UBC Motherhood - Homemaker

This is supposed to be yesterday's post's counterpart of sorts.Think "Stay at Home Mom vs working Mom".

I carefully chose the title of today's blog post. Under no circumstances did I want to call it "housewife". I don't identify myself a a housewife, even though, let's be honest, that's what I am.If not a maid.That's what almost every Mom is, if she likes it or not. Since she's at home anyway, and even if she isn't, she's expected to do the domestic stuff.

I decided to call it homemaker, because that's what I naturally became when I first moved in with my husband. He and his business partner had built a two-family house a few years earlier. Hubby was single at the time, his partner was married, and since hubby and his partner worked together, they socialized too, meaning he was invited to dinner over there every so often.

When the neighbors had their first baby, they moved into a larger house, and hubby was left behind, eating cereal and frozen pizza.

Since he was working a lot, he never got around to make his house a home if that makes sense. That's where I came in. I hung pictures on the bare walls, I decorated for the Holidays, and I populated the kitchen, even though my cooking skills were on a very low level back then. Since he didn't even do breakfast, he didn't have a kitchen table. 

I also tried to have houseplants, but I couldn't keep up with watering, fertilizing or repotting.

Since he didn't mind putting blue jeans and delicate white shirts in the same wash, I volunteered to take over laundry duty.

When we started to talk about having children, I made it clear that I wanted to be a Mom, not a maid. He didn't fully commit, but he also didn't want the full confrontation I guess.

I will talk about mental load in a later post, so I won't go into detail about who does which chore today. 

Instead I would like to focus on the positive aspects of being a person who spends more time at home than her husband. That's code for part-time working Mom. 

I introduced fun activities in connection with customs and festivities. Here's an example:  

In Switzerland we don't celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Well, nobody except us. When Colin was 3.5 years old, we set a Leprechaun trap for the first time and celebrated with his best friend's family by eating green food.

The next year I had a wooden bow made that we painted at home. 

Every year other elements were added. A rainbow dress for Barbie and home-made leprechaun cookies.

A St. Patrick's day theme scavenger hunt around the house.

A luxurious leprechaun hotel and five colorful M&Ms among our guests.

Somehow this post turned into a St. Patrick's Day medley. I apologize.

I also did themed birthday parties for Colin and his friends. One year it was LEGO, International Travel, Disney Cars, Soccer or Minecraft.

And of course there have been Halloween Parties -  again, not a regular thing in Switzerland, but somebody's got to take the lead

Tomorrow there'll be a separate Christmas post. So if you feel like thinking about the Holidays while suffering from heatwaves in July, come on over, there will be cookies!