Parenting for 59 hours

I haven’t been inspired for the most part this year. When life was more hectic, I hardly had the time to ponder but now it’s a different story.

This year, particularly after the big move, I seemed to have more time to think about where we are headed as a family — and me as a parent.

Maybe because we rebooted ourselves? All of a sudden there aren’t many stuff and bills to tether us down — no car payments, no mortgage, no insurance payments, no house improvements to plan for, etc.

Since having a kid our savings barely moved up. With our lightness now and with more money left to save, we’ve saved an amount that we couldn’t get to for 3 years.

I’ve told my husband the discontent I’ve had about working 40 hours a week. I like what I do in my career but it’s just not engaging me anymore. For the most part, I feel like a robot at work.

I’ve played with ideas about being a stay-at-home mom, teaching toddlers, and playing with my kid in such silliness. Mainly because if I do decide to stop working, I know I need to do something that has a purpose. It must be about something that makes me not notice the time or require me to work 8 hours a day.

I know this is not being lazy because it’s not. I want to spend MORE time with my toddler who’s growing fast. This led me to calculate the amount of time my husband and I individually spend with our child. We both work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

A week has 168 hours, 56 of which are spent on sleeping. The little man is usually asleep between 9 and 9:30pm (with almost 2 hours of nap daily). So, we each get to spend 59 hours a week with our child and this, to me, is unfair when I’m not even completely happy spending 40 hours a week at work that is not inspiring me anymore! Weekends become extremely busy with catching up on laundry and spending as much quality time as possible with our little man.

I don’t have romantic notions that if I were a SAHM that I would be constantly with my child and doing so many things. On quiet weekends, we have a number of concentrated fun times with him that have in-between times spent doing our own things.

Missing so much of his growth worries me, despite the fact that we’re very engaged parents. I wish I knew what I would want to do when I can stop working. I mentioned to Jonno that once we pay off his student loan, I can entertain the idea more. For now I’ll spend some of my time thinking of what I can and want to do when I stop working for money.