I've been a stay-at-home mom for 8 months now.  The first 7 months it was as stepmom to 13-year-old Jason.  The days in that stretch were spent organizing my home, planning meals, cooking, making sure homework got done, starting a small business with Thirty-One, and generally serving as life manager (as dubbed by my husband).  I got out of the house a lot, read a lot, and wrote whenever the muse struck me.  Not too shabby.

For the last six weeks, I've added mothering a newborn to the mix and it's not an exaggeration to say everything else has fallen by the wayside.  Laundry?  Ha!  Cleaning?  Yeah, right.  Cooking?  Does pouring cereal count?

Being a stay-at-home mom to a baby has become my round-the-clock job.  Between feeding and changing and soothing, I barely have time to pee.  I knew it would be a lot of work, but I didn't fully understand how time consuming it would be until now.

Mornings are especially needy times for baby Jonas so I rarely make it downstairs before 9:00 a.m. (some days it's after 10:00!)  Once downstairs I spend the rest of the day in the living room and the kitchen, baby in my arms.  My adult conversation comes in the form of Ellen DeGeneres, Jane in Drop Dead Diva, Hoda and (gulp!) Kathie Lee.  Yikes!  

From my time on the couch, I know how to remodel kitchens, decorate on a budget, walk a runway, and what not to wear.  I don't have time to do any of that but, by golly, if I did... watch out world!

I don't leave the house often except to pick up Jason after school, so I find that by the end of the day when my husband comes home from work, I want to do stuff, go places, discuss the plights of humanity.  My husband, on the other hand, having spent the day doing all those things wants to come home and relax and the couch.

Given that, I decided it was probably time to toughen up and brave the world with baby in tow.  To have our own adventures while the other half of our family is at work and school.  I started last weekend while my husband and stepson were preparing the fields for baseball season.  I went to Old Navy and Barnes & Noble with the little one.  We strolled and meandered.  We perched at the bookstore cafe where I sipped iced tea and wrote.  

Did you catch that?  I wrote!  

I saw other humans.  In real life.  I breathed the brisk outdoor air.  I even soothed Jonas through a public fussy spell- rather quickly, too.  Go me!  I felt alive and almost a little like me again.  Since then we've met a friend for lunch, gone for walks in the neighborhood, and survived the grocery store.  

Sorry Kathie Lee, I'm afraid I don't have much time for you and Hoda anymore.  My baby and I are out exploring the world.