I wanna scream "I love you" at the top of my lungs

What is so great about being a stay at home mom, anyway? I was thinking about this the other day while on a walk with my good friend Jessica, who is expecting her first baby in November. She's in the process of getting her PhD, so won't be home for long, but I realized while walking and talking about babies that all I seem to do is focus on how hard this is. How much harder it is than I ever believed it could be. How much more stressful, more exhausting.

I didn’t start this blog as an outlet for my complaints. And when I was pregnant, the thing that drove me crazy more than anything was the programming most women seem to have that makes them all see a pregnant lady and immediately let loose with every horror story they experienced, or have even ever heard; this followed immediately by, “Anyway, are you so excited?”

Um, no, certainly not after that story you just told me about your 36 hour labor and what a nightmare your kid is! I promised myself I wouldn’t do that to anybody once I had my baby, and yet here I find myself, nothing but complaints.

I did start this blog with a promise to be honest. And the truth is, I have a very happy life. I love my husband, who is the most wonderful man and just the best father. And I love Liam, who might be more energetic and interested in testing boundaries than I expected, but who is also—more importantly—the sweetest, nicest little boy I could have imagined. Anyway, I thought I’d write down some stuff that is awesome about staying home with him every weekday while Kurt is at work.

Most mornings I wake up to the sound of him jumping up and down in his crib because he’s so excited to start the day. He says “Please,” and sometimes “Thank you,” and calls me Mom (“Mum?”) and sometimes Mommy or Mom-Mom, which is one of the most strangely satisfying things I’ve ever experienced. He loves to jump around the living room and dances along to anything—commercials on TV, Raffi, the soundtrack to Tangled (which we blast on the reg), sometimes just to the music in his head.

While I was starting this post, he came into the living room to grab my hand and dragged me into his room, pulling me down to sit next to this toy my friend Tonya gave him two years ago that plays music. We played with it for a minute, and then he started to dance, grabbing my hands and tugging until I stood up and then holding my hands so we could dance together. A few weeks ago he spent a good 20 minutes running around our coffee table (now a play table for his train set), yelling “Hawaii! Hawaii!” which, after much confusion (how on Earth does he possibly know how to say Hawaii?!), we figured out was his way of calling our cat’s name (Hermione). He finds ways to play with everything in our apartment. He loves to try and play kitchen (opening and closing the toaster over, pretending to stir things on the stovetop, pouring water from cup to cup in the kitchen sink). And he has a whole vocabulary that only Kurt and I understand most of, which makes it feel like we’re in a secret little club, just the three of us. He still naps most days, not super typical at his age, which provides me with time to get stuff done around the house, get dinner together or take a break and veg a little, but also starts with the two of us in his room in the rocking chair, chatting and singing and listening to podcasts or audiobooks and snuggling with blankets and Eggy and Big Bear. When I trip or accidentally kick something or somehow hurt myself, he comes over and rubs the tip of Eggy’s ear against the injury to make me feel better (sometime he does for himself if he bonks his head or hits his toes against something).

Sometimes he does something cute like gives me an unsolicited hug, or even just totally normal like he'll eat a piece of wheat toast while sitting on the couch watching Thomas & Friends and it will make me so happy and make me love him so much I feel like my heart might actually burst. This is not hyperbole—it actually makes me hurt a little with how much love he makes me feel.

There are studies popularly referenced that say that percentage-wise, people who do not have children are happier than people who do. I hear about this a lot; from people who don't have kids (who feel like this means they will end up happier because of this decision), people who do (and are having a hard time with it and are afraid that it might be true), and people who are trying to, or about to have kids (and are nervous about what that will mean for their future happiness). I have a cousin, Jeff, who told me when Liam was about 2 months old, about his "seventy thirty theory." The theory is this: when you have kids, 70% of your life will be exhausting and stressful and miserable, but 30% is the happiest, most fulfilling feeling you have ever experienced.

I don't disagree with Jeff’s theory, although I do have an issue with the numbers. For me, they’re skewed differently, but for him, 70/30 works. The thing about those studies (pointed out to me by Kurt), is that there is no measurement of what "happy" means. I can tell you right now that the kind of happiness I feel with Liam in my life is deeper and more vast than I have ever felt before in my life, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that I could not have understood this kind of happiness without having had a child. This is not to say that nobody could understand it without having a kid, but I am positive that I could not have.

It's true, I am also often more frustrated and stressed in ways that are different and sometimes more extreme than they were prior to having a baby. But those feelings usually come and go and the next time they come it's just another feeling of frustration, a new stress, not so related to the last time. The happiness, though,  builds on top of the last happiness, and it gets bigger and more full each time in a way I just cannot explain. It builds and builds, every time he smiles at me or laughs at something he’s done; every time I find some of his cars lined up on the window sill that I know he carefully placed there, or when I ask him to please put something away and he does it; each time I say a word and he repeats it, or when I ask him a question and he nods, or shakes his head, or answers it with his own words. Every happy moment is brick and mortar atop the last happy moment, something solid that will remain and support everything that builds on top of it.

I don’t know if any of this makes sense.  But I think, if you've had children, you might understand.