Ask any stay-at-home mother this question at your peril! My experience of SAHM-hood was a challenge, and certainly jam-packed with chores, errands, running the household and, the part that makes it all worthwhile, spreading the love around.
So I really laughed when my friend K, a fellow pilot’s wife, showed us her five-year-old’s adorable drawings, depicting what she thinks her mom and dad do all day.
In the 5 minutes between school runs, grocery shopping, food prep, organising maintenance, yelling at the bank and parents’ meetings, maybe!
That’s hilarious! I don’t know what my kids think I do, other than go shopping and forget to buy the things they want. I keep telling them I work but somehow I don’t think they really believe me.
It’s such a hard concept for them to understand, isn’t it?! My kids think my sole purpose in the day is to go grocery shopping too – sometimes they look at me when I walk in and automatically say, “Mum, did you get the pink milk/cereal/…” I wish my favourite things would automatically appear in the cupboard 🙂
My family know I work from home because I moan at them about it all the time ‘I work you know!’ etc blah blah blah as a reason why I either can’t go into London to get something for them, or why I haven’t kept the cupboards overflowing with treats for them or whatever. It’s my father in law who hasn’t quite caught on. He keeps telling my husband all these great plans I could be out doing in the dormant veg garden, and offering to bring over the onions he grew for us and I can plant them in or dropping off a great packet of excess geraniums for me to plant somewhere because he knows I like flowers. I try to be nice about it because it’s a sweet gesture, but ARGH! I barely have time to get dinner ready before bedtime…
I’ll arghhh with you Michelloui!! I’ve recently started to really enjoy the work I get to do from home, but it’s so true, people think you’ll also have time to do all sorts of odd jobs, from running around in the car to buying all those treats. Good luck with the planting, if you ever get a spare mo between deadlines and chores!!