That's SMART

As far as jobs go, being a stay-at-home-mom is a pretty sweet deal. It’s like having a perpetual weekend, except that you don’t have money to go to the movies, and you’re exhausted from chasing a toddler around and cleaning up the crayon marks, toilet paper tents, sticky hand prints, and piles of dirty laundry that inexplicably end up on the floor. Actually, it’s nothing like a weekend. Forget I said that. It’s like a full-time job, but instead of clocking in at 8 and leaving at 5, you are on-call every hour of every day. But I love it, and am so very grateful that I get to be home with her.

Even though I know that making sure Cassie is fed, clothed, and loved IS my job right now, sometimes I feel like I don’t get anything accomplished. And if I fall into the trap of comparing myself to other mothers - ones who work outside the home, or have more than one child at home - I get a little stir-crazy. I should be DOING something. I even considered going back to work. But then I remembered why I decided to stay home in the first place: I really enjoy daytime TV, getting food stains out of the carpet, not having any money, I am loving watching my little girl grow and change every day. Seriously, she is learning all sorts of new things these days. For example: no clothes = run around and try to pee on things before mommy catches me.

Back when I worked a regular job I had annual performance reviews like everyone else in corporate America. It was a time my boss and I could talk about the things I accomplished over the last year, and set goals for the upcoming one. We had an acronym that I always thought was cheesy, but made setting goals a very straightforward process. The goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART). For example you couldn’t say “I want to be more productive.” You have to say, “I will increase X (sales, product output, etc), by Y amount, in the next 6 months.” Once you wrote out your goals this way it was very easy to track your progress.

So in order to feel more productive I decided to make some SMART goals for myself as a stay-at-home-mom. This will be good for Cassie, too, because I will be able to create achievable educational goals for her as well. This is good parenting, I can tell. I feel it in my over-achieving toes. Here are my goals, in no particular order:

Goal #1: I will take a shower at least 4 days a week. (Remember the goal has to be Achievable. I didn’t want to set myself up for failure by saying I would shower every day. That would be crazy.)

Goal #2: I will educate Cassie in the fine art of sleeping through the night by setting a good example for her and not getting up at 2, or 3, or 6a.m. for a snack. (See? Look how easy it is. Mommy can sleep all the way until 8:00!)

Goal #3: I will add exercise into our daily routine by dancing to the Wiggles with Cassie for at least 15 minutes 3 days a week, or until the music causes a neurological shut down and makes me want to run on the treadmill instead.

Yep. This is going to work. I think I’m getting this stay-at-home thing down.