Summer

When I tell people I am a teacher, their usual first response is "wow!"  When I tell them I want to be a stay at home mom, their automatic response is, "well, at least you get the summers off."  While I couldn't agree more, it does bug me a bit.

I want to stay at home with my daughter.  I want to love her.  I want to raise her.  I want to be there when she needs discipline, when she doesn't feel good, when she is having a hard day.  I want to take care of cleaning the house, cooking dinner, managing our finances.  I want to "socialize" my daughter by setting up play dates with other children.  I want to explore everything she does and open the world to her so that she can learn.

I don't want her in daycare.  Or full time preschool.  Or in any kind of institution.  When the time comes for school, I am there, with her in tow.  At that time, I want to help the teacher... with parties, with prep, with field trips, with  (cough cough) grading.  I want my daughter, and any other children I have to know that they have back-up, that they can count on me.  I want to be able to consider fostering children, something I can't really do if I work outside the home.

I drives me crazy that there is such a fight against this.  It drives me crazy that women I know feel like it is somehow below them to care for their families.  It drives my crazy that moms out there are ashamed to say, "yes, I am a stay at home mom!"

I am blessed to be a teacher, to at least have periods of weeks with my daughter.  I am blessed to be able to go part time, for right now.  Although, that may end next year.  I am even blessed to have a group of family and friends who watch Penelope right now.  I just wish that our society would see the value of motherhood.  I wish they would stop trying to push mothers to leave their child in a daycare center, and I wish that there was some way, any way, that I could do this full time.

Generations

I have a picture of myself hanging on the wall.  Well, I guess there are quite a few of them.  But in the one I am thinking of in particular, I am about a year old, standing in front of my dad, my little hand stretched out in his big one, feeding a goat.

We went to the Orange County Fair today, and we took this picture.  Penny is about one, standing in front of her dad, her little hand stretched out in his big one, feeding a goat.

I love it.