Ah, the mobile lifestyle. So glamorous. So bohemian. So new agey and hip and now.

So, I spent last night sleeping on the concrete floor of a handicap bathroom. No one in my family is handicapped, but it was the largest unoccupied space in the bath house of the campground where we’re currently “living”, which allowed my entire family of four to huddle on the same floor together.

Technically, my husband and kids slept while I laid awake listening to the storm rage outside. My body has become too accustomed to memory foam to be able to sleep on a concrete floor, even with the hasty padding of a king-size comforter that was wrapped burrito style around us. The three of them were exhausted after the 1:30 am wake-up call that came from pounding rain, blinding lightning, and howling wind that actually shook the RV, exhausted enough to fall asleep once we’d relocated to the safest place I could think of when the watches turned to warnings on my iPhone’s weather app.
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One of the coolest things about a mobile lifestyle is the constant change. The scenery outside my window is different from one week to the next, giving me plenty of opportunities to explore, discover, and try new things. I never get bored.

As a mother, however, the constant change becomes a challenge to overcome.

According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, security is one of our most basic needs, trumped only by our physiological need for food, shelter and sleep. Maslow argues that a sense of security is even more important than the need for love (which - woah. I’ll definitely be thinking more about that.) For children, their necessary sense of security can be threatened by constant change.
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When my husband and I decided to move from Iowa to Florida a few years ago, we knew that meant giving our children a different growing up experience than we had. Instead of snow days and piles of leaves, they’d have beaches and possible hurricane evacuations. We considered it a fair trade. These days we’re asking our kids to give up even more, and I’m not always sure I’m comfortable with our decision.
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This week has been filled with painful lessons in letting go and saying goodbye. As I’ve struggled to navigate the heartache myself, I’ve also had to face helping my kids cope with change.

There’s no denying that change is hard. While choosing change is usually easier than having it thrust upon you, there are still sacrifices to be made. In our case, our family is choosing to leave people we love so that we can travel for a year. Four years ago we made a similar decision in order to move to a bigger city in a warmer state. In both instances we were excited about the adventures ahead of us, but we cried buckets over the relationships that would be significantly changed by distance.

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I am currently in the process of embracing a much more practical lifestyle than I’m accustomed to.  I’m downsizing, I’m decluttering, I’m drastically reducing my frivolous spending.  I’m not even wearing makeup all the time because it just seems silly to waste the time.  This is a dramatic turn around for someone who owns a shopping blog, refers to her makeup box as “the Toolbox” and has probably never once been described as practical by another human being.

I’m not sure what’s come over me.  Perhaps selling our home and everything we own in order to embark on a year of travel around the country has forced me to rethink a few long-held ideas about time and stuff and money.  Ironically, most people wouldn’t describe “selling everything you own and vagabonding in a van” as practical, and yet the result of that impractical dream seems to be a healthy dose of minimalist thinking.

Or maybe I’m just getting old and crotchety.

Whatever.

Point is - I find myself saying things like “well that just seems like a waste” and “that just isn’t practical” a lot lately.  Professionally, the payoff has been tremendous as I’m producing more and able to clearly see the fruits of my labors and logical decision making.  But I wonder if, at home, I’m being a little too practical…

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I watched a beautiful video yesterday that asked moms what advice they would give themselves if they could go back in time to right before their first child was born.  The video was a gorgeous montage of varied answers that ranged from “sleep now” to “forgive yourself”.  My personal favorite was a sign that read “you are the expert”.

It got me thinking about other times in my life when I could have used some advice from women who had gone before me: my first day at a new school, the last day I went to college, our first argument after my wedding, that time I thought I could pull off the pixie haircut .  All of these moments could have been made just a little easier with some words of encouragement and wisdom.

Another milestone in my life as a woman, specifically as a working mother, when I could have used a little hand holding was when I went back to work after having my babies.  Ouch.  The heartbreak of dropping them off, the giddiness at having adult conversations during the day, the guilt at enjoying adult conversations and being overly tired at night; I was not prepared for either return to the workforce.

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Before I became a mother, I was an avid exerciser.  I worked out in the company gym with my work best friend nearly every day of the week.  On weekends, I would take a 3-5 mile walk with a girlfriend.  I weighed a good 40 pounds less than I do now and was fit.  Not like Jillian Michaels fit.  But I was healthy.  And active.  And my ass didn’t have it own zip code.

When I was pregnant with my son, I lost all my energy.  The third person I shared our good news with was my VP.  I was so tired that I was falling asleep at my desk every afternoon.  So I asked to be able to work from home after lunch.  He was so wonderful about it and agreed.  Good-bye working-out every afternoon.  Hello 2 hour nap!

It didn’t help either that my pregnancy cravings were nacho cheese, thin mints, and pancakes.  I was ballooning and quickly.  I gained 20 pounds in the first half of the pregnancy.  When my son was born, I had packed on nearly 60 pounds.  I always thought that I’d be one of those moms that quickly bounces back into her pre-pregnancy sizes.  Reality is my pre-pregnancy clothes are still hanging in my closet nearly six years later.
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Hello my gorgeous, awesome, and totally put-together Full Time, All the Time readers.  It’s been a while hasn’t it?  I hope you haven’t forgotten about me while the fabulous Miss Britt held down the fort here.  I’ve been on an unexpected blogging hiatus.  I wish that I had witty reasons for my short-term leave of absence, but the truth is that life smacked in the face.  Then the gut.  Then push me down and kicked me some more.

In other words, I suffered through my first Summer Break as a working mom. Then right when I felt like I was getting it all in control, life sucker-punched me in the face with Kindergarten.

When my son finished preschool in June, we decided (and by “we” I mean, I thought I had the best idea ever) to let our son have a real summer.  We spent lots of time at the pool.  I spent countless hours shuttling between home and a morning-only summer camp.  We played outside with our neighbors.  Saw nearly every PG or G movie in the theaters. And my son finally found bravery to ride his bike without training wheels.  It was fantastic.

I also spent hours upon hours working late into the night to make up for the lost hours during the day. 
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You know what my favorite thing about summer is?

The dramatic reduction in working mom guilt.

I mean, OK, I still feel bad because my kids spend their summer at daycare programs instead of running the neighborhood with their friends.  And, yes, I wish I had more time to take them to the pool and the beach and on family vacations.  But with the help of family, friends, camps and weekends, my kids get plenty of fun and relaxation in between June and August.

But school is just around the corner now (and has started for many of you), and it’s only a matter of time before I’m once again asking myself, “am I the only mom who works?!?”

You know the drill.  The letters asking if you’d like to volunteer to be a chaperone for this year’s field trips.  The PTA meetings and parent-teacher conferences held at 2 in the afternoon.  The requests for two dozen cookies sent home the night before two dozen cookies are needed.

And when I say “I have to work”, I feel like what’s heard is “I care more about my job than my children.”

Of course, that’s not true.  In fact, most of the women I know who work do so, in part, because of all the things they want to provide for their children.  Things like food and shelter, for example.

Moving away from a small town where I knew everyone helped to assauge a lot of the guilt I felt about not being able to be the Home Room Mom (whatever that is).  It’s a lot easier to focus on the realities of what’s important to your family when you don’t know the people you imagine to be juding you.  Once I got the Guilt Over Things I Am Probably Making Up In My Head out of the way, it became a lot easier to focus on realistic ways that I, as a mother who works full time, can be involved in my children’s education.

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The recent post about the benefits to children of working moms and the subsequent “Why are we still talking about this?” post have sparked quite a bit of discussion - both among the readers here and in my own head.

What?  You have discussions inside your own head, too, right?

One of the common themes that kept coming up was confidence.  Well, that and doubt - which I suppose is the opposite of confidence.

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