Tag Archives: Working Mom

Shuffling Chores

Posted on by
2

When James and I made the decision to switch roles and I went back to work, we had an honest conversation about chores. We acknowledged our individual talents (he picks up the entire house in a fluid efficient swath that would take me five times as long; I deep clean and organize in ways I’m not sure he is even aware) and divvied up the tasks in a reasonable reflection of the time available and our personal preference. I still did all the grocery shopping, he still paid all the bills, I cleaned the bathroom, he mowed the lawn. But the actual transition of chores was much less portioned and rational. I couldn’t quite let go of the way I used to run the house. The level of crumb on the kitchen floor, the frequency of laundry, the return of pillows to their correct place on the couch. I felt like I did it better.

But then I remembered that I hated being the one at home cleaning up after the rotation of messes, cycling through laundry in a resentful huff. And I noticed that while James let the clutter and crumbs build up for longer, he also built forts and loved being at home and so I adjusted to a slightly higher level of chaos. He also made this easier for me. Right before I got home from work, he would make a sweep of the most obviously chaotic and immediately apparent messes in the house and put it away, make the bed, wipe the counters. We met in the middle in a way.

And then just recently I was watching him fold laundry. He turned each t-shirt over one additional time to form perfect little rectangles, lined up each corner of the kitchen towels, folded each pair of my underwear. I realized he is better at this than I ever was. It isn’t just that I am putting up with a lower level of housekeeping, that we had to come to some sort of compromise between happiness and housework. If I scrubbed a table down three times in a day to James’ once, it still ends up clean. If the laundry builds up longer when James is doing it, it still gets washed, folded and put away to be worn again. I didn’t do it better; I just did it more. So now, about a year into this most recent switching of roles, I am seeing that chores are important, that they need to be done but that there is a spectrum to completing them. And that finding the way to get things done while still enjoying your role counts for a lot more than the placement of pillows or the presence of crumbs.

Popularity: 5%

Guest Post: Any Male Can be a Father, It Takes a Man to be a Dad

Posted on by
5

Todays guest post is brought to you by Tiffany over at Mom-Nom. She is the mother of two and has a great blog for a mommy blogger. You shouldn’t follow her on Twitter but should go to her blog and read her funny posts and sign up for the many amazing give aways she hosts from some crafty folks. I flatly deny any story she may or may not tell about an alleged follower competition but just to be safe don’t follow her, follow me instead. If she has any cool give aways or funny posts I will tell you about them I promise. With out any further ado:


You see, James & I have a unique story. HE was having his own personal Twitter Follower’s contest with ME, WITHOUT TELLING ME ABOUT IT. So, you can imagine my surprise when he actually told me. about a contest. he’d been having for weeks. with me.

And, you can see why I was a little shocked when I ventured over to his blog and discovered how great it is. I mean, who has private competitions with someone that doesn’t even know their competing and still rocks? This dood ==> James. That’s who.

And honestly, here I am rather intimidated. I mean…I’ve never written on a dood’s website before. You guys take it easy on me okay? I’m all girly & fragile & shit.

(For the record, I won the contest.)
________________________

At 20 years old I had the daunting task of finding someone who was willing to be a step-father.  I took me four years.

You see, I wasn’t just looking for an every-other-weekend/three nights a week step-father, but a full-time dad.

I would describe this task as stressful & aging. And…well, mostly aging.

I liked to tell myself I was “hand-picking” someone. You know, to make me feel better about the situation an all. While this situation isn’t quite so unique now-a-days it is still very eye-opening and very stressful for a single mom.

I believe most women marry the man of their dreams – imagining the father he will be. I also believe most of them are living in a fairy-tale land, that doesn’t exist, when they picture life after kids.  In my opinion, if you don’t have kids, the entire thought of having them IS a fairy-tale.

On the otherhand, I had the crystal ball in my hands… I could see into the future, before I married him. I could witness his evolution as he grew more accustomed to having a child around. I could watch as he fell in love & I like to think that I helped shape his evolution as a father.

You know, cause I like taking credit for good stuff.

I even had a list. I’m crazy like that.

He has to be:

  • Christian (preferably Catholic) & dedicated to raising his family in faith
  • Patient, I can’t handle a screamer. Two screamers give babies headaches.
  • Athletic (we like sports, what?)
  • Educated
  • Someone who can cook & clean. Not someone who would raise my son to think of housework as a “woman’s work”
  • But still handy, cause I need someone to fix stuff. Ya know? When I break stuff. From screaming. (Can you say hypocrite?)

But really, all I wanted was a man that could show my son true, unconditional love. I wanted him to witnes a man who loved his family, his children, his wife & his life completely.

Do I feel like I had an edge on other women because of this all-knowing eye? Yes. I do, actually. The first six months – or even the first year – of having a child as a married couple is a strange relationship-altering time. Yes, most couples make it but there are usually some bangs and bruises along the way. For the most part, we got to skip this. You see, I was what I call a “ready-made” family. A package deal. A take it or leave it situation…I could keep going. But, I’ll spare you.

You see, I don’t tell him enough. And, he doesn’t read my guest posts, so he may never know…but he saved us from anymore broken hearts, unreturned phone calls, uncomfortable first dates, lonely nights at home & awkward school gatherings.

I like to think I made the most of my situation. I took what life handed me (lemons, lets say) and I made delicious frozen lemondate margahitas.

Delish.

You dad’s are pretty rad doods. Who come in all shapes, styles and packages. And I, for one, can’t imagine life without you…now.

Popularity: 11%

Balance

Posted on by
4

I am an assistant. This is hard for me to admit. I am not very important at the company where I work. I am new, true. But I am also very low on the totem pole in the grand scheme of things, which means that I deal with a lot of paperwork and spreadsheets and jobs that other people don’t want to waste time with and so have their assistant do it. That’s me. I’m the assistant.

This is not all bad. I get to work a very regular 40 hour week, have important but not stressful tasks and I am very much able to leave my work at my desk, far behind me by the end of the first segment of All Things Considered, crossing the bridge home in time for dinner. And I work in Human Resources giving me a broad exposure to all parts of the company and its power structure, the players and the decisions made. I enjoy this generalized cross section now. But I do hope to move up, be an expert, not be an assistant.

And this is why I have started to think about balance. Right now, it is easy for me to make specific quality time for my boys: when I get home, during the bedtime routine and on the weekends. They are young and so far have no schedules that we do not have immediate veto power over. They don’t go to school; they take long afternoon naps. I can carve the quality time out of their time to suit my current 8-5 schedule. And because they are young, I also have those lovely late evening and night time hours when they are asleep, to catch up, spend time with my husband, deep clean the kitchen, read. I even find a generous amount of time to sew and build, nurture a sense of creativity. We spend time with friends and family. Balance comes easily for assistants.

But if I move up–and for financial stability’s sake alone, I hope I will–then this balance will certainly come much more roughly, with more sacrifice and disappointment. The boys will be in school soon with events and sports and friendships that will take them away from home. Their schedule will start to dictate the time I can spend with them. The ease with which I leave my desk at 5 sharp now will give way to more hours and probably more responsibility and stress. I imagine sewing my own clothes will seem less appealing when I have the money to buy them. And the balance I have such wonder in now will certainly require a recalibration in both schedule and importance. I will need to evaluate and assign value to the parts to my life: my family, my creative interests, my work, my community, my new yorker subscription.

I hope I chose well. I hope I still stay up until 3 in the morning reupholstering the couch in the basement. I hope I am there for the bright defining conversations of my boys’ childhoods and also for some of the mundane ones. I hope I still lay on the couch in the evening across from James and talk what ifs. I hope I still read. I hope that for writing this now, I’ll be ready for it when it comes, that balance will come easy not just for assistants but for experts. Here’s hoping.

Popularity: 4%

Management training

Posted on by
1

One of the really great things about my new job is my new manager. He is a sixties-ish Wisconsin native who has enough characteristics similar to my dad to make me already believe after two weeks of work that he will be great to work for. But even beyond his mid-western fatherly traits, he seems to genuinely be a good manager. Everyone who works for him credits his constancy and calm to making it through a really volatile time in the company’s history. And other departments, when I introduce myself say in a sort of longing way, “oh you get to work with Jim, Jim is great.”

And since I have not had the good fortune to work for many good managers, I am already watching him carefully, both to know how best to work for him and for my own sense of how I might be a good manager in the future. So far, what I’ve come up with is this: good management looks a lot like good parenting. The context and the stakes are obviously quite different but I can recognize key strengths that make or break both. For instance, Jim will drop everything he is doing to have a good conversation. On the parenting front, conversations sprout up in all sorts of environments where they might not be convenient–when you are on the way out the door, or mopping the floors or reading an awfully good magazine article–but stopping to acknowledge the question and respond is key to good communication. Jim also moves around a lot, sits in other people’s offices or when he has a question he comes over and asks, not through e-mail or phone call or yelled from his chair but physically moves to you. This is also key to kids, moving to their level and coming to them instead of always demanding they come scampering to you. He also trains an employee to do something and then has them do it, right there, right away with every confidence that they will do it. Every kid needs that. Patient instruction and then encouragement and opportunity to learn themselves.

There are lots of other ways management and parenting reflect on one another and I’m sure I am not the first to notice these ties. But it does have me thinking that I might not be ready for management any time soon. I am not particularly good at any of those things with my kids–addressing their questions patiently, moving to their level and interacting, showing and then letting them have independence–so I might be a ways off managing adults who need from me these same traits. I guess for now, I’ll keep working on listening and responding to the four year old’s bazillion questions and letting the two year old run full tilt down the hill to the park. I’m working on being a better parent and maybe in the process picking up some great management training.

Popularity: 3%

Fun on a budget, an important lesson

Posted on by
7

Not too long ago we went through a frighteningly long time of financial thinness, that is we were paying our bills but because of a lost job and a not yet found job we were scraping by with very little for extras. It was an enlightening time in a lot of ways. We made our groceries last longer, bought less and maybe most importantly, we learned to entertain ourselves with very little or no money at all. It is very easy to come up with an activity to entertain two toddlers when money is no option-there are restaurants and toy stores and museums. But when you are calculating hours of part time work patched together to pay rent, it is very difficult to justify four tickets to the children’s museum on a rainy day or happy meals on the way home from grandma’s house.  Instead we found creative ways to stay busy and got better at staying home too.
Now that I am working again, there are margins for these extras again. We have been going out to eat a lot more often; we take trips and stop for treats and generally picked up the spending habit again very quickly. Being able to predict an income and have any extra is really liberating and makes life much easier. But as we’ve settled into this more financially soluble life, I can’t help but think that easier isn’t always better. Not that I want unemployment again-I definitely do not. But being bare bones brought out the best in us and I want to remember some of those lessons we learned, how on a shoe string budget we had some of the best times because we had to build up with little expectation of being “entertained” in that classic sense of something being done to us. Instead we enjoyed ourselves by proactively seeking out new ways to spend time, to know each other better, to be happy. Weather we had money or not.

Here are a few of my favorites:

1. Garage sale-ing. Hands down one of the most thrilling experiences for young kids. We gave each of the boys a few dollars in change and set out on a Saturday to find treasures. They rummaged through boxes of hotwheels and stuffed animals, negotiated prices and handed over their change. Some sales were better than others and that was part of the thrill. Our oldest started to rate the sales as we drove up, peering out the window saying, “drive on, no kid stuff here!”

2. Riding the train. I know James has mentioned how much we love the train here in Portland a number of times but it really can’t be underestimated the joy that a three year old boy who loves all things with wheels feels when riding a train. No seatbelts or car seats. Just hanging on to the railing and watching the city go by. We spent a lot of time on the train even when we weren’t entirely sure what our destination was.

3. Baking. With both boys perched on the counter on either side of the mixing bowl, measuring out ingredients and sticking there fingers in the dough, we learned to make all manner of treats. We had less money but much more time and so we made cookies and bread and cakes and elaborate dinners just because we could. Needless to say, we also gained weight.

4.Drawing with chalk. Our front porch steps down to a wide sidewalk that steps down again to the street level sidewalk so there are three layers of playing in our front yard. One day with a large piece of yellow chalk, I started drawing a parking lot and then a road that lead to the muddy flower bed and then a multi lane highway that sloped down the curb on the side of the stairs around the japanese maple and back up to a second parking lot. The boys parked and drove their toy cars on this cement jungle for hours. We spent many of these hours reading on the porch and listening to podcasts of this american life.

5. Taking walks. Usually in tandem with riding the train, we explored whole new parts of the city by taking long walks, packing a snack in the stroller and setting off for a yet unknown destination.

6. Got to know the library. Letting the boys pick out books each week always made for entertaining bedtime story time: Peter Rabbit in spanish, potty books, and anything with a truck on the cover.

We still do a lot of these things now and I’ll always be grateful to the time we had all together with no money, grateful we learned how to have a good time, grateful we got through it, grateful it’s behind us.

Popularity: 7%

Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya tomorrow

Posted on by
1

Tomorrow marks a new start in many ways. I did what I said I would do. I found a new job with a better schedule, closer to home and with responsibilities that make sense to my resume. I gave notice at my old terrible job on Wednesday of this last week and because it is one of those places where you really aren’t of any use once you publicly make it known that you don’t want to be there any more, my last day was Wednesday as well.

I had a four day weekend. It was lovely because the sun was out and Portland has finally been putting on its June clothes but also because there was an end behind me, a new start ahead. This new job could be another version of terrible. I don’t know yet. But for now, it is a hopeful opportunity to have a more content life both in terms of career and in the ways that work affects everything else, in the rest of my life as well. For the most part I can barely contain my elation at the prospect of this new job, at the reality of leaving my old job, at having four consecutive days off. But there is also a bit of anxiety in this transition. Maybe it’s a sign of getting older that my hope is not unadulterated the way it would have been when I was just starting out. Now I know bad jobs and layoffs and have the added reality of kids who need health insurance and vacation plans looming in the near summer.

But through this transition, I am working on a couple of things. I’m working on being more content, finding the parts of my life to live in and allowing everything else to just fill in, or roll off or fall away. I’m also working on being more grateful. I know this blog has not really been a mouthpiece for raising our kids in a community or family of faith, and for the most part I’m not living as if this is a priority anyways, but it would be untrue to say that I don’t feel connected to a bigger story, that I don’t have a sense that we are being cared for in some way. Because two weeks ago I got to a class I was teaching early and as I waited for the students to show up, I looked out the window to the parking lot and prayed for change. I took on that old unused trope of another time and I sent out a pointed supplication, that my situation would change, that things would get more hopeful, that I would have a sense of what it was that I should do with my life. And now, those things have gotten underway. So I am grateful that things sometimes happen when you want them to. I don’t know that this new job is the answer to all of my occupational questions. But it is a change; it is better; I give thanks.

Popularity: 4%

Dear Phil & Ted

Posted on by
Reply

I picture the two of you very vividly as hippy parent inventor extraordinaires: well tanned and with lovely accents (you are Australian after all), athletically thin (you make jogging strollers) and bearing the characteristic idiosyncrasies of both the modern progressive parent and the self made business men that you are (this part I’m just conjecturing). And with this image in my mind–a sort of boyscout meets crocodile dundee meets metrosexual dad of three with a Subaru forrester and a compost pile sort of image–I write you this letter of appreciation believing that it means something to you to hear it.

I love your strollers. I mean really. I really love your strollers.

I fancy myself a progressive parent in my own right, but more of the garage sale-ing, taking mass transit, carrying a canvas tote everywhere I go kind of progressive (see here-less money than your typical granola mom) so your stroller, with its hefty price tag and slightly yuppy looking exterior would normally not appeal to me. But here’s the thing, the whole design of the double stroller that converts so simply for varying children in different stages and does so with such minimal bulk is really just so very brilliant. So brilliant in fact that when I first saw one of your strollers on a clandestined day at a Borders in Beaverton, I chased the man down who was pushing it and bombarded him with questions as he hastily tried to find his wife and make his escape. I actually followed him through the store marveling at the apple green stroller with his two toddler aged sons riding comfortably double decker as their father swiveled and maneuvered between narrow bookshelves and dawdling customers. I dropped my books on a table near the door, waved my husband down and followed this man with the stroller out the front door to continue my interview.

The very next day, I went to the store of his direction and found the vary same Phil&Ted’s stroller parked just inside the front door. A week later, after much rationalizing and some financial fanangling, we took our own green apple stroller home. As it would happen, we found the last stroller of a certain shipment from your lovely company that had been specially priced so that the double kit came free. It seemed like a good omen.

Ever since, I have pushed my stroller proudly to all manner of events, through airports and MAX stations, festivals and carnivals, on dirt and on grass and on pavement. And it has been worth every penny we paid for it and more. I live in a lovely city where it rains unforgivably often and when we bought your stroller, I was a newcomer and knew very few people. It would have been very easy for me to stay home with my newborn and two-year-old sons and mournfully look out the drizzly windows. But with the initial motivation of making sure I got my money’s worth and then for the continued joy of being outside and finding the trails and playgrounds in an ever-broadening radius from our house, we used it all the time. Now looking back on two years in this rainy city, we have you to thank for ever having gotten out to see it at all.

I realize this sounds like hyperbole. And to some extent I know it is hyperbole. We would live quite effectively with a less lovely stroller and in fact would probably continue to breathe without a stroller at all. But my point is, your design is useful to my life. I walk more often: to buy groceries for dinner, to send a birthday present, to get coffee and then play at the park. And if walking more isn’t progressive, than I don’t know what is.

Thank you for the ingenious design of your double jogging stroller. I believe I am a better mom for its convenience and comfort.

Very best,

Kate Rohl

PS. While I appreciate the stroller’s jogging capacity, I should disclaim that I have not yet utilized it for actual jogging.

PPS: Your company might want to think seriously about issuing me some sort of commission structure as I am easily persuaded into conversations with perfect strangers about the brilliance of your strollers and then a subsequent demonstration of its function. I have also introduced the stroller to entirely new markets visiting friends in both Indiana and Arizona where you, Phil&Ted are not nearly as well represented as you are here in cutting edge Portland.

Popularity: 4%

Your life has been recorded one post at a time

Posted on by
3

As the youngest of four kids, I grew up resenting how little my parents remembered about my birth and early childhood. I expressed this resentment so effectively in my teenage years that my mom finally strung together as many bits of memorabilia she could muster to make me a baby book for my sixteenth birthday. It was probably mostly made up because they didn’t remember much of the details but it was a nice gesture. I still felt like I was a little less loved than my oldest sister in particular who had every lock of hair, childhood project and early developmental stage chronicled and captured in albums. But now that I have just two children myself, I can see how this happens. I had the grandest intentions of memory boxes and baby books, journals and albums for each of the boys and while I keep a lot of this stuff, the hospital bracelets, doctor’s office weight charts and coloring projects, I have yet to put a single collection of any sort together. And now I worry that I will have no idea why a certain drawing was important at all when I go back to paste it into an album.

So far the boys don’t seem to mind. And the one consolation I have, and it’s a good one, is that this blog in some form or other has existed since the time we first learned that we were pregnant, then that we were not and then from the earliest thoughts of Primo, through his birth and Segundo’s too and on through to today, the day Primo turns four.

So even though we will probably never make him a baby book (Primo, if you are reading this in the future you could probably still guilt me into making you one-it worked for me) we are memorializing this day, this fourth birthday. And even better than a baby book, we’ve posted a bit of writing or a photograph for all the days around this day, all the days that fill in the story between the firsts, the special occasions and the photo ops. Lucky you Primo. Your parents blogged.

But for celebration’s sake, I did want to do a little remembering about the day that we are celebrating. About the day we arrived at the hospital at 6am to be induced, my hair done and makeup on because somehow feeling presentable was important; the day when my mom called in sick and my dad grinned unwaveringly and ran laps in the hallway when the nurses kicked him out. The day when I thought I would go natural, no medication but then found as the waves of induced contractions gained in frequency that I wouldn’t be able to make it; the day I got a lovely epidural that I felt no guilt over. The day Primo came out of me to my mom’s cheers, James’ sobbing and my general awe over the entire process. Ready or not we were parents. Four years later, we’ve had more practice but perhaps are no better at it than we were that day that everything changed, that day Primo showed up and rocked our world. Happy Birthday Buddy.

Popularity: 4%

On the paradox of wishing time away

Posted on by
7

Looking back on the posts I have contributed thus far to this blog,they are all negative. I seem to be doing a lot of complaining; I seem to be an unhappy sort of person. It’s not true really. For the most part, our life in community with James at home is going swimmingly. We are all in our best role and the really important things are good, really good actually. So why is it that I always sound so damn whiney? I blame my job. I promise though, next week I will come up with something really positive, like-sunshine and roses and smiling isn’t-the-world-lovely kind of optimism. You won’t know what hit you. In the mean time, here’s one more dooms-ville post to add to my record. Because I wasn’t quite feeling up for optimism yet. It’s coming though. Soon. Really.

I do a job I do not enjoy. I have bad hours, an uninteresting commute out of the city to the suburbs, tasks that I am not challenged by and metrics I am not achieving. Because of these things, I am constantly wishing time off the clock, willing lunchtime to come sooner and living for the end of the day when I run out the door, peel out of the parking lot and weave in and out of traffic home, to my boys, who I am working for. But this wishing time away of course makes me feel like I am living for the 3 or 4 hours when I am away from my job and these hours end up going by much more quickly than any other in the day. So time is going by, slowly by day and quickly by night. And all of a sudden, in the four months since I started this job, my little boy who was still a toddler is talking in full sentences and his older brother is already shrugging off my snuggling and these lovely, innocent months are slipping through my fingers.

It is difficult to switch gears: to get through the day and linger through the evening, to resent the daylight hours in my cubicle and cherish the bedtime routine, to function through tasks and then engage with full emotional depth. For the most part, I’m not good at the separation. I end up blurring the lines and coming home with a practical agenda and feeling impatient, discontent, frustrated. And because I realize this as it is happening, as I watch one of the boys react to my rigidity or feel James’ retreat from my negativity, I immediately regret my attitude and further resent the job that brings me to this place, the job that steals from the time I have by fostering ennui for most of my waking hours. I’m sure I am not alone in this feeling. In fact I’m sure that even working parents who like their jobs struggle with switching gears from day to night. But the difference must be that I don’t feel like I accomplish much during the day, I don’t spend the time away from my kids for any productive, world changing work, or even work I gain pleasure from or contribute talent towards. I am just making money. Which is important, I know. But sometimes I can’t remember why it’s important enough to be spending this much time away from my boys.

I don’t know what to do. The easy answer is to quit my job, find something else that I enjoy more, that has better hours that is closer to home. For now, there aren’t any good options for those kinds of jobs. And for this time, however long it lasts I need to get better at being content and appreciating what I have, maybe even trying harder to be successful in my job. I’m sure at some not too distant time in the future I will look back on this as a blip of time in between much better times. I just don’t know what to do while I wait. Because I don’t think I can wish time away much longer; I’ll have lost too much of the good stuff.

Popularity: 5%