Yes, it has been a full year since the little monster inside me decided to and pop his head out.  Now he is basically a mini-me with his daddy’s face.  My husband wrote a very detailed reflection on  and I feel that I should write about how the first year of motherhood has been for me.

This year went by extremely fast for me just because I had so much to do every single day.  Although I got up earlier every morning the days just seemed shorter because I spent hours feeding the little guy every single day.  In the beginning he ate around 12 times a day, and yes, I was After I went back to work in January I started to pump milk to send to the babysitter, and at home he still drank my milk.  I did do exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months, and although it took a lot of time, I felt that it was worthwhile because he did not get sick at all during that time period.

When he was around six months I started to make baby food for him, but soon we started to just let him self feed and stopped with the purees.  He was still getting most of his nutrients from breast milk but he learned to self feed quickly.  Now he eats a wide variety of foods by himself as long as I cut it up into small pieces.  He still drinks breast milk now, but he is slowly weaning himself so he isn’t drinking nearly as much breast milk as before.

I also starting at 4 months, and he was doing really well for a long time.  It got to a  point when he would just poop at home during the morning and evenings in his potty and his babysitter rarely had to change poopy diapers.  Now he turned one and he is starting to stand up while he his on his potty, and much to my dismay, there has been more accidents just because he is less inclined to sit there and do his business.

In short, it has been a generic viagra pills of work, but watching him grow has been quite rewarding, too.  I guess I never understood why moms posted Facebook updates of their kids’ every little development until I started doing it myself.   I think every parent has that unexplainable joy and pride in their babies’ achievements, no matter how small and silly it is.   All this work is worth it to me because my child is absolutely amazing in my eyes.  My husband said to me once that my baby is probably my biggest accomplishment, and my mom  actually said that I am doing a better job than she ever expected with my child.  That is a huge compliment coming from a critical Asian mom like her.

After having my baby, I am even more deeply convinced that being a wage slave for your entire life is not the way to live.  It does not make sense to pay someone to be away from my child just to earn money, but that is the dilemma so many working moms face.  My son makes me want to retire early even more because I want to be able to take him to the beach any day of the week.  He is changing so quickly that I just feel like that I would miss something if I wasn’t with him.  Although I have very little time now to write, I am still working on increasing my side income, and we are still saving very aggressively so perhaps we will be able to get out of the rat race sooner than planned.  I do have a target for my side income.  Basically if I can earn 50% of my current salary in side income for 6 months, then I would be ready to quit because we would actually come out ahead economically in that case.  The main reasons are that we would pay a lot less in taxes, and I would not have to pay for childcare.  Additionally, I will have more time to build up even more side income.   Right now my side income is up to 20% of my salary, so I am hoping to reach my goal by the end of next year.