From DINK to SAHM

Several years ago, before I got pregnant, I was a DINK: Double-income, no kids.  Or should I say, I was one half of the DINK partnership, the power couple.  My husband and I were working full-time, didn’t think much about eating haute cuisine and going on shopping sprees, and I could watch the fluff puff that passed for news in the morning with a cup of coffee uninterrupted.  

I never got up in the middle of the night for anything.  I wasn’t doing laundry around the clock.  I wasn’t frequently encountering mystery substances in my home, such as in between the pages of my favorite book.  The keys on my computer weren’t sticky from little hands.  I could eat my meals sitting down.  

The years have danced in circles, leading me on journeys, adventures and misadventures, and I couldn’t have foreseen that I would become a SAHM, a stay-at-home-mom.  (Is DG -- Domestic Goddess -- better?  Not sure...) Now my home is an obstacle course of childish things that never get put away.  I’ve learned to march to the beat of a different drummer.  I’ve sworn to believing in fairies. 

I’m only having “cuisine” if it’s written on the box of a frozen TV dinner.  I’m clipping coupons instead of keeping up with the spring fashions.  I even read the Penny Saver.  I can’t leave the house without taking everything but the kitchen sink with me, and sometimes I even wish I could fit that into the diaper bag as well.

I know now who’s getting the dollhouse I had when I was eight.  She kisses me in the morning and says she loves me too.  She has bright eyes, and she never stops smiling.  She’s walked with me on my path for only two short years now, but it feels like she’s always been with me.  She’s the reason I became who I am today.