“Mommy….Mommy!” Harlan’s calling my name from the other room as I sit working at my computer on the kitchen table (my workspace during the day.)
“When are you going to be finished?” she asks.
“Soon,” I reply. “Just let me finish this for work.”
“But you’re always on your computer working.” she whines.
Ouch. Those are the words I’ve been dreading to hear, yet have somewhat expected.
When we moved from Tampa to Manhattan, we made the decision to have me stay home with Harlan and officially become the stay-at-home mom that I had always wanted to be. I never expected my time at home with her and starting a blog would to turn into a career.
As much as I love being able to be with the kids and work from home, there is still not a perfect balance that I can accomplish each day. I spend a lot of time at my computer or on my phone during the week. I’m sure the girls have no idea what I’m doing on either, but they just see me having a lot of screen time. I try to limit the time I spend with my technology while the kids are awake, but sometimes I have a deadline I have to meet or a phone call I have to get on and I have to give my job my undivided attention. It’s not ideal, but it’s just the way things are.
Thankfully moving into our house has eased a little bit of the stress because the girls have so much space to keep them busy and having fun. One of our favorite things to do is sit on the back porch while I work, Macks jumps around in his jumper and the girls just play.
But while I try to carefully balance both work and being a mom, I know that no matter what my kids are my priority. I never want to look back (or have my children look back) and only remember me with my face in my computer all of the time.
Last weekend, on a whim, I decided to turn everything off. I’d missed deadlines earlier that week, but vowed not to worry about them because the weekend was for my family. A time for them to have my undivided attention. If I needed to get something done, it would be done when everyone was asleep and in bed.
This was the very first weekend since we’ve moved that we had absolutely no agenda. We went shopping together, played in the backyard, enjoyed dinner on the back porch, and even took a little road trip to see Yale. And I didn’t take a photo of any of it. It was so nice to be unplugged and have my entire focus on my family.
I must admit that it was hard to turn my computer on this morning and get to working and I know the girls had a hard time with it too, but my little experiment over the weekend taught me a lot about the time that I spend during my day.
Sometimes it’s okay to turn it off. You aren’t missing anything by doing so, you’re missing more when you don’t.
