15 Things That Surprised Me When I Became a Stay-at-Home Mom

More time at home does not mean more time to tidy up; more time at home means more messes to clean up.

I am on call 24/7. There is always something else to do, the "office" never closes, and I no longer have the luxury of setting up an out-of-office email message to automatically reply to people who have questions. The to-do list is relentless.

I thought I would be able to do cartwheels down the aisles at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday. Nope. All of the other stay-at-home parents are there with their kids, along with retirees. There might be fewer people, there might be shorter people, but they take up a lot of real estate. Checkout takes a while.

My skin, tresses, wallet, and high-maintenance toddler are all appeased. Good thing I'm all for natural beauty.

Since I don't have to be out the door at a certain time, mornings are a lot more relaxed now. We snuggle, I make scrambled eggs, I hand my partner some coffee on his way out the door and into hellacious traffic, and then we do whatever we want until naptime. This one was a nice surprise.

Oh, the evenings. I usually need to complete about 87 tasks in the small window before bedtime. My toddler is like a boss who rolls ups to my desk to chat about nothing during the busiest part of the workday (think a tiny Michael Scott), and it's annoying as hell.

They don't just take away the dirty diapers and empty milk jugs — they wave, they stop to chat, they sometimes give out colouring books, and they allow me a five-minute break from reading books about animals making various noises.

On top of me not pulling in a paycheck, our spending habits have just totally changed. Less gas, more groceries. After a few months of expenditure analysis, our budget got quite the makeover.

First, I am unsure about the "politically correct" term. Homemaker? Domestic Engineer? Second, people are weirdly judgy about stay-at-home moms. I just say what I used to do and plan on doing again someday and leave it at that.