How did we get here?

I married my high school sweetheart.  We've been "together" for 11 years, married for almost 5 of them.  Is marriage work, yes.  How do mom's find the time to manage household affairs and then at the end of the day, try to put on your best face for your man...which lets be honest, during any sort of "love making" that may take place that night, you're trying to mentally balance the check book, figure out when the best time to wash, dry and fold the laundry will be, you're thinking-"did I pack my kids lunches", often the thing furthest from your mind is "wow, this sweaty man is so cute...what was that face he just made?--ugh--that reminds me, I think it's garbage day tomorrow, better take the trash out when this is done in a few minutes".

Let us be honest again though, if you're in a relationship anything like mine, that's probably the first time you've had sex in two weeks...so while you should be enjoying what little physical contact/attention you just received you're already on auto-pilot, winding down your day--so why not multitask your evening away?  Seriously, two weeks.  If only he knew what that did to me mentally!--but we'll get to that in another chapter of my life, we can go into depth about the fragile self esteem of a mom and how sex can make or break their mental state.

Like I said before, I married my wonderful high school sweetheart.  He really is a wonderful man (alright ladies, don't hang up on me yet, I know, who wants to hear about all the butterflies and wonderful date nights...bleh...this is not that blog).  I just want everyone to be aware of how much I love this man, because there is a good chance there will be a lot of gripping about his flaws in later blogs and I just want to set the record state from the beginning.  I can't see myself with anyone else (well, maybe some hot Actor, if he were available, but I'm trying to be realistic here).  If you were to think back to your high school days and remember that guy that maybe played sports, but wasn't the asshole captain of the team, just the guy who played sports, loved his mom, and was nice to everyone.  Everyone.  He's just that good guy, the one you think, he's nice, he's cute, alright, maybe I'll go out on one date with him.  Little did you know he's smart and funny too.  He meets all of your non-negotiable needs from the start, (not that we had this serious of a talk in high school, but..) he's father-like material, wants kids, lots of them, and wants to be able to provide for his family.  Doesn't beat his kids or wife or abuse them in any sense of the word.  He's attentive (most of the time, don't bother talking to him if sports are on), all in all he's a 4 out of 5 star kind of guy.  I love this man. 

Now please, remember that when you read further chapters, despite what I say, he really is a wonderful man!

We got married when we were 21 years young.  On our first anniversary, we got a dog.  Love her.  By our second we had had our first child, our son.  Our third anniversary, surprise, we got another dog--an obnoxious hound, but she plays so well with the kids and lab, we couldn't say no--she was our rescue dog.  Lastly, on our 4th anniversary, we were pregnant with our second baby, our little princess.  Needless to say we will not be on craigslist or in the paper looking for another pup and we've been assured by the doctor the IUD should prevent any pregnancies.  Ha ha, so hopefully this 5th anniversary coming up soon will be uneventful in the additions to the house trend we have going on. 

I think probably once a week my husband and I will stare at each other, usually exhausted out of our minds after the kids have gone to bed, one of us will smile and say "do you ever just step back and say...wow, we're parents?--I didn't see this happening so quickly nor did I picture it being like this when we were in high school, etc". 

Currently my husband and I are employed, thank the good lord above.  In this economy any sort of income is a miracle, and we are very thankful for that.  My husband works out of the home, while I recently have been deployed from the office to working from home.  It's hard.  I secretly keep the kids home with me, despite my works policy on being "not being sole provider of the children, when working from home".  We're trying to save money where ever we can, and cutting daycare costs has allowed us to save our $1000.00 emergency fund and pay off one credit card--small shout out and thank you to Mr. Dave Ramsey; some of his teachings are hittin' home.

Well, I think that's enough of the "history of my life" lesson for today.  Kids are still awake and we just came back from a long Easter Vacation--I still have lots of unpacking and kid wrangling left to do for the day.

Back to work.

Introduction

house·wife/ˈhousˌwīf/Noun A married woman whose main occupation is caring for her family, managing household affairs, and doing housework.

Is that all?

I'd first like to thank the world wide web for summing up a mothers duties into one sentence...clearly a mother, a REAL housewife did not write that definition.  If I could just add a few disclaimers to their definition it would be, "caring for her family"--even when they want nothing to do with you from 8-8 but midnight flu bug rolls around and duty calls; "managing the household affairs"--including but not limited to working a job, maybe two, and then coming home to your third job (the kids, husband and house); lastly "doing housework"--everything else no one else will do.

I'm sure all the mothers out there have dozens upon dozens of variations for that title, but we'll leave it at that for now, no sense in completely blowing the socks off our readers. 

Housewife is not only for the women these days either, there are plenty of "Househusbands" out there populating our parks, grocery stores, laundry rooms and school plays.

I'm the mother of two young kiddos.  A soon to be three year old little guy and a 1 year old daughter.  Will there be more kids, you might ask, "heck yes!", haha.  I love my kids and hope to overpopulate my house with them (not like Octomom or 18--maybe 19 kids and counting) I'm more of a 3 or 4 kid kind of mom. 

I'm not an experienced-expert of a mom, I am only as smart as WebMD.com and babycenter.com will allow me to be when it comes to parenting.  So why a blog you might ask?  What mom doesn't need to just get her feelings, frustrations, stories out and down on paper (electronic save the trees kind of paper)...this is a way for me to share my stories and frustrations with the rest of the average housewives and househusbands out there.  We're not wealthy, you don't see me on the next series of "Real Housewives of Orange County" or Beverly Hills, or Atlanta, New York, etc, etc.  Those are not REAL Housewives or Househusbands.

Will we cry, probably, will there be laughter, I hope so.  More importantly I'm hoping for some unity between us average mothers and fathers out there.  A chance to feel less "alone" in our feelings and stories.  We all have bad days, good days, and phenomenal days, why not share?

This is my story...I'm a mom.