Full time Stay at Home Mum reporting for Duty....

On Friday at 12:45pm I was called into the office, informed that I no longer had a job, and by 1pm I had packed up my desk, been escorted out of the building and was no longer employed. So now I am a Stay at Home Mum, which means that I now work for loves and kisses instead of pound sterling and my hours are 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. And instead of getting upset about it I am going to live up to the challenge. Gareth and I have agreed to re-evaluate this in the new year and see where we are, but for now I have the most important job in the world. I will have to take care of all James' nutritional needs (dietician and chef), his education (teacher), discipline (police officer) and fix all his boo boo's (nurse).

I also get the job of keeping the house in a tip top condition (cleaner). Now to say that I am um, domesticated, would be true to sense.... Name me a food and I will cook it for, of late, name me a cake and I will bake it for you. What you want your dishes cleaned and your kitchen swept and mopped, not a problem. You need your toilet cleaned, ok no hassles, I know how to do bathrooms too, and how to dust... but I am afraid that is where all my being domestic stops..... ummmmm....... yeah. Gareth has spoilt me since I became pregnant. He has always done all our laundry and I bet if I asked nicely enough he would even do my ironing (if I bought clothes that needed to be ironed of course), and he changes all our bedding and he does all the vacuuming. He is the man to call when you need to oven cleaned or the dirt taken out. What you have a hole in your trousers? I will just ask my husband to sew it up straight after he builds the wall unit. I think I can safely say that by me being spoilt Gareth has learnt alot.... he can even cook a decent tomato bredie or curry if you ask nicely. But seen as I am now home all the time, I have decided that I will need to take on the domestic side of things and that way we can spend more time together doing family things on the weekend.

Today reminded me of how undomesticated I can be..... James was being an angel for me this morning so I took a shower and washed my hair. While I was drying my hair I could hear James in the lounge playing happily, and then it happened! My son walks into my bedroom, looking very pleased with himself and hands me his nappy, inside his nappy was a nice poo. Yes, James had taken off his nappy himself and brought it very proudly to me. So I chase the little monster to clean his bum and to put a clean nappy on it and then carry on drying my hair. I then walk into the lounge and guess what I find? James had smeared his poo all over his bean bag chair! He had taken his nappy off and then sat on his chair! Great stuff. Luckily I remember that the beans can come out of the chair and that it can be machine washed, so I take the bean bag to the kitchen and try to pour the 10 million beans into a refuse bag..... yeah, that did not work so well.... there were white beans everywhere, except in the refuse bag, it looked like it had snowed in my kitchen. James thought this was great fun. So I sweep up all the beans and I take the bean bag to the bedroom where I attempted to put the beans into the mesh washing basket, this works great until the washing basket gets too full and there are still beans in the bean bag. So I try and put the refuse bag over the top of the mesh washing basket, but the damn thing moves and white beans snow everywhere. Great I eventually get all the beans out and into the washing basket, the refuse bag or on the floor. I sweep up as many of the beans as I can using my hands and put them into the refuse bag, and then decide that I need to vacuum up the rest. I fetch the vacuum, great. I attach all the necessary pipes to the correct holes, great. I plug the vacuum cleaner in, great.... but where is the on button? It took me about 5 minutes to find the damn on button!

Next job, I thought that I would wash all the bedding, so I go and fetch the duvet covers off the top of the cupboard and as I am pulling, 2 winter King size duvets and about 6 pillows with all necessary covers and about 6 blankets all come tumbling down on me.... I was standing in an avalanche of bedding.... This was just too much for me, I looked at the bedding and stepped over it, and walked out the room. So, when Gareth got home tonight, I told him about my day and he just seemed to understand. He helped me clear up everything, after he had stopped laughing, of course.

Next step - education. I have an Internet friend - Abby that does the most wonderful things with her son. I am always so envious of her good ideas, but one that I am going to steal from her is her theme's. Every week she does a different theme with her son. They read a book and that book forms the theme of the week and they do all sorts of activities based around that. So, this is where you come in. Please suggest a theme for James and I, please mention the book that you would use too. What was your favourite childhood read? I am going to add to this as well, by saying that I am going to have a word a day for James to learn around that theme as he is picking up words all the time.

Ok, its now midnight and I have had a long day.... and tomorrow I get to try this being domestic thing again, hopefully without snow or avalanches.