Travelling with young uns

So I’m getting ready for a trip to Canada with a two year old. I’ve never traveled on a plane with my little guy so this is going to be very interesting. There is no direct flight to Ottawa, so we have to leave Fort Lauderdale and travel to Philadelphia and then catch a flight to Ottawa. Because of the switch, and in order for us to get there at a reasonable time and drive two hours to our eventual destination, we opted to leave Fort Lauderdale at 0h Dark Hundred Hours in oder to make it onto the Dark Thirty flight, if you get my drift?

So then I began to think, okay since I’m traveling for a whole day with my little munchin, what are all the things I’m going to need.

Health
We have to take him to see the doctor the day before we leave to ensure that he’s in good enough health to fly. We don’t want any busted ear drums or clogged sinuses because of the flying.

Entertainment
We’ve bought a portable DVD player and plan on taking loads of Barney DVD’s to keep him occupied. In addition to this, there are books, crayons, markers, a writing slate and books which we hope will help keep him busy.

Nutrition
We live in an era where you are no longer fed on a plane. This means that we have to travel with all his eats for that day and then eats for when we get to our destination. Tristan loves mac and cheese, sausages, ovaltine, cheese noodles and goldfish. Not only am I traveling with this for the day of travel, but also for the duration of our stay.

Miscellaneous
Then when I sat and thought about it, I normally travel with a change of clothes, pull-ups, wipes and a variety of things for him on a normal basis. Now, I’m adding entertainment, breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. Wow.

So the next time you see a harassed mom with 2 or 3 kids at the airport. Have some pity on her. Travelling with kids is a job in itself. I'll update you once I've travelled and returned home safely with my precious cargo.

Stay-at-home Moms

So can I tell you that there is something at work because everybody is pregnant. When I was pregnant with Tristan, there were about 5 of us who were pregnant at the same time. In one office alone, they have 3 pregnant women and one just got back from Maternity leave. Remind me not to drink the water or sit in any chairs in that office or another year or so. I can’t afford to get pregnant until next year so that by the time I go on Maternity Leave, I’d have been in the job well over a year.

Okay, but now onto my little prejudice – stay at home Moms. When I had my son, initially I felt really guilty about going back to work because one of my girlfriends had left her fairly high powered (about to make mega bucks) job to stay home with her daughter for a year. I kept thinking that maybe I was shortchanging my son in some way. Within 6 months, I realized how false this concept was. I was with him in the morning and he got all of me, then I went to work and dealt with that and then I came home and I was all his again. I also employed someone to provide full-time stimulation and affectionf or him in my absence. I think because I had that huge break in the day of not having interaction with him, I was much more dedicated to making my time with him really count and important. So what he had was someone always dedicated and focused on him and I think that made a huge difference.

Then I remember reading the Parents or Parenting magazine one day and there was a stay-at-home Mom lamenting on the fact that she always wondered how working mothers always seemed to have it together. They were always well dressed because they had to go to work, they had all their kids stuff together and seemed to always be on top of things while she always was frazzled. The answer slowly came to me. Because we worked outside the home, we had to have a routine that we adhered to and good time management skills. We knew that we had more on our plates so we allotted time for each thing and strictly adhered to it. Stay at home Moms tended to be looser about getting things accomplished, hence some things never did get done.

So, here is my prejudice. It’s really bad and I know that every woman has the right to make her own choices, but I realize that I have less respect for stay at home Moms than I do for working Moms. The reason is this. My belief is that if you opt to be a stay at home Mom and housewife then you need to make sure that this is really what you do and do it well. Your home should be immaculate, well decorated and cared for. Your children should be well dressed and involved in a variety of activities as should you, since your work is to manage home and family. In addition, you should make the time to ensure that you look good. That's my prejudice and there, I've said it. I do cut working Moms more slack, because they do almost as much as stay at home Moms do and still manage to eek out 9 or 10 hours/day to work at earning a salary.

Way too often I see stay at home Moms whose homes are a wreck and they barely have control over their children. If they were getting paid a salary for the work they were doing, they’d be fired. Can you imagine hiring a babysitter/housekeeper and you came home and dishes were all over the place, the kids were dirty, beds hadn’t been made and the children hadn’t been involved in some meaningful project all day. You would fire that person post haste. Yet stay-at-home Moms get away with it and expect others to understand that their job is very demanding and to somehow justify their lack of homemaking/parenting skills.

Pre-school teachers, and I use my son’s teacher as an example, manage 6-8 two year olds and manages to (a) have them participate in singing, counting and alphabet lessons in the morning, she follows this with (b) some art project and then (c) takes them to eat before (d) putting them down for a nap in which time she cleans up everything. If she can get it done, why can’t a Mom who’s home with maybe one or two kids?

It sounds bad, but if I were a husband and my wife opted to work in the home then that should be her full time job. Her home should be immaculate and she shouldn’t expect him to come home and pick up where she left off, after all, does she go to work and help him to earn his paycheck? He should be expected to participate in family life which means spending time with his children, thereby giving her time to be able to pursue what she’d like, but she should have dinner ready because that’s part of the deal. If they choose to make dinner as a family, that’s also fine. I'm really not trying to be a bitch to stay-at-home Moms, I just think they want to have thier cake and eat it too. If they choose to stay home, then they should accept that it is extremely challenging, but that's their choice and they should embrace it and excel at it. If they don't then they shouldn't do it and instead should work at something they are better suited to.

I know that this is so not a feminist position to take, but I think many women who opt to stay home are not doing so for the benefit of the family, they are simply lazy and lack ambition. They are happy to stay home and have someone else take care of everything for them. Then they wonder why their husbands invariably have affairs with the women they work with or a professional woman. Then when the husbands leave them for a younger thinner version, they have no skill or trade to turn to because they gave up everything to be a wife and Mom.

I've seen some stay-at-home Moms and housewives who truly excel at what they do. They have fabulous homes that always have fresh flowers. You can always find baked goods, fruit and something cooked to eat in the fridge. They don't run out of food because they are always prepared. They participate in their children's functions, volunteer for a variety of things and look great to boot. Now those are women who are truly doing what they have set out to do. In addition, they host functions that help their husbands to achieve the stature in society, business, government that they are after. These are not stupid women, they are bright, intelligent, well read and truly fulfilling the role of stay at home wife and mother.

I think in today’s society where many men and women don’t value marriage as they did a century ago, that women should be wise to the fact that they shouldn’t be relying on someone to take care of them, they should be able to do that themselves. Now, that’s not to say that if you meet someone who wants to take care of you, that you should tell him or her to go to hell, it simply means that you don’t become an albatross around that person’s neck. Being an independent Mom creates sons who realize that women are more than women to sleep with and daughters with a strong sense of self.