Remember how lovely it was last Friday morning? Before winter came back? It was a glorious morning outside and my nanny arrived fresh faced and eager to take my cranky toddler (after 22 months, he’s finally a toddler, yay Eli!). My cranky toddler wasn’t ready to be wrested from my arms, however, and it was only a bribe of monkeys at the zoo that would ebb the flow of tears.
So Olga lovingly got Eli ready for the zoo while I hesitantly got ready for work. When they were ready to go, Eli stopped by my home office and said “mommy, zoo, come”. Daggers. Utter daggers. What spreadsheet in the world was more important than watching my cherubic 2-year-old marvel at the “huge monkeys” (his words)? Then the internal pep talk began. The justifications. It wasn’t the task at hand that was more important, it was the mortgage. Or the hubby’s law school loans, or the saving for a new house so Eli and future babes could have room to roam and not be woken by revving motorcycles at 3 am.
But then no matter how hard I tried, the nag still came back. In 20 years when I reminisce about my children’ childhoods, am I going to regret working while Eli was young and impressionable and discovering the world for the first time? Thankfully practical me came back in the nick of time and kicked me in the rear and reminded me that I could take Eli to the zoo the next day and still work today and that just because I am working today doesn’t mean that I have to continue at the frenetic pace I’ve been operating at for months. That one day I soon I will hopefully have a better balance again.
It was settled – I would work today and we would go to the zoo on Saturday.
I think Saturday was negative four…
Are there any other mommying workers out there that suffer the “guiltys”? Especially that accompany the adventures brought on by warmer weather?
