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.