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 »

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 »

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 »

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?

We’re all part of the office grapevine, whether we participate or not. I work at a large newspaper and I’ve always felt that, if my co-workers couldn’t figure out what was going on around the office, they weren’t worth spit as reporters. Also: When you work for a newspaper, you tend to assume that everything is on the record. So, I try to be careful about what say and do.

Our kids are not as circumspect. Of course, we don’t really expect them to be. But we try to encourage them to be respectful and to treat others as they’d like to be treated themselves. Right?

And then there’s Gossip Report. Read the rest of this entry »

People who know me well often say that I grew up taking care of other people’s children. I started babysitting when I was about 11, and mothered — or smothered, as the case may be — my brothers well before that. I worked as a nanny for years during college and ran a playgroup for toddlers when I was in my early 20s. So it wasn’t much of a surprise that when I got married, it was to a man who already had three kids of his own.

Contrary to popular belief (think Snow White, think Julia Roberts in Stepmom, think pretty much any soap opera or sitcom) stepmotherhood has been neither traumatic nor dramatic for me. The kids were very young when I came into their lives — just 5, 3, and 1 year old — and on my wedding day, four years later, I exchanged vows with them as well as with their dad.

Interestingly enough, life as a Working Stepmom was different than life as a Working Mom. After all, they were somebody else’s children, right? Wouldn’t their “real parent” handle all of the rough stuff, leaving me ample time in which to work?

Well, when you’re parenting, step or not, you’re a parent. That’s really all there is to it.

For years, I arranged playdates, kissed boo-boos, changed diapers, soothed away bad dreams, packed lunches … the list of real, honest-to-goodness “Mom”-type stuff goes on and on. But things didn’t really change at work when I was “just” a Stepmom. I still worked nights, usually 3 to 11 p.m., so my colleauges never saw me race to meet a daycare deadline (they do now that I’m on days). My annual performance reviews still ended with a little tidbit about what I needed to do in order to advance through the ranks (oddly enough, they don’t now). It wasn’t that I was expected to work overtime as much as it was that I was expected to want to work overtime, because I wasn’t “really a parent.” “You can stay late tonight, right?” my then-boss once asked as he got ready to duck out early. “It’s not like you’re rushing home to see your stepkids, right?”

Um… actually, I can’t. Because, yes. Yes, I am.

Working stepmoms: Do you feel like you’re considered less of a working parent than your colleauges? Why or why not?

What with all of the hustle and bustle and preparation for BlogHer Business, I thought I’d ease my own disappointment about not being able to go (and about missing all of those great speakers and not being able to meet and network with so many fantastic bloggers — sob) by offering up a little something to help those of you who are going feel a little better about the trip.

You already understand why it’s really good to take advantage of network opportunities like this. Your kids, though? They don’t necessarily get it. And, if they’re little, the biggest thing they’ll register is that you’re going somewhere — gasp! — without them.

1.) Leave them something to listen to while you’re gone. Make your own book-on-tape of you reading your child’s favorite story. Don’t forget to include a reminder to turn the page! (”Next page, Sweetie!” is better than a generic “beep,” though any funny noise will do.) If you sometimes sing your tot to sleep, tape that, too.

2.) Bring along one of their stuffed toys, and take pictures of it in your hotel room. If you’re feeling especially brave, take the toy out on the town. Email the photos home for your kids to look at, with a little note written from the toy’s point of view (or look at them together when you return).

3.) Send postcards. It doesn’t matter whether you’ll be away for a day or for a week, your child will be thrilled to receive something in the mail, even if it arrives after you get back. No time to buy some? Bring a card or two with you and mail them during the trip — the picture on the front matters way less than whatever little note you jot on the back.

There are as many coping strategies for things like this as there are kids, so please, share yours in the comments!

In one of my all-time favorite movies, This is Spinal Tap, aging rockstar David St. Hubbins muses, “It’s such a fine line between stupid, and … clever.”

There are times when I traipse across this fine line daily, at home and at work. Usually, though, I’m going from clever to stupid.

The Clever: L.’s hideously croupy cough resurfaced a few weeks ago, and I took her to the doctor. Our pediatrician wasn’t in, so the appointment was with one of her colleauges, whom we’d never seen before, but hey, my child was sick and had been for a while, it was starting to affect her sleep and her school, and so I took her in.

The Fine Line: The doctor we saw didn’t know us, didn’t take more than a minute to listen to her breathe semi-deeply exactly four times (without coughing), and didn’t take more than 30 seconds or so jump to a big conclusion about me — that I must be an overly anxious, first-time mom who felt guilty about sending her kid to daycare — and diagnose accordingly. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, the New Jersey State Senate approved legislation that would grant employees paid maternity or dependent-care leave, making New Jersey one of only three states in the US to pay workers who need time off to care for a new child or a sick relative.

That’s right. Three.

Did you know that the United States and Australia are the only two industrialized countries in the world that do not offer paid leave to new mothers? And moms in the Outback have a sweeter deal than we do; in Australia, your job is protected for a year, but in the United States new working moms only get that guarantee for 12 weeks. In fact, according to a 2005 article by the Associated Press, “…out of 168 nations in a Harvard University study last year, 163 had some form of paid maternity leave, leaving the United States in the company of Lesotho, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland.”

Yes, you read that correctly.

But there is hope, at least in New Jersey. According to the New York Times article, “Those taking the leave would be eligible for two-thirds of their salary, up to a maximum of $524 a week, for six weeks.” That’s less than the $917 per week California offers, but is more than twice what Washington State allows. Similar legislation has stalled out in New York, but the New York bill only offered $170 a week, so even if it had passed it might not have been much of a help to workers in urban areas. (Come on… realistically speaking, $170 might make a difference in, say, Cayuga County, but it’s a drop in the bucket if you live in The Bronx.) Read the rest of this entry »

There are plenty of things you can do, not to mention things you can bring, to make traveling with very young children go more smoothly. Some of those things work — in theory. In practice, though? Well…

In theory: Taking an 8:10 p.m. flight — right at bedtime — would mean that my adorable 3-year-old and my angelic 15-month old would sleep on board, and we’d tuck their sweetly slumbering selves into their beds at my in-law’s home on the other end of the trip.

In practice: Not so much. Read the rest of this entry »