I got a promotion

(I started this post two weeks ago - must be more disciplined about the blog posting.)

Well, not a promotion in the conventional sense of the word.  But this one's been a long time coming.  Or it feels that way.  Ready for it?  On July 11th, I bit the bullet and resigned from my full time job.  So, my promotion is home to be with my kiddos. 

These are the ones.

For a while now (since March at least), Brian and I have been looking at options that would allow me to work less and be home more.  We kept having conversations wherein one of us would say, "we can't keep up this pace." or "we don't have any time margin." but we couldn't find a work situation that made sense to us. 

When we just had C.C., it was hard for me to be gone from her and I often felt like my time with her was not enough.  Adding in Henry has multiplied that feeling.  I know there are plenty of women who work full time - I've told myself this several times throughout the past seven or eight months.  I've tried to tell myself to buck up  and look at the positive - my current job is only four days a week and it is a job that I can truly leave behind when I go home.  But I kept longing for something different.

I believe that God has called me to be a mother - that it is my primary task and ministry to train the children in our home.  Part of that will be foster care - we aren't done with that.  The other part will be loving the children who are forever in our home.

Anyway, after a particularly rough night of sleep (or lack of), on a Thursday which is my last work day of the week, Brian and I put our heads together.  In practice, we weren't playing to our strengths.  On the days that Brian wasn't working, he was at home with Henry and also trying to do housework.  Meanwhile, I was at work wishing to be home.  That day, we decided to take a hard look at the budget and see if we could make do without my income.  Since you're reading this, you know that we did figure out something satisfactory to us.  It's not without it's sacrifices, but I think it will ultimately work better for our family. 

So, here I am, in my last few days of full-time work (for the foreseeable future) excited to shift gears into my other job.  For now, I'm going to be working one long shift a week and running the house the rest of the time.  I am not naive enough to believe that I'm choosing something easy - it's just a different hard.