Life: Thoughts on a Wednesday

Hello my lovely friends!

One of my goals as a blogger is to have you all get to know me a little better. I love that I get to meet so many amazing people in the blogging world, and I want to make sure you all know who I am!

So today I wanted to share more about my life lately, because it’s been crazy, exciting, stressful and all around insane (like I’m sure most of our lives are ha!).

So I’ll start with the good news! My husband, Kyle got a promotion at work! Hurray! I’m so very proud of him! He has known a promotion has been in store for him for a while now, so it’s exciting that it finally happened! It was really crazy how it happened! On Thursday after work, Kyle came and woke me up (I work night shift and sleep during the day some days). He told me the good news and I was really excited, but exhausted and I fell back asleep. The next day, I didn’t have work so I was up and about during the day. Kyle then informed me that his new schedule started Monday. MONDAY! He is now working a ton more hours, and since both of us worked full time, I needed to find a sitter for my son…IN ONE DAY! Can we just take a moment and think about how stressful that was for me haha!? I am overly protective of everyone in my life, so I really wanted to get to know someone before they watch my son. One day was NOT enough time for me to do that! Thankfully we have some amazing in-laws that helped spread the word through church and we found an amazing sitter. She has a little boy of her own and a dog (Everett is OBSESSED with dogs…but I don’t have the patience to get one) and she is wonderful! We were instant friends! We had a play date with our boys Saturday and had a lot of fun! It’s so nice to have someone I trust taking care of Everett while Kyle and I work hard to provide for our family!

But with this whirl-wind promotion, it’s got me thinking a lot about how I really wish I didn’t have to work…or that I could only work part-time. First off, let me just say that I love my career! It’s stressful, but fun…and I get to meet a ton of people! I’m really lucky to have a career where I earn a good amount of money, have great insurance, and get to work in medicine! I really am lucky that I was able to get a job right out of college, and get a job so easily when we moved to Texas. It’s been such a blessing in our family’s lives, especially since it’s allowed Kyle to focus on applying to grad school. On the other hand, I see lots of women that get to stay at home with their kids, have play dates, and get to really raise their children. It just seems so nice (but also an extremely hard job). It’s not like being a stay-at-home mom is any easier than working full time, it just sounds like a lot more of what I want sometimes. I crave having more time with Everett…and sometimes I feel immense gilt for leaving him to go to work. It’s really a daily struggle for me. Luckily, my work schedule allows me to work 7 days in a row and get 7 whole days off, so I get the best of both worlds. Have any of you been in this situation? What did you chose to do?

The other obvious side to this is the money. We could definitely survive off of one income (we were practically doing this when my husband was working part-time and applying to grad school), but it’s hard. I’m sure all of you totally understand this…there are bills to pay, things to save up for, kids to take care of, financial goals that are wanting to be met, and of course it’s nice to have fun money to spend on makeup and clothes :). It’s really nice to have 2 full-time incomes now, because we are able to pay off our debt faster, and save for a home faster, and have money for grad school (have you seen how expensive it is…yikes!). It’s been hard for me to really decide what would be best for our family, Everett and our finances. I will have to work when Kyle is in school, but should I take a break until he does?

I have also wanted more time to devote to my creative side. I want to develop my makeup skills, and actually start doing some free-lance work. I also think it would be fun to go to beauty school and really learn the in’s and out’s of hair, skin care, makeup etc. It would be so nice to have more time to devote to my photography and to be able to actually start making money off of that as well…AND I want to devote more time to blogging! I LOVE blogging and everything associated with it! It’s so fun and so rewarding to me! But do I want to give up my career in medicine to do all of these things? I honestly think I would miss it way to much, so I need to find a balance (and the time) to reach all of my goals!

And now I’m going to take a second to talk about my amazing little boy and his developments! He is growing up fast!! He’s just about 10 months old now, and I can’t believe he’s almost one! He crawls extremely fast, he can pull himself up into a standing position, and he’s started to take steps while holding on to things. He loves to take bites of our grownup food, and he loves to get into my makeup stash (he also figured out how to open a bottle of liquid foundation and get it all over himself and my vanity). Watching Everett grow up has been so rewarding for my husband and I. I never realized that having a child would bring so much joy (and obviously stress) to my life! So in conclusion, I’m obsessed with my little boy, and I love him!!

So thank you for sitting through this random story time on Dressing Dallas ha! Can any of you relate to what I’m going through? What would your advice to me be?