Hellobee

I’ve been pretty absent lately, and my only excuse is I haven’t really known what to say about life the last few months. I’m still not sure if I can write anything that accurately conveys what it’s been like around here, but I want to give it a shot.

Since long before I was married or even knew Mr. Blue, I wanted to stay-at-home when I had kids. When the boys were born, staying home was not an option I could consider both for financial reasons and due to commitment to serve two years in my position at the time. I wrote several posts about my thought process on trying to decide what to do as we considered what we wanted after my position ended in September. After considering a lot of angles, the news that we would be welcoming Baby #3 about 4 months after my job ended helped make the decision for us.

Having decided that I would stay-at-home until the new baby was at least a few months old, I started mentally preparing for what would undoubtedly be a massive transition for all of us. This decision would make our finances super tight, I would suddenly have very little adult interaction, and our general family dynamics would shift as we left the world of two working-outside-the-home parents. I said multiple times that I thought I needed to give myself until the beginning of October to really have a grasp on whether I liked staying at home and whether it was working for our family. That would give us all about 6 weeks to settle in to our new roles.

Not only were we transitioning from me working outside the home to staying at home, but we also moved cities, bought our first house, and Mr. Blue went from a government position to working in private practice. I still had about two months of work left when we had to move, so I was also working from a new office and the boys had a patchwork of babysitters to try to get us through that gap of time. Throw in expecting a new baby (which is a wonderful thing, of course), and our life was just a big ball of chaos and mixed emotions by all. When I said I needed to give myself until the beginning of October, I should have thrown another month in there for sure. All the transitions I expected to be rough were indeed rough. The boys’ behavior was a nightmare for at least the first six weeks, and I was seriously questioning why I had ever even thought this was a good idea.

Around mid-October, I got a call about a position that in so many ways seemed absolutely perfect. It was half time, but it would pay well and get us back on federal government insurance (something we were already missing). I’ve always heard good things about the man who would be my boss and about the woman who would be splitting the full-time position with me. This came completely out of the blue. Mr. Blue pretty much left the decision up to me and I honestly had no idea what to do. On one hand, the money would be so great for our finances and get us back to making more progress on our school debt, rather than doing only slightly better than treading water. Part-time positions (especially those with a decent salary) just don’t come open very often in my field, especially not in our market, so there’s no guaranty another position like this would become available in the next 5 years. I was able to find child care that would still allow me to make enough money for it to be “worth it,” but if I had to switch (it was an in home provider I’d never used) it would eat into my profit significantly.

On the other hand, I was just starting to feel more settled into my new role as a stay-at-home mom and was beginning to see the sunshine peeking through the clouds. I felt like I hadn’t really given it a chance yet when this was what I had been dying to do for years and what I struggled so much with not having the option to do when Finn & Elliot were babies. If I took the job, it would mean that when this new little guy came, I’d have to leave him, too, even if it was only half-time. I went back and forth, prayed, talked to people I trusted, begged Mr. Blue to give me more of an opinion on what he would like me to do, and generally worried myself into a tizzy about it. Finally, I made the decision to walk away. I wish I could say I had an overwhelming sense of peace or confidence in my decision, but I still worried on whether it had been the right thing to do.  Sometimes, I still wonder if I made the right choice, just like I’m sure I would be wondering if I had taken the job! At the end of the day, I just felt like staying home was something that I needed to give a chance. If the job had come up a year from now, when our next baby was a little older, I probably would have jumped on it, but given the current timing, it just didn’t feel quite right.

Now having a couple months of hindsight perspective, I feel really good overall about where we are at with all our many transitions. The boys have settled in great and most days, I love staying home (at least until about 4:30, when all hell breaks loose until dinner time when they become normal people again-who knew the witching hour doesn’t stop when your kids are no longer babies!?!), Mr. Blue is starting to feel more at ease in his new job and making connections with the people he works for and with, and we’re gearing up for Baby 3’s imminent arrival.

We’re in a really good place right now. Such a good place that it gives me pause to think that we’re about to have a baby and throw a whole new cycle of transitions into everyone’s lives. This time, I’m armed with a better idea of what to expect and how long it will take and the knowledge that you just have to ride out the transitions and cling to “this too shall pass.”