Stay-at-home Whining

So I love staying at home with my two little girls, but there are downsides to everything. I already talked about the good, here’s the bad and ugly.

More cooking. When I was working, I threw a granola bar at the kids for breakfast and called it good. You think I’m kidding. Now I find myself as a short order cook making scrambled eggs, pancakes, and bacon. Then there is lunch. I never had to make lunch. Preschool did that. And then there are snacks! Before, dinner was the only meal I really cooked…and let’s be honest, sometimes it came from a drive-thru window.
And all that cooking leads to dishes! Dishes are my least favorite chore. Now I have to do three times the dishes! Luckily, I’ve already enlisted my two- and four-year-old daughters in helping. Unluckily, they can only reach the bottom drawers of the kitchen. Sigh.
Toy tornado. What are toy tornadoes? Well, they usually come through my house right after breakfast. And they are fast! I turn my back to load the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher (sigh) and all of a sudden the living room is covered in toys. While I pick up the path of destruction, the tornado simply moves upstairs to a bedroom! I chase that tornado all around the house until the girls to go sleep.
Diapers. Need I say more? I missed out on so much poop when I was working. When I say “missed” I mean “did not miss.”
I thought it would be easier. I cut myself a lot of slack when I was working mom. McDonald’s for dinner? It was a crazy day and I’m too tired to cook anything. The house is mess? We haven’t been home long enough to clean it. Your favorite shirt is dirty? I’ll catch up with 8 loads of laundry on Saturday. I was doing the best I could. But now that it is my “job” to stay-at-home, I feel like I should be cooking every meal in a spotless house. Then I get disappointed when it doesn’t happen. I thought it would be easier. Turns out, staying-at-home is still work. And just like when I was a working mom, I’d rather be playing Go Fish than doing the dishes.