Like most people, I’ve been glued to the Olympics for days now. And while watching world records fall and medal counts rise, I’m thinking… what if parenting was an Olympic event?

Look at it this way: It’s more of an endurance challenge than running a marathon, as your kids get older it becomes more nerve-wracking than any routine on a 4-inch-wide balance beam, if you have a partner then you have to work on synchronizing your routine perfectly, and if you don’t then you’re swimming the 4×400 relay solo every single day. Read the rest of this entry »

You’d think that after a summer of packing five lunches every weekday, I’d have this what-do-you-want-to-take-for lunch thing down pat, right?

Wrong.

“What do you want in your lunchbox, Sweetie?” I asked my preschooler the other day. And, without even looking up from the picture she was coloring, she answered, “Something not boring.” Read the rest of this entry »

I just got home from the airport. My three big kids are winging their way back to their mom and stepdad as I type this, and my husband and I have just tucked two heartbroken little kids into their beds. My husband is venting in the garage, working on one of his many car-related projects. I’m throwing myself into my work. The only things that makes this bearable is the fact that I know they had a fun summer and I know how excited they are to see their mom and stepdad again. The fact that there are people who love them dearly on both sides of this flight, people who have missed them the way we miss them now.

This stepmothering thing… you get used to it. You learn how to manage and juggle. But it never really gets easier. At least, it hasn’t for me, even nearly 10 years into it. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been a bit overwhelmed recently. Not with work, per se, but with trying to juggle all of the things I’ve got going on right now — when you put it all together, well, there’s a lot on my plate, and it can leave me feeling uninspired and unmotivated.

I’m sure you can relate to that feeling. I like to pretend I’m SuperMom but, of course, I’m not (I don’t even come with interchangeable heads — I feel like the frazzled one has been attached for the past few weeks).

So I thought I’d share with you a few of the places I turn to when I need a bit of inspiration (besides Work It, Mom! of course)… Read the rest of this entry »

The hardest thing about working during my second pregnancy — aside from the fact that I had four kids at home for a good chunk of it — was my morning commute. I was constantly tired from either getting up in the middle of the night with my toddler (or, in the third trimester, from getting up to go to the bathroom every 37 minutes).

The second hardest thing about my second pregnancy was the way I felt that the size of my expanding body was indirectly proportional to my value as an employee. That is to say, I worried that people would see my enormous belly, notice that I was no longer walking so much as lumbering, and assume that I wouldn’t be able to do my job properly because I was pregnant. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve all experienced it at one time or another: The Mommy Drive-By. When a someone — a relative, another mom, a total stranger — takes it upon herself to question your judgment or criticize your parenting.

Single moms get flak about their social lives. Step moms are looked down upon for not being “a real parent.” Breast-feeding mamas get hit when they nurse their child in public; formula-feeding mothers get the evil eye when they whip out a bottle instead of a breast. Mothers from all walks of life are questioned for decisions large and small. And working mothers, well, they get a little bit of “all of the above.” Read the rest of this entry »

With five kids, two parents who work full-time, a 75-pound black lab who sheds hair like he’s desperately trying to clone himself, no housekeeper, and my tendency to clutter, I don’t need to tell you that my house isn’t pristine. It’s not filthy — in terms of the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization’s Clutter Hoarding Scale, we’re not more than a 1, the lowest score. But still, I wouldn’t happily eat off of the floor or anything. (My toddler is far less discriminating.)

The other day, my husband went on a cleaning tantrum. He started with the kitchen, moving things off the counter tops and scrubbing the stove and swabbing the backsplash with powerful detergents. He tossed the newspapers I’d left languishing in a pile on a chair and wiped down every surface he could find while I worked in the next room.

I was grateful. I was also mortified. I appreciated the fact that he recognized I was overloaded and couldn’t get to the cleaning myself, but still… it made me feel like I’d failed, somehow. Read the rest of this entry »

Your site doesn’t show that you have a good sense of what women want — where is all the celebrity content and diet tips?

When I read that on Nataly’s great post about the upside of being a working mom, I cringed. Sure, some women want celebrity content and diet tips, but that doesn’t mean that every woman does. And how could anyone say that a woman entrepreneur crafting a site for working women doesn’t have a good sense of what working women want? Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve just finished twisting our 12-year-old’s curls into about eleventy-billion tiny, two-strand twists, and my hands are still slick with conditioner. The little two are tucked in bed, stuffed animals clutched in their sweaty little hands. The other big kids are playing “Rock Band” with my husband, just a couple of feet away from me in the family room. It’s past bedtime, and bits of conversation (like “We should be concentrating our efforts on Killasaurus,” and “Daddy! We should play San Francisco now!” and “That’s such a sweet song and then they hit you with the ‘f’ word…”) grasp the edges of my concentration as I try to write.

I could — should, really — go to another room so I can get my work done. I mean, the work has to get done. But I’m loathe to leave. Even when my husband hands me the mic and asks me to sing “Maps” — an obvious sign that I’m not going to get much done if I’m also expected to sing lead — I don’t go.

Sometimes, the thing that really gets in the way when I’m trying to juggle work and family is myself. Read the rest of this entry »

When I went back to work after having my first baby, I was working days while my husband worked nights. He’d hang out with our baby during the day, then take her in to the office at the start of his shift. My shift ended when his started, and he’d hand her off to me and I’d take her back home for what I called my Second Shift with the kids (my first baby was also our fourth child).

I often said that the thing that made returning to work after my first maternity leave most manageable, for me, was the knowledge that my baby was spending the day with her dad instead of with someone I didn’t already know and trust. So Carolyn Hax’s piece over at The Washington Post today really struck a chord with me. Read the rest of this entry »