Kate Olson is a mother of 2 toddlers and lives in rural Wisconsin. She balances motherhood & working from home in a semi-functional fashion - you can read more about Kate on our contributors page. She blogs about education and lots of business/tech stuff at Kate Says . Want more? Read all of Kate’s posts!

Last night I was reading this great post at Sparkplugging that really hit home for me. It’s about handling summer break when you’re a WAHM and the kids are home. I’m a WAHM and my kids are in daycare during the school year, but our sitter takes the summers off. That’s fine, since I used to be a teacher - I LOVED the idea of not having to pay to hold our spot during the summer when I wouldn’t be working. Now, I still don’t want to have my kids in daycare full-time in the summer, but not having ANY daycare is just about killing me!

I made it through June and the first part of July with NO daycare - I was only working before the kids got up in the morning, during nap, and after they went to bed. Well, as the post I mentioned says, summers for WAHM = NO SLEEP. That’s right - working is done when kids are sleeping. You know what? That doesn’t really cut it for me. No sleep means crabbiness and sloppy work. I’m not a good mom and I’m really not at the top of my game when I have to pack a full day’s work into those tiny nooks and crannies of time.

Enter my new best friend, T. T is actually a high school girl who for some reason, is willing to come to my house and watch my kids - and seems to enjoy it! I have given in and realized that it’s just not good for anyone for me to try to do it all for 3 months - I now have T. coming over for 4 - 8 hours each week to watch the kiddos while I work. The only catch? My children don’t seem to get that when T. is over, SHE’S in charge. That means they still want me for everything - no productivity earned in that! My home office doesn’t have a door (don’t ask, this house is over 120 years old) so there’s no way of hiding and working while I have the sitter here.

The solution? I drive 30 minutes each way to sit at Caribou and use their free wireless and furiously try to get a couple of hours of work in each time. Yup, that’s right. I waste up to 2 hours of paid babysitting time each week to drive to a coffee shop to work! Luckily this will all change in September when I have full-time daycare again (a woman who takes my kids into her home and treats them better than I do -I worship her).

Until then? I need a volunteer to come over and build me an office right next to my house. Any takers?