My Cup Runneth Over

When Lynn offered me my job – note the use of the personal pronoun here, it’s gone from the job to my job – I danced around my room and yelled “thank you” to the walls and did a whole lot of whooping. I didn’t think that anyone could be more excited about my new job than I.
I was wrong.

My children are over the moon excited about my new job.

My youngest cannot believe his good fortune at being able to attend extended day (i.e. after school care).
“When do I get to start?” he asked, face bright enough to power an entire Third World country. “Do I get to go every day?”
“Yes you do,” I smile back to him.
In my head, I’m screaming, “It’s daycare! Did you hear me? D-A-Y-C-A-R-E! You’re not supposed to want to go to daycare!”

My youngest daughter does a fist pump and says, “Tight! Now when people ask me what my mother does, I can tell them you have a job!”
Apparently, my dabble in the independent sales rep world didn’t qualify as a job. “You worked at home,” she explains patiently, as though talking to a petulant two-year old. “You didn’t go to work.”
“I went on business trips,” I whine in my best terrible-two voice.
“That doesn’t count,” she states, emphatically.
Inside, I am incredulous. “My guilt about being away for week long sales trips, missing meets and tournaments, was merely gratuitous guilt. Who knew?”

My oldest son acts nonchalant.
“It means that I may not be able to drive you to school every day,” I warn.
“No problem. I’ll just get a ride from Lauren or do a morning run to get to school,” he flips. “Yeah, that would be a good time to do my run,” he adds with a smile.
And I’m thinking, “Huh, I’ve been struggling all year to get you and your sister to schools that start at exactly the same time every morning and are located on different sides of town and it’s no big deal to you to have to find another way to get there?! Could you maybe have let me know this a little sooner?!”

I am thrilled that my children are thrilled. Really. But come on! Is it really necessary to make me feel foolish for trying so hard with the stay-at-home mom-ing?

Of course, they are not making me feel foolish, I am making me feel foolish.

There is a verse from the Talmud, “We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

My children have been seamlessly able to switch from being children with a stay-at-home mother to being children with a mother working outside the home. Neither is inherently better or worse than the other, it’s all about the view.
I didn’t see them changing.
Apparently, they did see me changing.
Even before I did.
And they accommodated my change.

I know we're all in a bit of that honeymoon phase. I know that the landing into reality may be a bit rocky. And, I know that we'll make it through just fine.
We'll make it through just fine because my children see a glass that is half full.

Talk about hitting the jackpot!

I get to do something I really want to do AND my children are happy and supportive about it.

Apparently, someone, somewhere, taught them well.
Woohoo!