I took a bit of a holiday hiatus with my blog. Our family has been very busy lately and I wanted to enjoy what little alone time I had by doing absolutely nothing. Eli took a small vacation from school and therapies as well, but I will point out that the break did not affect his progress at all. He is talking more than ever now. He is saying probably between 100-150 words. He tries to repeat everything everyone says and can read some numbers and letters on his own. Getting Eli to this point has been anything but easy; it has been a lot of hours of school and therapies and constant modeling outside of therapy. In the midst of all this I somehow found the time to complete a certification course online for medical billing and coding.
I made a blog in the past about living my life for Eli. Since we started speech therapy at 18 months my life has been completely focused on Eli; I have never made time to do something just for me. I don’t necessarily regret doing that, I think that when you become a parent your life should be focused on raising that child and giving them everything they need, and for Eli that was therapy, structure, learning sign language, etc. The mistake that I made was thinking that because Eli needed so much of my time, I didn’t have time to do anything for myself. Yes, I had very little time to myself, but it is definitely doable.
So I took the plunge and started an online program for medical billing and coding. Trying to split my time between schoolwork, taking care of the house and laundry, taking Eli to all of his therapies, going back and forth to preschool, and cooking and cleaning up dinner was very difficult. Eli still came first, there’s no way around that; after that, whenever I could fit in schoolwork, I did. I mostly did my work when Eli was at school, taking naps, and after everyone else went to sleep. From August into December all of my free time was going into my school work (and blog). Now that I finished my classes I took my couple week hiatus and I’m ready to spend time back on my blog. It was very challenging to try and get this school finished and there were many times I wanted to just stop and throw in the towel, but I’m very glad I keep pushing through. With our upcoming move I’m sure I won’t be finding a job in this field anytime soon but just knowing what I have and can accomplish is enough for me right now. It’s not easy trying to find your own life when you’re a stay at home parent, single parent, or honesty- any type of parent at all. But speaking from experience, it’s possible and it is very much worth it.
Mastering Motherhood 