- really step, but the only dad he's ever known- is a long-haul trucker. She did what she felt she needed to do and I cannot fault her.

I was raised by a mom who stayed home, babysat people's kids and taught dance, tumbling and baton in her living room so she could be with her kids. My mom didn't have a job with a regular-type paycheck until I was in fourth grade and she drove school bus. Even then she could take the little kids with her. My mom worked hard to give us all those memories that I want to create. We were poor, my parents struggled, but it was important to her that she be there as much as possible while we grew up... So she was. Even when I was CONVINCED that she didn't love me and I MUST be adopted because she'd NEVER treat her own child so horribly... Somewhere inside I always knew that I was one of the most important things to her- one of nine as it turns out... Ten when you add in my dad.

I doubt that I'll be a super mom like some of the women I've had a chance to meet. I will never be as amazing as Katie or as creative as Stacy or as much of many other great things that I could list about many other great women... Though I do have a shot at being as CRAZY as my own mom. But one thing, one of the most important things, that I have a goal to be is THERE. I will decorate wedding cakes at my house with a toddler in a high chair banging a spoon if I have to, but I will find a way to be there with my children and I know they will remember that I was... And maybe it will mean enough to my daughter that she will vow to be home with her children, too.