Cliche

Sometimes I feel like such a cliche.

Don't get me wrong. I love my life. I am happily married. I have a beautiful and healthy baby boy. I live in, what my opinion is, the greatest neighborhood on earth. And I am fortunate enough that I can start a business because I want to, not because I have to.

That said, let's take a little walk through my adult life for a second. Girl goes to college. Girl graduates college and makes a big move out west to do something "different". Girl falls in love with boy out west. Girl moves in with boy into their first apartment together. Girl moves back East to get married to said boy. Girl gets married. Girl and boy buy an apartment in a pricy, but starting-a-family-friendly neighborhood. Girl and boy get a dog. Girl and boy realize that being a parent (albeit one to a dog) is not quite as easy as they thought. Girl and boy decide to start a family of the human kind. Girl takes a year off of work to care for new baby. After one year girl decides homemaking is not enough for her, and decides to start a business.

So here we are. Now I try to cram 5 business days worth of work into the two daycare days I can afford, and nap times on the other three days. I know I am one of many women (and some men) who are trying to somehow start a stay-at-home business, while being a stay-at-home parent. It is so tough, but so rewarding, and so far I love it.

Of course what I didn't mention in my above life history is that in college I was on the crew team - one of the hardest and most rigorous sports in existence, but to this day one of the greatest things I have ever done. When I was out west I ran a marathon. When I fell in love, I almost lost that love when I didn't recognize what love was. When I got married, it was the happiest, most beautiful (and fastest!) day of my life. When we bought our apartment, I was absolutely, unequivocally in love with it, and still am. Our dog (who, by the way, was the greatest dog of all time) lived for only two short years, then died very suddenly from an extremely rare infection in her brain. When I had my son, I split both my abdominal wall and pubic bone so terribly, that I was paralyzed with pain before the birth of my son, and couldn't walk for weeks after his birth. And starting this business, so far, has been an amazing and wonderful experience.

Maybe I'm not such a cliche after all.