Outsourcing

So, I've been thinking lately about the parenting duties that most of my friends outsource...

My husband and I decided when we first got pregnant, that we would sacrifice whatever had to to keep our children home with us rather than putting them into daycare. For us that meant that after Sophia's first year of life, I went to work while my husband stayed home with them (we did have a part time nanny for a little while to help out and then put both the girls in our church's Mother's Day Out two mornings a week after they turned 2). It's one thing we absolutely will never regret doing! We may live in a smaller house, I may be the last person on earth not to own an iPhone, the last time I got a diamond was 9 years ago when I got engaged... but boy, these days of having babies at home are so numbered, I wouldn't trade them for all the diamonds in the world!

But there are smaller things I've resisted the urge to outsource... like baking the kids' birthday cakes, which are never perfect. We have their parties at home (or the playground) and will continue to until they insist otherwise, which means I do the invitations and decorations and clean up. Again, none of it is anywhere near perfect, but it's our party and I love it. It's a lot of work sometimes, but again, these days are limited - in a few years they'll have to have the jump zone party, and then they'll have parties to which I'm not even invited...

I've been stressed out lately about enrolling the girls in swim lessons (the money, the commitment to get them there, etc.) when I made the bold decision to teach my own kids to swim, just like my parents (and girl in Italy with whom I couldn't communicate verbally, because I spoke no Italian and she spoke no German) taught me to swim.

I cut my kids' hair. See?

I've had professional pictures of my kids taken a sum total of one times (and I loooove those pictures more than just about anything in the world and if I could kidnap my friend Allison and make her follow my family around taking all of our pictures, I totally would!) I'm pretty cool with the fact that we have an insane number of candid pictures taken by me. Those are our family pictures. And yes, that means any pictures of my kids and me (in the same shot!) have to be taken with the self-timer set and the camera sitting on the couch arm

Some of these decisions have been because of money, but mostly they're just my determination to parent these babies as much as I possibly can while I can. I think it's easy to get caught up in what everyone else is doing - I can't tell you how many times I thought oh my gosh I have GOT to get them into swim lessons or wondered whether my kids would feel like they had some sort of sad deprived childhood because I didn't shell out $100 for their second birthday invitations or because I don't spend $500 a year on portraits. But I'm pretty sure they won't.