I love being up early, but I’ve never been good at getting up early. I’m grouchy and groggy in the morning, even though I’m instantly awake multiple times in the middle of the night if any of the children so much as wimper. (Hmmm… connection, maybe? Nah.)

Right now, in order to get everyone and everything ready for 8 a.m. camp and school, I need to be up by 6. No matter how much I get done the night before, it seems that I still need that much time to get the ball rolling (or juggling, as the case may be) in the morning. This morning was so hectic, in fact, that I’m considering getting up even earlier, even though the idea of the alarm going off at 5:30 makes me cringe.

Once 9 a.m. rolls around, though, I’m raring to go. The problem is that by then I’m usually stuck in traffic on the way to work, crawling along the highway or hugging the speed limit on a winding back road. Read the rest of this entry »

I am wiped out. Completely. So much so that, in lieu of a proper post, I’m just going to blog my Saturday for you:

1 a.m. Go to bed.

3 a.m. Get up, go to toddler’s room. Toddler is shrieking like he’s being eaten by lions, but stops and smiles the instant I enter the room and chirps, “Monnin’, Mama!” It is not morning.

3:25. a.m. Back to bed. Glance at husband, who can sleep through anything and is, in fact, doing so.

5:45 a.m. Back to toddler. Tell him that it is still not morning.

6 a.m. Back to bed.

6:30 a.m. Give up, go to toddler’s room, concede that it is, technically, morning. Change nastiest diaper on earth. Why do 20-month-old boys eat crayons, for God’s sake?

7 a.m. Take him downstairs before he wakes up the rest of the house.

7: 07 a.m. Ahhhh, coffee.

7:15 a.m. Ahhhh, more coffee.

7:20. a.m. Make breakfast. Fruit and granola and yogurt for toddler and preschooler, who I am certain will appear behind me at any moment.

7:32 a.m. Preschooler materializes by my side and stands there, silently grinning, until I notice her and jump out of my skin. Read the rest of this entry »

If vacationing close to home — or “staycationing” — is the newest travel trend, I’m waaaaaay ahead of the curve.

We almost always stay home for the summer. I say “almost” because there have been two exceptions: In 2003 we drove to Niagara Falls because the kids were complaining that they’d never been to another country (hello, Canada!), and last week I had to research a couple of family travel stories and so we went to an old-fashioned amusement park and careened down a snow-less ski slope on a bobsled and spent a night in a tree house. It was way cool. The kids loved it. My husband and I did, too, but I think that, while the kids came home re-energized after our little adventure, us parents were more exhausted after our “vacation” than we had been when we left. Read the rest of this entry »

My morning routine is usually pretty easy. I try to get up before my toddler and preschooler, fail to do so about 95 percent of the time and, instead, wake up to whining and crying, get them washed and dressed, get myself washed and dressed before they destroy my room and/or OD on Dora the Explorer, feed them while chugging coffee and packing up their two lunches and their bag-o’-stuff-for-school, and load them into the car for drop off at preschool and daycare before heading into the office.

OK, that doesn’t sound very easy, but really, it is. Comparatively speaking.

Summers are trickier. Five kids instead of two. Extra curricular activities to coordinate. New parents to meet before agreeing to sleepovers with new friends. Camp, karate, and horseback riding drop offs and pick ups in addition to preschool and daycare. More errands. More housework. Way more laundry. And less time in which to do it all, because I’m more than willing to stay up late watching “Camp Rock” with my big kids when I should be doing my freelance work instead. (Hey, they’re only young once. And life is short. Got to have priorities, right?) Read the rest of this entry »

There were a lot of questions about my food budget after I wrote about how I spend more on gas than I do on food, and so I thought I’d share a few of my family’s tips. And then I saw this great thread in the Frugal Mom’s group, about how to save $100 a month, and I started to chime in, but when my reply grew to, well, blog-length, I thought I’d move it here. And then I thought, “Hey, those two ideas could be related. Let’s write about both!”

So. Ready? Here are five things we do to keep our grocery bill down: Read the rest of this entry »

How many times have you written an email, hit “send,” and immediately wished you had an “unsend” button?

Maybe you saw a typo in the split second that the email system was processing. Maybe you wrote the missive in a fit of anger, and belatedly realized that it needed a re-write or several in order to be considered anywhere near diplomatic. Or maybe, in that moment the email was still on your screen, before it flew out into the ether, you saw that you had addressed it to the person you were writing about instead of the person you were writing to. Read the rest of this entry »

My preschooler has been having a bit of what I call “Mama Drama” lately, usually right before bed (when she knows I have to log on and work from home once she’s asleep) or when I drop her off at school (when she knows I’m leaving so I can go to the office). It starts with a long sad look, shoulders drooping, glancing sideways to see if I’ve noticed. If I seem not to have, she adds a snuffle and a sniffle, sometimes wiping her (dry) eyes for dramatic effect.

You know the effect Kryptonite had on Superman? Well, for this SuperMom, Mama Drama does the same thing. It kills me. Read the rest of this entry »

This weekend was a scorcher here in New England. Our little backyard thermometer hit 114 degrees in the sun on Saturday, and only backed down to 96 when I moved it to a shadier part of the deck. Sunday was about the same. Today is supposed to be even hotter.

Did I mention that we don’t have air conditioning? We don’t.

But my office does. So while my youngest kids were splashing in the kiddie pool and my dear husband was sweating over yard work, I daydreamed about going to the office to beat the heat. Read the rest of this entry »

I was at the office some time ago, reveling in the relative peace and solitude of working at my desk at the office instead of being smack dab in the middle of our chaotic family room, when I got this email from our second-oldest child:

When are you coming home? I miss you.

Instantly, I wished I was home.

Has that every happened to you? You’re secure in your choice and/or need to work — more than that, really, you are happy about working outside of the home — except when, suddenly, you’re not.

What do you do?

I’d like to say that I shut down my computer, announced to my boss and coworkers that I was needed elsewhere, and jetted home to my kids immediately. But I didn’t. I emailed her back — something loving and supportive that included a link to I Can Haz Cheeseburger or something funny like that — and got back to work.

And now, months later, I’m still wishing I had just shut everything off and gone home.

What would you have done?

I was supposed to write a short article recently about what I, personally, as a mom, do “just for me,” and I was stuck. I couldn’t think of a single thing.

Which is ridiculous, of course, because I must do some things just for me, right?

I used to get a massage once a month, but stopped late last year when we were faced with a bunch of unexpected household expenses, and suddenly it seemed unjustifiable to spend $75 a month on just myself. I don’t go clothes shopping for fun — even though our youngest is now 19 months old and I’m back to my pre-pregnancy weight, my body hasn’t gotten back into it’s pre-pregnancy shape and probably never will, and that makes for a less-than-thrilling shopping adventure. I don’t take any cool classes or have a regular “girls’ night out” or get my nails done or have spa days in my candle-lit bathroom after the kids go to bed.

So, as I was rubbing my eyes and trying to write about how I spend my “me” time, I realized that, recently, in my daily work-life-career-parenting juggle, the “me” ball seems to have rolled under the couch and gotten lost among the dust bunnies. Read the rest of this entry »