Being a stay-at-home mom

Yes, I know, I haven't really been one yet, but I just can't wait until the time comes for me to be able to stay at home with my beautiful babies. And yes, it will be plural because I'll have Travis all summer long. Even though I'm mostly scared to death, I'm really excited to have that opportunity. I'm really grateful to my wonderful husband who is working his butt off so that we can have enough so that I can stay at home with my kids. I don't think I ever appreciated how much both my mom and my dad sacrificed so that my mom could stay at home with all of us kids. They sacrificed so much time and money for all of us, so that we could grow up in a large family. I have to say that I still can't stomach pancakes because of how many times we ate that as children, and I'm really grateful that eventually my mom realized that oatmeal (no matter how it was prepared) really did cause me to throw up, I wasn't just being stubborn. But as I look back on childhood, I don't ever remember feeling deprived. It wasn't until I hit teenage years that I suddenly thought that life wasn't fair, but now that I'm in adulthood and just trying to figure out how to make life nice with what Josh makes and two small children, I have a lot more respect and appreciation for the life that my parents had. For the worries, for the heartaches, for the dreams that didn't get fulfilled so that they could pursue other dreams, dreams that didn't include big houses and expensive cars, but rather fridges full of hand drawn pictures, rooms with toys strewn all over them, old vans & suburbans and a four bedroom home that was filled to the bursting. Instead of trips to Hawaii and Europe, they traded that for trips to Grandma and Grandpa's house for us kids. Instead of being able to dine at all the fancy restaurants they traded it for dreams of leftovers, of the same (cheap) meal every time they sat down. For a lot of people this may seem like my parents were stupid, but I have to say that I'm grateful now for all of the things that they gave up so that I could be here with my ten siblings. I'm grateful that they gave it up so that I could learn to do without. I'm grateful that they gave it up so that I could learn what is important and what isn't that important. And so I'm grateful for two wonderful people, who at 18 and 21 somehow saw the dream of what my family is today and stuck to the hope of that dream no matter how much they had to give up and how hard they had to work. I'm also grateful for a wonderful husband who is a crazy wonderful dreamer like me, and is willing to give up things and work super hard so that hopefully someday we can have even a portion of that dream.