As of two weeks ago, I am a full blown, 100%, stay-at-home-mom (sahm).  The commitment I had made to my company was to give between 8-10 hours per week, which, I know sounds like something any of us could do without even blinking… However, the deal was that I would do this work from home while my daughter napped. I suppose at some level I knew it’d be a temporary situation, as obviously babies do not keep up that heavenly schedule of sleeping MOST of the day, but when Quinn abruptly shifted her naps from 4 down to 2 a day so quickly - I was a bit shell-shocked. I tried to “squeeze” in my 8-10 hours but the attempt was quite pathetic. She’d go down, I’d pick-up a few things around the house, maybe wash a dish or two then I’d head upstairs settling in to do some work, and 15 minutes later she was awake. I’d give a *sigh* of frustration and leave the pile of work there for the next time.

After almost 3 weeks of playing this game, I finally realized… things were not going back to the way they were. (Hey, listen, I never said I was quick on the uptake…) I returned the box of work, 2/3rd’s complete, said my goodbyes and my “yes, we’ll be coming back to visit often” remarks and off we went. A very anticlimactic ending to something that has been the constant in my life for over 8 years.

It was a couple of days later that I began feeling sad about ending the nearly perfect situation with my employer. While I only went in once a week to return/collect more work, that visit, plus watching the stream of department emails come and go, was my lifeline to the “working” world. The last morsel of my “old” self. I tried to log into my work email in the hopes that someone forgot to disable my account but…  I no longer existed. I spoke to Jake about it and he said what most guys (dudes, sorry for generalizing) would say, “I thought this is what you wanted”. I replied with, “yes it is, but, I’m still sad about it.” I know you’re probably familiar with this predictable male-to-female conversation format that occurs on a semi-regular basis in our house (man hears woman declare feelings, man gives solution, woman doesn’t WANT solution, she just wants him to LISTEN. Man can’t JUST listen, must give ACTION, SOLUTION, ANSWERS to stop woman from “declaring of feelings”.) Sorry, I digress — the fundamental differences between the way men and women communicate is for another post, on another day.

After my mourning/moping stage, the idea of this new found “freedom” began to take shape in my head.  See, even though I was only working while she was sleeping, I never ventured off too far, due to her frequent naps and the fact that I didn’t want to be caught out-and-about while she napped in the car, because “naptime” was always my “work-time”.

So during the first week and a half, I found myself with more freedom, yet I didn’t quite know what to do with it. As a result, I defaulted to our typical stopping grounds — Safeway, Fred Meyer’s and the ever so wonderful, money-sucking Target. However, when our fridge was stocked and there was not one more baby item I could justify purchasing at Target, I realized that Quinn and I need some new “activities”.

I made my way through the Urbanmamas calendar section… and payed a bit closer attention to the “puddle jumpers” mailing list I am a part of and selected a couple of things to attend.

The first was this, the World’s Biggest Playdate. It was very entertaining and I’m sure Quinn will take away a decent cold or two, thanks to the “community” toys she managed to shove in her mouth. There were lots of babies, live music, and Elmo!

Then on Friday we spent the day at OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science & Industry) with my friend Janna & Eve. Eve is 13 months old and quiet the little role-model for Quinn. We played for a couple of hours at the museum and then put the babies in their respective strollers and went on a 4 mile stroll. The girls did wonderful and only in the last 15 minutes did Quinn start to fuss, but it was short-lived because she quickly crashed in the car. Next on the agenda is Gym Class at Gymboree on Tuesday & Library time on Friday.

The challenge to these “outings” is to look for things that are free, or very inexpensive at the least.  I’m excited about the Gymboree gym class, but at 65 bucks a month, I’m gonna stick with my “free class” pass and seek out other options.

My hope is to have an “activity” at least 3 time a week for her, and while this is mainly for Quinn’s benefit, these outing do mamma some good as well.  Being cooped up in a (non-gigantic) house with a baby begins to wear on my nerves after a while. And now that I’m getting the hang of this SAHM thing, I’m sort of getting excited about the things she and I can fill our days with.