a working mamma

Today I got a little fired up on the topic of "stay-at-home" mom. It's something I'm passionate about doing, something I'm proud of. It's exhausting, messy, smelly, and as cliche as it sounds, it's worth it all, and so rewarding.
I feel like the role of the stay-at-home mom is dying. Like someone is actually trying to kill it, I mean, being a stay-at-home mom doesn't help the economy right. I often have people say to me, "you're so lucky you can afford to stay home". Well, luck has nothing to do with it. Learning to cut my families hair, having almost every piece of furniture in my house thrifted, not re-doing our hard wood floors and being a master at sliver pulling, not buying those amazing boots I saw, always making pizza instead of ordering it, those kinds of things have a lot more to do with it than luck. I want all those things, but I know I want to stay home with my kids more. 
Its been six years so far, and in five more years, all four of these lovelies will be in school, full-time, and out of my hands. One of them is already there and it breaks my heart a little only seeing him 4-5 hours a day, and it's going to be like that for the next twelve years at least. 

There's nothing I would change, I'm not staying home because it's cheaper than daycare, or because I don't know what else to do, it's because I don't want the foundation of family ever to be able to rock in the lives of my kids.

I don't want to offend any working moms/dads, or single parents out there who really don't have many options, because what's best for you is not going to be what's best for me, and vise versa. This is more a rant (I know I shouldn't do that here, I promise I'll leave you with encouraging words) to the people I come across who really don't validate, or respect the role of the stay-at-home mom as a valuable, purposeful, laborious, job. Its been an intentional choice made and I love it.

So, go out and do what you love.....and don't let other people get you down about it like I did today.