The reality of the stay at home mum

Hi all,
I am still at the first part of my mat leave with my second child, but looking at the cost of childcare, the lack of family around us, the stressful expectation at my work and the needs of my kids (education quality is not too impressive, so I try to put in extra time and effort to educate my older one who will soon enter pre-teens soon), the more I do the maths, the more it seems like it is best for everyone if I stay at home for a few years and leave my work. I actually feel fine with that, feel like that is the right thing to do, but I wanted to ask you guys about the reality of being a stay at home mum...the good, the bad, the ugly. Just to know what not to be surprised about..
Thanks for sharing your experience!

in our community

Christmas dinner

My baby is going to be 9 months at Christmas can he have a Christmas dinner like we do or does it have to be blended
What do u give them for a Christmas dinner

Need honest answers - it's long

I'll try to make it all simple.

I have 3 (adult) brothers who have learning difficulties. Limited friends, live alone.
My dad recently got remarried.
1 of my brothers really dislikes my dad's partner - too much has happened to write here, but basically he sees her as controlling and a bully.

Organising Christmas last year was a nightmare as my dad's partner refused to be in the same room as my brother. Said she never wanted to see him again.
The rest of the family thought this was a complete overreaction (given my brother has never said/done anything nasty/malicious.) They were talking about a Christmas meal, but excluding my brother. So we said NO, we are not leaving him alone on christmas day and the rest of the family wanted him there. We basically said; Christmas is at ours, but we are not having anyone excluded, so you either come together or not at all.
Probably not the best way to handle it but I was so pissed off.

My dad and his partner booked a cottage away for 2 weeks, to see her daughter who lives 3 hrs away by car. So choosing not to spend any of Christmas with us at all.

So my brothers came down to ours for Christmas (because my daf and his partner weren't even trying to resolve the issue)- it was lovely.

I alternate Christmas day with my partner- one year with my family, the next with his etc. So this year it's his turn.

Usually my dad would spend Christmas day with my brothers. But he has told me they have booked the cottage again and seeing her daughter again.

This means my brothers will be alone on Christmas day.
They don't drive and they don't live very near each other. They don't have jobs and are some of the kindest people I've ever met.
They don't deserve to be excluded. They don't cook either.

Do you think what my dad and his partner have done sounds fair?

Bad Habit

Moms!!! How did yall prevent yalls kids from putting their hands in their mouth? My 5 month old son has a bad habit of shoving his hands down his throat every chance he gets and he’s getting sick off of it. We’ve tried gloves but he puts those in his mouth too

When did your child start feeding themselves?

Hi! I've never posted here... I hope this is how it goes 🤣 I have 9 month old twin boys who love to eat. They eat table food, but have NO INTEREST in feeding themselves, unless it's like a big wafer. SOMETIMES they'll manage a few puffs. Otherwise they want to be spoon fed and/or pull my hand to their face with finger foods. When did your little one want to bring food to their mouth?

Advice

I went to mess about on my partners phone on his ChatGPT and I seen two saved chats, one was him saying “I’m starting to hate coming home”, “a reason why I’m working so much is so I don’t have to go home”, it’s really hurt me that he feels he can’t come to me and share how he feels instead he has to tell an ai ‘yes man’ robot,
We have a 4 month old baby, I’ve basically been a single parent despite still being in a relationship, he says he has to pick up this much overtime to pay the bills but he works every single day, starts at 4am, some days he starts work at 4am and finishes around 8-9pm,
He also said that the dog at his parents house was going to be left alone overnight whilst his dad worked so he had to go stay there to watch the dog, I seen a message of his from his dad saying he wasn’t working so now im just starting to think he made it up as an excuse not to stay with us in the house.

I don’t know how to word this conversation with him, or if I should even bother attempt to have the conversation with him

Was your kindergartner this ready??

Could your child do half this list? Or the entire list or very few?