One year It's been one year since I resigned from my job to stay at home with the girls. My last day of work was on Friday, January 31, and Lily was born the following Monday. I didn't have any time to adjust to being a stay-at-home mom. The year has flown by faster than I thought possible. My baby is turning one, and I have survived a year at home. I received mixed reactions when I told my co-workers that I wasn't coming back from maternity leave. Most were supportive and offered their congratulations. A very few made some not-so-nice comments about how nice it must be to be able to afford to stay home. And others predicted that I'd get bored and be begging to come back within two months. After a year I wonder how anyone could be bored doing this. There aren't many quiet moments around our house, let alone boring ones. It was a tough adjustment, and at first there were times when I didn't think I'd make it. I had a difficult time adjusting to the idea of down time. I felt like I should be working around the house all day. It was my job to take care of the house and the girls; therefore, I should be doing something productive all the time. The laundry always had to be folded, the kitchen always had to be clean, and the floors had to be vacuumed. After several months of trying to meet impossible standards, I came to the conclusion that June Cleaver and Donna Reed were probably drinking in the kitchen. How else could someone vacuum and dust while wearing high heels? There were days where I felt like I was playing hooky. If I took the girls to the park or the pool to play, it was like I was shirking my duties at home. I had to constantly remind myself that making sure the girls had fun was part of my job - the most important part of my job. But it was hard to shake the feeling that having fun was what I was supposed to be doing. I've had the most fun this year just watching the girls play. I don't remember having time to just sit and watch Ella when she was tiny. I was too frantic from working full time and surviving Brandon's travel schedule. Now I have the time to just sit on the floor with the girls as they toodle around. Yesterday I whiled away five minutes watching Lily try to stuff Ella's lunchbox into a gift bag with handles. I'm having fun doing nothing with them. During the last two years of my job, I worked at home each afternoon. I communicated with the office via e-mail. If I left the house during the afternoon for any reason, the first thing I did when I walked in was check e-mail to make sure I hadn't missed anything important. It took me a good six months to get out of the habit of checking for e-mails from the office. Over the year, the question I've been asked most often is whether I miss working. I have to bite my tongue to keep from asking, "You don't think I work?" But I know what the person is actually asking. There are days when I would give anything to get dressed in work clothes and spend the day with other grown ups and to not have to say, "stop doing that" twenty times an hour. But those days are few and far between. And I'd never give up the fun I have with the girls for office life again. In fact, I was back at my old office this past week, and I just can't imagine being there, or in any office, again. Money was also a concern for me. Until two years ago, I made more than Brandon each year. To spend this year not generating much income at all was hard for me. I felt like I wasn't pulling my own weight. Each time I fretted about a lack of income, Brandon would remind me that my job of raising the girls was more important than money. Brandon and I worked for two years to be in a position financially for me to stay home. It was a goal of ours from the time we knew Ella was on her way. We don't live a lavish lifestyle, and we may never. For both of us, being home with the girls is more important than big houses or fancy cars or trips to Europe. Although, I'd still like the trip to Europe. It got easier when the freelance work started. I was able to spend a few hours each day doing something that taxed my brain a bit, and I was generating some income. I became less compulsive about housework. In addition, my two years of working at home in the afternoons helped me transition to freelance work. I already had a good idea of how to balance kids and work. So it's been a year. Ella is a happy three-year-old who loves to dance and tell stories and talk to her imaginary friends. Lily is our roly-poly little comedienne who is up and walking and jabbering a mile a minute as she follows her sister around the house. I see the fruits of my labors every day in them. I can't imagine any other job I'd rather have right now. This is too much fun.