When I "growed" up

(not sure why this whole post is in italics, but I couldn't fix it-- sorry!)


Last night, Chloe asked me and Micky the same question she's been asking for weeks:
"What do you want to be when you growed up?"

We gave the same answer we've been giving:
"We're already grown up. Mommy's a nurse and Daddy's a dentist."

Well, she never likes this answer. So, she proceeds to tell us what we will be.
"I'm going to be a Princess and Daddy will be a Prince. Mom, you can be the Fairy Godmother or Genie if you want."
To which we usually just smile and nod.

These exchanges over the past few weeks have got me thinking about what I used to want to be. And then last Friday, while at a friends house, I was talking to 4 of my closest friends and we realized that, at this time, only one of us is "using" our degree. Afterwards, I thought about it for awhile and I realized we were wrong. The truth is that only one of us is getting PAID money to use our degree. Three of us are stay at home moms (SAHM as dooce says!). I still use my nursing knowledge in caring for my friends and family, and my friends are using their teaching degrees EVERYDAY in how they raise their kids.
These past few years of staying home with Chloe, and now Emma, have been awesome and I wouldn't change it for anything. But I have had the struggle with "self-worth" that I'm sure every stay at home mom has when you think that -- because I'm not bringing home a check maybe I'm not contributing enough to my family. I've tried for 3 years to get over that feeling, and every time I think I've kicked it, it'll rear it's ugly little head again. It doesn't matter how many times Micky tells me I'm doing a great job or how supportive he is, that feeling can eat away at me for days, weeks, forever.... I've gotten better at dealing with it, but I don't think it will ever be gone for good. Maybe that's because when I was growing up I never thought I'd be a SAHM. I wanted to be a meteorologist and work on the Weather Channel. Some girls wanted to be like Debbie Gibson or Kelly Kapowski, not me-- I wanted to be Cheryl Lemke the weekend anchor on the Weather Channel.










I know I could have rocked out the jet-stream moving across the country like nobodies business! But when the time came to go to college, the closest school for meteorology was Georgia Tech. Out of state-- so not only out of price range, but way too far for this mama's girl to go! Who knows, maybe when my girls graduate college I'll go get that meteorology degree and be the "smoking hot granny" on the Weather Channel. But for now, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing and realize how lucky I am to get to be here with our girls during this time of their lives, and try to stomp down that ugly little monsters head when he tries to make me doubt myself!
So, the next time Chloe asks me what I'm going to be when I "growed" up, I'm going to simply reply, "FABULOUS!"