Not to Brag, But... (Job Evaluation- Round 5)

Working nearly full-time as a clinic nurse, I can rattle off a "HPI" in seconds. Here's one from past Friday:

62 year old diabetic male presents for follow-up wound care to bilateral calcaneal area. Reports increased pain 5/10 and difficulty walking in the last 2 days. Taking Ibuprofen BID with poor relief. Changing dressings daily with NS and Medi-honey. Denies fever, chills, wound discharge. 

Sadly, however, the "History of Present Illness" has been the extent of my creative writing in the past year. While I give it my best medical flourish, it surprises me how little motivation I have had for original prose. I wrote ONE blog post last year. One! What is that about?! Writing has always been an important (required?) outlet for me. All of those early questions I had about parenting? There seemed to be no end to blogging possibilities, and if it weren't for that pesky need to actually parent, I would have been writing non-stop (ahem, I wrote 45 blog posts in 2013). Now the closest I get to dialing in is encouraging Nug to use a thesaurus for her 3rd grade duck report.

So what is it all about? Where have I been? The best I can figure is this:

• I turned 40 (in 2018) and it brought a sense of peace to my daily rumination. Fewer and fewer questions plague my mind. Perhaps that makes me sound vapid-  of course there are thousands of questions in the world, but that's what NPR's Radio Lab is for. 😁
• The adult connection I longed for as a full-time Baby Wrangler, once somewhat satisfied by blogging to an anonymous internet audience, is now fulfilled through real connection at work, or being able to talk to friends without simultaneously making sure my toddler doesn't fall from the stairs. 
• With Nug and Cookie growing into their independence through school and extracurriculars, I don't want our physical time together to be spent in front of a computer.
• Last, but maybe most important: my mother-in-law is staying with us for three months and is doing ALL THE DISHES AND LAUNDRY!!! Let me repeat. My mother-in-law is doing all the dishes and laundry. So, where have I been? I've been doing dishes and laundry!!! I hadn't realized just how much of my time was spent in chores.

The newfound freedom is almost unsettling. Well... not really, it's pretty easy to walk away from dishes, but it has been two weeks and I haven't figured out how to fill the time. So... blogging?

One of my favorite blogging themes- my Stay-At-Home Mom Job Evaluation- is a bit outdated, so I figure I will start there. It feels a little strange to call myself a SAH mom right now that I'm working 20+ hours a week, but 1) it's temporary while the grandparents are here, and 2) I've earned the title (for proof, read this blog) and will continue to claim lifetime membership. As an aside, I received my first real/official/paid job evaluation just last month! It was far less humorous than my mom evals, but it did come with a raise and a new job title. I'll take it!

The top ten reasons why I'm a really great mom*. 

*Ask me the same question next year, and I'll surely give a different list. Ask another mom, and she'll give a different list too. This is to say that we all judge ourselves by different standards, so please keep that in mind as you're reading! 

1. My continued dedication to documenting our life through photographs that I am never in.

Hey, there's four of us somewhere in the photo, right?

2. But that's okay because due to an uptick in care-taking this year, I've ignored my needs and eaten my stress. I hardly recognize my new, swollen self. Ignoring my needs in favor of others does not indeed make me a good parent, but pulling on my new high-waist size fourteen pants to get through a hard year brings blessings of patience and acceptance.

3. The year's volunteering feats:

• Girl Scouts leader (Nug)
• Girl Scouts assistant leader (Cookie)
• Kindergarten and 3rd grade Garden Coordinator + Party Planner
• soccer team parent for both kids
• weekly Kindergarten class helper
• author of monthly "Whole Child Wellness" topics for the school newsletter 
• bi-weekly garden recess volunteer

4. And, because of all the volunteering, I know the name of nearly all 96 kids in Nug's grade level. Nobody gets past this mom. 😈 😇

5. Our house is now open for sleepovers. Enough said.

6. But the normal stuff too: After thanking Mother Earth for this bounty, we eat dinner together every night and discuss our highs and lows. We do homework on time. We read bedtime stories. We have sit-up contests (Nug wins) and burpee contests (Cookie wins). They eat most of the vegetables I pack. 

7. Both kids have been Student of the Month this fall. Cookie, honored for citizenship says, "because I was friendly, helpful, and kind."

8. It took a long while to get here, but I have the BEST work-life balance. I feel perfectly occupied and present, and that feeling shines out from me.

9. The kids, born just (three years plus) two days apart, get separate birthday parties. Some might call that stupid (including myself after the second party), but every kid wants a day that is their own. This year: a) horseback riding and a sleepover, and b) indoor swim party.

10. And most importantly, because my two little bosses think so:

From Nug (age 8)

"I think you're a good mom because-- um that's hard!-- do I have to pick one? Or two? You're a good mom because it's hard to think of one thing that you're good at! Okay, when you come home from work, you kiss me and hug me and love me. And when I'm sick you're like 'oh, you'll be okay' and tell me there's nothing to worry about."

From Cookie (age 5)

"Um, because when I play with you, when I say tickle, you don't tickle me, and when I say tickle me a lot you tickle me and it scares me."

...Ok, that sounds weird, but if you've read about the science of tickling, it is the perfect way for a five-year-old to thank me for acknowledging her; the intimacy of what excites her and when to stop. "It's a social dance: Tickling is the way we and the chimps establish, without words, that we're in this thing together." -Robert R. Provine, neuroscientist

In it together at our local river

I'm happy to take suggestions on new hobbies or how to otherwise spend my free time! More blogging?!

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Links to my past "Job Evaluations"

Round One (Jan 2013)
Round Two (October 2014)
Round Three - my favorite one- (November 2015)
Round Four (Jan 2018)

OMG, haha!