The Perks of the “Stay Home” Life

I am (and have been for five years!) a full-time stay-at-home mom. Now, I am a stay-at-home-all-the-time mom. There is a difference.

Before, that was just my job title. AKA homemaker. Now, it’s a state-mandated state of existence.

I’m not complaining. I’m not interested in engaging in debate about whether we should be “stay home”ing or not. I’m naturally a rule follower. For now, I’m happy to comply with what the governor says. Sure, my kids are a little stir-crazy (no playgrounds, no school), I’m a little over-talked-to (there is little to no sacred silence to be found in my life right now), and I’m sad my mom probably won’t get to come to my big girl’s preschool graduation. I’m not sure that graduation will even take place.

But…lucky for me, I am finding silver lining after silver lining to the current state of things, for my family and myself.

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Right now, I’m holding and rocking my precious sleeping 8-month-old in her bedroom, while typing on my phone and listening to my other kids play in the living room. It’s nearly 10am, and every one of us is still in pajamas. Kids have decided to go potty if they needed to, but I haven’t needed to insist on it. We’ll brush their teeth before naptime, I promise. If they want to stay in their pajamas all day long, fine! I personally don’t…I like to get dressed to feel more alive and…clean. But it’s nice to not have to try to make anyone do the morning routine within a certain time constraint.

Since I’m not dragging her around to drop off and pick up siblings from school and run errands in between, causing accidental/too short car ride naps, Cecily is more regularly taking her naps in her crib when I need her to: or, like today, I get to hold her asleep and soak up her preciousness without guilt, because Dad is here to intervene if a crisis happens to arise with the other kids while I snuggle the baby.

Justin started a new position within his company at the beginning of April, which was supposed to take him out of town three days a week, but because of the recommendation to stay home if you can, and his company’s cooperation with that, he’s working from home 90% of the time. The kids get to see him more, he’s here to back me up every night for dinner and bedtime routines (and to retain his post as primary bath-giver), and we get to hang out, just us, every night after kids are asleep and sometimes in the middle of the day while kids nap/rest. Before all this, he was going out of town for work 2-4 nights at a time about every other week, so this is a temporary lifestyle upgrade all around.

Also due to Justin being at home all the time, the house projects we had planned for weekends this spring and summer are on the fast track, since Justin can work on them any time he’s not on conference calls. He can move his computer work around in order to take advantage of the best weather at whatever time of day it occurs. We feel very lucky that Justin has great job security, even in these circumstances, and is able to work from home. I know not everyone is in such a position.

In an effort to need fewer trips to the grocery store, and quicker ones when we must go, I’ve been working on using up what we already have in the freezer: 18-month-old homemade chili (it was still delicious!), pre-scooped leftover birthday cookie dough, more than one pork roast, etc. Since I’m freeing up space and moving things around in there, I’ve made some fun discoveries! Two long-forgotten popsicles. A box of ready-to-heat garlic bread (a perfect accompaniment to our soup last night). The most surprising and delightful find was a whole ’nother bottle of homemade limoncello! When we make a batch, we put it in two bottles, and keep them in the freezer for optimum longevity and to have chilled limoncello ready any time. We finished the other bottle several weeks ago; we thought it was the second bottle from the last batch (one batch lasts a long time, so it’s hard to keep track, when one bottle is accidentally buried under frozen peas, corn, and bananas). This had been our best batch of limoncello yet, so finding another bottle was akin to discovering buried treasure. I don’t even know how something could get that buried in our freezer, which isn’t that big: we don’t have a separate deep-freeze, it’s just the bottom compartment of our refrigerator. But hey, I’ll take it!

This may be my favorite part. The kids are getting sooo much outside play time! I talked about this a little bit over here, but it’s worth mentioning again. I love seeing them build muscle, skills, and confidence, not to mention the harder-to-articulate benefits of fresh air and sunshine. They climb the neighbor’s front yard retaining walls. They work on fine motor skills, too, putting on and buckling their helmets by themselves. They’re getting biology lessons (“Look at that mourning dove!”) and a sense of responsibility and accomplishment from helping Justin and me with outdoor work. We bought them their own “work gloves” (gardening gloves), because they wanted to help us bag yard waste; the neighbors gave them their own small potted plant to care for when they were doing some landscaping last week; they get the mail for me and bring it inside to the kitchen table every day, without having to be asked. Back in the physical realm, they’re both so speedy and agile on their tricycles, like I didn’t even know it was possible to be. Miryam has also mastered riding the balance bike, to the point that we actually bought her a real bike with pedals—more appropriate than the balance bike for her 5-year-old size—that we’ll be unveiling to her tomorrow. I’m so excited for her to hit this big kid milestone!

Both kids have also developed the endurance to ride their bikes/trikes on some of our long family walks. They sleep hard on those nights. There’s just enough sloping up and down in our neighborhood to make that quite the workout for preschooler legs. And the family time we spend on walks is priceless. We did them before coronavirus times, but much less frequently. Now it’s about every other day, and it’s just lovely. Mom and Dad are not distracted by our phones or chores like we can be at home. We’re talking about all kinds of things with the kids that just haven’t come up in other circumstances. Justin and I get our exercise and fresh air, too. Cecily gets her fresh air, and sometimes a stroller or Lillebaby carrier snuggle nap. Our turnaround point is usually a visit with our friends from church, Mr. and Mrs. F, Miryam’s other favorite “extra Texas grandparents” besides our next door neighbors. (Social distancing is faithfully observed. I call them when we arrive, we stay on the street or their driveway, and they stay on their porch. Sometimes Miryam drops a picture she made into their mailbox for them to retrieve later with sanitizer on hand.) They always mention how they miss their various retirement clubs and how they love seeing our kids and chatting with us, so it’s a win-win.

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Our kids are each getting more one-on-one time with both parents, too. Luke loves when he gets to go outside with Daddy and help with leaves, help with the power drill (Justin replaced the pillars on our front porch recently), and take rides in the wheelbarrow, or perhaps take a ride in the mustang. Miryam doesn’t mind sharing her Mommy Time with Cecily, we just call it “girl time” and she’s satisfied. A friend lent us her set of Bob Books, and I love getting to spend time with Miryam helping her learn to read with them. The pride on her face (not to mention the same in my mama heart) when she reads a whole sentence by herself is spectacular. She gets frustrated more quickly when interrupted by Luke, who wants me to just read the darn book, so we use our special Girl Time to practice reading. When she finishes her Bob book, then I read to her any books she picks out in succession. Luke usually wanders back in before the end of that, and so we all get to read five stories in a row from The Complete Book of Farmyard Tales, sometimes repeating “Barn on Fire” more than once. It’s the favorite. And we have nowhere else to be, so might as well! Reading time comes to an unwanted end when Cecily gets way too fussy, or I get hungry. The big kids are never the ones to request an end to reading time. *happy sigh*

We have our first mommy-son / daddy-daughter time of “stay home orders” set aside for tomorrow, when the bicycle gets revealed. (It’s a surprise for Miryam. She’s been asking for a real bike, but we haven’t told her we’re getting it.) Justin plans to take her to an empty parking lot to have lessons. Luke doesn’t share my attention with Cecily so graciously, so we’ll see how that ends up going for us. Maybe we can time it to be during a baby nap-in-the-crib nap.

So, yes, the times right now are CRAZY; however, it’s not exclusively negative! Take a minute today to focus on a positive change you’re experiencing.

Tell me in the comments, what’s an unexpected blessing you’ve found amid the stay home orders we’re all under?