The Mom Crowd

This is a guest post from my friend Natalie. She is one of the most caring moms that I know and she makes the most beautiful children. Natalie works at my church and is in charge of the Creative Arts Team.  Here is her insight on how to handle being a mom while working at the same time.

I have been a mother now for almost 3 years. Not only am I a mom of a 3 year old and 6 month old, but I am also a “working mom”.  My experience has been full of joyous moments and even crying in the shower moments at the end of a long day. Thankfully, my job has allowed me to bring my kids to work. My oldest now attends our Mother’s Day Out program at our church, but he was with me 3 times a week until he started crawling. We all know that when our kids get mobile it’s hard finding time to do anything.  My daughter will soon be moving along before I know it and I will have to once again make the decision to find someone else to keep her.

It’s easy to feel guilty that I am not a “stay at home mom”, but I know that this is where I am called to be.  Although I am so thankful for such a great situation, it’s not the easiest thing. In addition to all my responsibilities at work, I am also responsible for raising my kids!  Juggling a work schedule, nap schedule, eating schedule and finding time to get my house clean and dinner cooked has been one of the most challenging things I have ever done.

I will never forget the first time I brought my daughter to work and had to get my son off to pre-school.  The morning was spent getting bottles ready, diapers packed, both my kids dressed, and myself decent enough to go into work. I found out very quickly that I needed to add another 45 minutes on to the start of my day! I think by the end of the first 2 weeks I was crying in the shower every morning and falling asleep the minute my head hit the pillow.  My husband came home one night about a month ago, handed me the keys and said, “Go get something to eat and take the long way home.”  I think that was the most romantic thing ever.

Whether you are a working mom or you stay at home with your kids, we all have a lot on our plates. We will never have enough time and/or energy to teach our kids how to read by the time they are 3, potty train them by the time they are 18 months old and make sure we are the perfect homeroom mom. We will try though, won’t we?  The one thing I know I will always have time for is loving them.  I have found myself getting so upset that my son is not potty trained yet. I think to myself, “If only I were at home ALL day then he would be done by now.”  That’s not true at all. My mom raised 5 kids working and we are all finding our way to the restroom.  So, if that means they aren’t potty trained until they are 3 years old and 5 days (I am determined!!), then oh well! We can’t do it all, but we can love them.

5 Tips for Working Moms

1. Schedule fun days – Set aside a Family Weekend once a month. There will always be something that can take up your weekend. Put it on the calendar in advance and stick to it.

2. Bring home to the office. – Decorate your office with pictures of your children. Bring in their artwork and put it up. I love when I get to look my kids smiling faces. It makes me smile and I find myself being grateful!

3. Don’t bring work home! – You can choose to cheat your family or your job. Cheat your job. Leave work at the office and don’t bring it home. I work from home once a week, but I shut things down at 2:00 pm.

4. Volunteer Part-time – You may not be able to be in charge of every school party, but you can certainly help out. Volunteer to make phone calls or help by bringing something. Don’t forget to talk with your employer. They have a family too and you may surprised by what latitude they give you.

5. Find time for yourself and your husband – One of the best things you can do for yourself is have a loving marriage. It’s too easy to get home at night and mindlessly watch reruns of “Everybody Loves Raymond”. Put the kids to bed early, talk, rent a movie and have a date at home. We have done this many times!

At a recent dinner party I attended the husbands were lovingly razzing us Stay at Homes Moms, because we only call them at work to see if we can spend fifteen bucks at Target. One husband wondered out loud how a mom who “stays home” could use so much gas in one week. The wives and I retorted that they should be thankful for having such low maintenance wives and how in the big picture we barely spend money.

One mom and I realized that we don’t even wash our face with proper face wash, because we are so cheap. So this got me thinking about what other things make us frugal mamas.

Here are 10 signs that you might be a Frugal Mama:

1. You wear the same three pair of blue jeans over and over.

2. You love the little red stickers at Target.

3. You buy Easter and Christmas dresses for the next year on clearance the year before.

4. You check the Baby+Kids section of Craigslist everyday looking for deals.

5. You are up early on Saturday mornings hitting the sales in front yards.

6. You talk yourself out of buying the items you picked up while standing in the checkout line.

7. You brag about what you saved in coupons and sales after every trip to the grocery store.

8. You haven’t had a hair cut in six months.

9. You love the challenge of coming in under budget.

10. You don’t buy toys, because you wait for family and friends to buy them for you.

What makes you a Frugal Mama?

- photo courtesy of iChris.

This has been going around lately on blogs & such, and I couldn’t resist sharing it here.

Have you seen this?  What are your feelings after reading it?

As you can see The Mom Crowd has a new design! We are still in the process of tweaking it a bit.

I am super thankful for Cicily at August Afternoon Designs! She did a FANTASTIC job incorporating everything I wanted in the design. My husband and I put together the old blue design ourselves and it is great to have a professional to clean up our amateur work and make something gorgeous.

I would also like to thank, Daniel, my wonderful husband who is the genius behind Grow Development. He took Cicily’s design and made it reality. Not to mention he also upgraded my prehistoric version of WordPress.

Thank you Cicily and Daniel!!

I hope you all like our new layout!

I had a great time enjoying my maternity leave from The Mom Crowd. Thank you so much for all the guest bloggers that filled in for myself, McKenna, Dawn, and Amelia while we either having a baby, going on vacation, or going to Eastern Europe to bring home a new adopted member of the family!

I LOVE hearing labor and delivery stories and I thought I would share how my second delivery went in my first post back. I love how having a blog forces me to write out my story. I know years from now I am going to be glad I wrote this story.

Roman’s Birth Story

I woke up March 3rd at 5:41 a.m. with my first contraction. I was already dilated to 3 cm and the baby was in -1 station before my labor began. The day before my lower back hurt really bad, but I still went walking with my friend Barb around an outdoor mall here in San Antonio to help induce my labor. Looks like walking worked!

For the first hour my contractions were every 10 minutes apart. I woke up my husband after the first hour and he began to time them. I am super thankful that my 22-month-old daughter had Mother’s Day Out (MDO) that day and my husband managed to get her there on time. We also made arrangements for other people to take care of her the rest of the day after MDO. I laid in bed all morning watching t.v. in between contractions.

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