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12
exceptional women
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
7
8283.EW0413
By MARA STINE
Pamplin Media Group
A
s a stay-at-home mother of four,
Kelly Rasmussen hears it all the
time.
“Oh, that’s a lot of kids.”
“Your hands are full.”
“You must be so busy.”
“You are so lucky to not be working.”
The short reply?
Yes, yes, yes and yes.
And she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“It’s not as overwhelming to me as it must
seem to others,” she says during a remarkably
quiet afternoon in her Gresham home. The
two oldest children, Katelin, 9, and Andrew, 7,
are at school. The younger two —Allison, 3,
and Emily, 1 — are playing in the dining room,
which has been turned into a kids’ den com-
plete with a pint-sized table and four matching
chairs.
“Someday we’ll turn it back into a dining
room,” Rasmussen says, explaining that re-
purposing the roommakes it easy to keep an
eye the children while she’s in the kitchen.
Rasmussen worked in public relations and
scaled back her hours when she had her first
child.
With each baby, she cut her hours more.
“It’s just hard to even get the laptop out and
check email and stuff,” she says. Now, she
works, maybe a few hours a month, but for all
intents and purposes, she considers herself a
stay-at-home mom.
A very lucky stay-at-home mom.
In today’s world of two-income households,
she’s fortunate her husband John’s job as a po-
lice detective brings in enough money to sup-
port the family.
The choice is not without sacrifices. No
choice is when a mother weighs working full-
time, part-time or staying home with the chil-
dren, she says.
“There’s a perception that stay-at-home
moms think that every mom should be a stay-
at-home mom, and that’s not necessarily
true,” Rasmussen says. “We’re all in the same
boat really, trying to do what’s best for our
families.”
n n n
Rasmussen’s mother stayed home with her
and her sister throughout most of their child-
hood.
The family moved from Ohio to Spokane
when Rasmussen was 6, before moving to Or-
egon where she graduated fromMcMinnville
High School.
Rasmussen returned to Spokane for college,
studying at Whitworth University, and got a
job in public relations withWaggener Ed-
strom after graduating.
She always wanted to have a family but nev-
er imagined she’d have so many children.
“I knew I wanted to have kids. I don’t know
that I would have guessed four,” she says.
But her husband, who is one of four sib-
lings, thought it was the perfect number of
children to have. They agreed to have three,
but eventually Rasmussen came around to the
idea of adding a fourth to the mix.
“People say, ‘After three, it’s all the same,’”
she says. “I disagree. Four is definitely more
work than three.”
After Emily joined the family, Rasmussen —
a highly organized woman — suddenly began
losing things. Keys. A child’s sweatshirt. You
name it. But it’s no wonder something gets lost
in the shuffle between shuttling a 3-year-old to
preschool, two children to elementary school
and a baby everywhere in between.
She gets by on six to seven hours of sleep a
night, and counts her blessings if the baby is
only up once or twice a night. Or if only one
child wakes up in the middle of the night.
Stay-at-home mother of
four counts her blessings
The day starts at 7 a.m. with a shower be-
fore the children are up. Then it’s time to
make the lunches. Eat breakfast. Drive the
older two to school. On Tuesdays and Thurs-
days there’s preschool for Allie, which creates
a window of opportunity for Rasmussen to go
grocery shopping and run
errands with only one
child in tow.
“After the kids are
home in the afternoon, I
feel like I’mgoing to fall
over dead,” Rasmussen
says. “But by 8:30 at night,
I’mgood to go.”
By then, the homework is do-
ne, dinner is over, the kids have played, bathed
and are in bed.
While Rasmussen ticks off the elements of
her typical day, a small voice calls out from the
kitchen.
“Emily’s in the
pantry again,” Allie
says.
Out toddles Emily
with an offering for
her mother.
“Oh, tuna,” Ras-
mussen says. “Thank
you!”
What surprises
her about motherhood is how non-stop it all is.
“There’s just no break,” she says. “There’s
not ever a time when there’s not someone or
something waiting for me.”
It could be a dryer with a load of clothes that
need to be folded, or a nose
that needs wiping.
But it’s always some-
thing.
“It’s like going through
the day with an arm tied
behind your back,” she
says. “It takes longer to do
anything and everything.
And it’s hard to truly appre-
ciate it until you’re experienc-
ing
it.”
n n n
Rasmussen says the secrets to her success
are her hands-on husband, who is very in-
volved with the children - “thank goodness” -
and knowing when to let go. She’s learned
Kelly
Rasmussen,
a stay-at-
home-
mother of
four,
considers
herself lucky
to be able to
not work
full-time
outside the
home. Her
two youngest
children,
Allison, 3,
and Emily, 1,
play in the
foreground.
PHOTO BY
JIM CLARK
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