Stephanie Sandifer is a mother of (almost) 6 month-old twins (a boy and a girl) and lives in Houston, Texas. She balances motherhood & working as a Literacy Content Area Specialist for the Houston Independent School District - you can read more about Stephanie on our contributors page. She blogs about education and technology at Change Agency and about educational leadership issues at LeaderTalk.org.

July is finally here and I feel like I can breathe again.  We are working on developing a nap schedule, and everything seems to be going very well with that so far.  (Yes, I just knocked on wood…)

Last week I attended the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) and it was the first time that I was away from my babies.  I was out of town for 5 days and I can’t remember the last time I was so homesick.  Sure, I enjoyed the conference, but it was so hard to know that I wouldn’t be able to hold my babies, feed them, or kiss them goodnight every evening.  On at least a couple of occasions there were a few tears on my part.

We contemplated using Skype to chat in the evenings even though at 6 months old they really wouldn’t grasp the concept of what they were looking at, but the days were so busy and went by so quickly that we never did fire up Skype.  On the last day of the conference I was chatting with one of the other educators that I met at the conference and he said that his wife told him that he couldn’t Skype home any more.  Apparently his 2 year old daughter freaked out when daddy disappeared from the screen.  Not good.

Now I’m home and I’m fortunate that I have the month of July off from work to enjoy spending more with my beautiful children.  However, I am looking at quite a bit of travel over the next year and I struggle with mixed feelings of excitement over the opportunities to do presentations and workshops, and sadness over being away from my children.  And now I know that at least for a few years, Skype will not be an option…  Not sure yet how I’m going to cope with all of it.

In other news, I’ve also accepted a new job offer that will take me from campus-based position to a leadership role in central office.  Yep.  I just became part of the bureaucracy.  Okay — that was an attempt at humor.  I’m really looking forward to my new job and I’m very excited that the central office is only about 5 minutes away from my current school campus which is where the daycare is located.  I get a new job and I don’t have to worry about new daycare arrangements for the babies.  That doesn’t cure my recent (and future) homesickness — but it does make life a little easier!

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