Routines and being Stay-at-Home Mom

I grew up with a SAHM - most of my childhood friends did. I can't imagine having grown up with bag lunches and afterschool programs but I never thought I would be a SAHM. Granted, if you asked my university friends, I never thought I would be a mom. I have never had the overwhelming desire to have a child and tend to sort of go out of my way to avoid holding other people's babies. Babies are just not my thing - confirmed, in part, by the ten tearful months after Isabelle was born - you mean that doesn't happen to everyone? And by the relief of returning to work and reclaiming some of myself.

So here I am, living in a new country as a SAHM. The key, I have found to everyone's happiness is routine. But, I think the routine is what keeps me from blogging much. I guess everything is so routine that I figure no one really cares. Plus, Paul blogs about the fun stuff so sometimes it feels like there is not much left of interest.

So, for those of you who are interested this is what our average week looks like, most days Paul leaves the house at some ungodly hour and gets home between 4:30 and 5:30:

Monday - get Isabelle up, dressed and fed and drop her at school at 8:30am; stop and get groceries, hopefully for the week, on the way home; get home and throw laundry in. Putter around until 11:30am when it is time to go and pick Isabelle up from school. Lunch and then we have a quiet afternoon doing laundry, making beds etc. and getting supper started until it is time for Isabelle's swimming lesson (this month her lessons are from 5:20 to 5:50). Home from swimming, quick supper and then it is usually just about bedtime.

Tuesday - morning usually the same except instead of laundry and groceries, I try to get to the Y. Afternoon - sometime errands with Isabelle sometimes just playing at home. The other kids on the street get home from school around 2:30pm so if it nice out she can go outside to play. Supper around 5:30 or 6 then Isabelle to bed at 7:30 or 8.

Wednesday - morning the same maybe another trip to the Y for me, afternoon quiet again, sometimes a trip to the grocery store for milk and bread, otherwise she is too tired for the swimming lesson then rush home for supper and bed.

Thursday - Isabelle to school, often a trip to the dog park for Maggie and maybe a walk through Cleveland Park. Pick-up Isabelle, then home for a quick lunch and change for gymnastics. Getting home from gymnastics isn't the best timing wise since we usually arrive home at the same time as the school bus which stops at the top of our street. Isabelle knows to be quiet when we come home so I can concentrate on not running over any children!

Friday - Morning the same - sometimes another trip to the Y for me or to the dog park if we didn't make it earlier in the week or groceries for the weekend or something else that needs to be done. By Friday afternoon, Isabelle and I are pretty bored with each other so she often is outside playing when Paul get home from work.

When I write it all down - it doesn't look very busy but as one woman told me when we first moved here - "It doesn't matter where you are going in Greenville, it takes a 1/2 hour to get there" - and she is not far off.

My sister would be appalled by the amount of time we spend in the car and when it comes right down to it so am I. But I think somewhere in the American Constitution, in the fine print under the amendment about the right to keep and bear arms, there must be a clauses about the right to drive a car, the right to not give the right of way to pedestrians or bicycles and the right for developers to not build walkable communities. Ooops, was I ranting....