This Friday I hop on a plane to San Francisco and will be away for a little over 24 hours speaking at a start-up conference.  Over the weekend I started telling my sons, particularly my almost 5-year-old, that I was going to be gone for one night. My husband and I have found that our oldest does a lot better when he knows “the plan” and we can discuss it for a few days before it happens. If you sneak something up on him - he is liable to have on of his “fits” (as he calls them).  As I talked about why I had to be gone, my oldest said:

That’s not fair. Mommy always has to go. It’s Daddy’s turn.

He is right. I more often have events and travel outside of office hours. I don’t travel tons, and often times when I do travel I take the kids with me (along with my mom or husband or mother-in-law to help out). But about once a month I have evening events where I speak, teach, or facilitate entrepreneurship, and once on a while I plan a quick trip to a conference or speaking engagement where it is  just easier to fly in and out and not plan on the extra expense and all the extra hard work that entails bringing the  kids along. In April I will be gone for a total of 3 full nights away, and one evening at a local entrepreneurship event.  Daddy will be in charge, taking care of our 2 boys on his own.

My son knows my husband and I work together, running Palo Alto Software together. He knows that we go to the same office, and work with the same people. So his question is of course very logical. What is harder for him to understand right now is the different jobs that Mommy and Daddy do. I am the public face person for the company. My position requires me to travel more and to be in front of as many people as possible speaking, teaching and evangelizing.  My husband is our opps detail guy. He is all about product development, IT infrastructure and web development. So no matter how I like it or not - I am going to be the one that travels more and is more often gone.

And of course that gives me immense Mommy guilt. While I LOVE what I do, and I have chosen this life and this career, and I would NEVER change it, that doesn’t mean I don’t have guilt. Especially when the almost 5 year old wants to know why I have to be gone more than Daddy. I wish it could be different. I wish I could ALWAYS take the kids. But I also know its good  for Daddy to have some time on his own with the kids. Our kids are still so young that they definitely tend to still migrate towards me when they are hurt, tired, hungry, or upset. So every time Daddy is the only one — I feel like they get a little more bonded to him. Or maybe this is how I make myself feel better about being away.  One way or another though — I can’t change the fact that in order to do the job I love, I am going to have to travel here and there. This means I am going to have to leave the kids behind sometimes.  I know they are O.K. — I just need to learn how to not feel so guilty about it.

If you are a working mommy who travels more than your partner, I would love to know how you deal with it!

Sabrina Parsons aka MommyCEO

“Mama, don’t let your sons grow up to be cowboys!” So advises the country song - which may be good advice, or it may not.

As parents, we should put up barriers to “careers” that are harmful or illegal. But as for the wide variety of trades and careers that our children may be uniquely gifted for, and inclined to, we should not erect artificial fences.

The world needs good cowboys. And plumbers. And electricians. And shepherds. And mechanics. People good with their hands.

If your son shows strong interest in fixing cars, and has limited academic drive and ability, why in the world would you push him to become a lawyer? We need great mechanics, and his gifts and inclinations are already showing you a potential career path.

If your daughter gravitates toward making beautiful floral arrangements, why should she be guilt-tripped into being a business executive? Is there not an ongoing need for all sorts of gifted designers?

The fact is, we’ll always need people who are good with their hands. And even the greatest and wealthiest among us recognize that, when you find a capable and reliable craftsman, tradesman, or laborer, they are gold. These folks have tremendous earning power and job security, because there are so many shoddy and unscrupulous workers in the marketplace. People who are skilled in their work, and prove themselves over time, are almost always in demand. Compare that to the job insecurity of many in white-collar careers, and you begin to see that it is not a step down to learn and ply a trade.

I have five sons. It has always been my perspective not to pre-determine their academic and professional careers, but to carefully evaluate their wired-in gifts and budding interests, and seek to move them in that direction, even if it is quite different from the course my wife or I took as young adults. And, sure enough, we’re having some surprises. As you will with your children.

If you have children that are good with their hands, and you worry about whether they will go to college and launch into some high-profile information-driven career, remember - this is not about you and your reputation. Most people throughout history learned trades that were passed down through generations, and many still do. You can be immensely proud of a son or daughter who works with his/her hands, and who is skilled in the tangible arts. Make it your goal that if your mantel has smiling pictures of a fireman, a professor, a pet shop owner, and an architect, that you will be equally proud of each one.

Don’t rob your child of fulfillment in pursuing a direction that “fits” with her gifts, and don’t rob the rest of us of his abilities as we plan, build, landscape, and repair. Frankly, we don’t need a whole lot more lawyers, executives, and investment bankers. We will always need capable cabinet-makers, graphic designers, tailors, and - yes - devoted mothers who work part-time out of the home. These less-glamorous spheres of labor, using active minds and active hands, are where tremendously valuable work gets done.

I’ve been away for too long, my friends.  My family and I have just had too much chaos in the past few months and I finally had to put the brakes on this out-of-control train, do a little audit of what was and wasn’t working in our little universe, and figure out what to do about it.  Of course, with all that’s gone on over the past few months, that’s taken a considerable amount of time!  In any event, my sincere apologies for staying away for so long.  It’s good to be back.  :)

So, about the title of this post:  An Extreme Life Makeover. Sounds sort of drastic and official, doesn’t it? Well, that’s how it feels, a little bit.

Many things have happened in the past few months that have prompted us to have to get a little drastic and official.  Thankfully the end result is that I - and we - feel like we’re finally finding our feet again, feeling more confident, happy, excited.  And it feels really, really good.

I’ll start off by getting you up to speed on what’s been going on lately…

As you might recall from my last few posts (from August and July, to my utter mortification), my wonderful husband was downsized out of his job back at the end of June.  I’m not going to lie: It was at times enormously stressful to have the primary bread winner NOT, well, “winning bread.” Nonetheless, I think he - and we - have handled it with as much calm and optimism as we possibly could in the circumstances with two children to support, a mortgage payment and all the other usual bills to pay.

There have been several things working in our favor, not the least of which is that my husband is a one-of-a-kind, wonderful, calm “glass is half-full” kind of guy. There’s also the fact that my husband has a fantastic network of personal and professional contacts.  We were stunned by how many people contacted Dan after his job loss, whether just to voice their support or to provide him with contacts or job leads.  If any of those people are reading what I’m writing here, please accept our heartfelt THANKS, because you kept us both hopeful and positive.

I think my husband’s strong work ethic and workhorse personality were also factors in our surviving the past few months.  The man refused to treat any of his time unemployed as “vacation” or “down time,” and he spent every day making phone calls, sending out resumes, finishing antiques “projects” he’d acquired over the years so he could sell them on Craiglist, helping friends complete home improvement projects that they lacked the ability or knowledge (or tools!) to do themselves.  He kept his mind and his body engaged the whole time, and I admire that about him.

So where am I going with this?  Well, let’s just say that Dan’s job search is over.  And we’re pleased as punch!

Don’t get me wrong: I loved having all of that one-on-one time with my husband and am grateful that fate threw us that curve ball when it did.  Dan had been stressed out and anxious leading up to the downsizing; once it was over and the dust had settled, he was back to being himself, the guy I know and love: calm, happy-go-lucky, driven, optimistic.  With his perspective back, it was nice having him around more, and the new routines we developed bouncing around the house together all day every day have been sorely missed now that he’s back to work again.  But Dan was ready and excited to begin his new professional journey, and so far, so good!

There are two other things that came up recently that have also forced us to examine our lives a bit more closely, especially when paired with Dan’s job situation.   Continue Reading »

Oh, out of the mouths of babes!

I take the kids to daycare every morning and then drive back home to work out of the house while the Daddy of the family leaves at the same time and drives into town to work. Maggie always asks, “Where is Daddy going?” and I always reply, “to work” and we talk about how everyone has a job to do (thanks to our beloved Frances book!) and that Daddy’s job is to go to work and Maggie’s job is to go to daycare. Today when I gave my usual reply, she said:

“Do girls work?”

Indeed.

I’ll spare you the analyzing I’ve been doing over the past hour, but they always serve up such zingers, don’t they? At the very least this proves that I should put on “real” clothes in the morning and brush my hair a little more…………

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!

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?

Corey Smith is the proud father of four wonderful children. They provide the foundation for everything that he does. Corey’s daytime job is that of a serial entrepreneur. In addition to developing websites for Dealer Marketing Systems as their Chief Web Architect, he maintains a business and technology blog, just launched CopierCatalog.com and is working on about 10 other projects. You can also find him on Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn.

I have been a father for almost 8 years now. With four children, life can get a little hectic. 

Like all the projects I take on, there is so much that I have to learn as I go. Although others have experienced fatherhood before, no one has experienced exactly what I am experiencing and so no one can really guide me through it.

I like to look at the positives more than the negatives because I think it helps to keep me centered. Here the top five reasons I love being a father.

1. Having the joy of four little children in my life everyday. They are my friends. I know that no matter how much I mess up, they will still love me. Well, at least now while they are little, but I hope that stays true for the next 60 years.
2. My little "helpers" for when I build shelves, mow the lawn and work in the garage. Okay they don’t really help, they actually make the project take longer, but it is still fun when they think that I couldn’t have completed a job without them.
3. Seeing the joy of learning on their faces. When they learn something new and apply some new bit of knowledge, it is a thrill to witness. How did we every lose that spirit of discovery?
4. I get to get on the floor and "rough-house" and be a kid myself. One of the favorite things my kids enjoy is getting on the floor and jumping on Dad. All I have to say is, "I think I am going to take a nap," and lay on the floor and four kids come from all over the house to play.
5. Striving to be a good Dad makes me a better man. Without my children teaching me things like how to be thankful or how to share, I don’t know that I would remember on my own. By teaching them the right things to do, I get to remind myself.

Being a Dad is hard work. It is not easy to give up what I want to do for their sake. The challenge is worth it. The time is worth it. But it is only worth it if I do it right. If I try to be a Dad half way, it would be a waste of effort and time.

One of those things you hear before you’re a parent – and you wish parents would stop saying all the time – is how quickly the time goes. It starts during the pregnancy, “You just wait, the 9 months are going to fly by!” and continues through each developmental phase your child goes through, “You just wait, he’s going to be crawling/eating solids/walking/talking before you know it!”

The reason parents talk about time all the, umm, time is because it does go by so quickly. This past year has flown by for me, and I can’t believe how different my life is now than it was at this time last year. At this time last year, I was a single parent, I was starting a new job, I was trying to settle into a city that I hadn’t lived in in more than a decade, and I was trying to help my son adjust to our new lives. Now, I’m engaged to a man who has easily slipped into the role of “father” for my son, I love my job and feel like I’m not the new girl anymore, I can get in the car and drive without getting lost, and my son knows where all the important things are (grandparents’ houses, his school, the library, etc.). Life is very good and very different.

Tonight was a perfect illustration of that difference. We had planned to have dinner with my fiance’s family so after work I rushed home to get out of my heels (super cute, super uncomfortable) and throw on some cooler clothes. On our way to the restaurant, my pager went off. Dang it! A call from a reporter that an interview had been scheduled with a patient. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a big deal, except that we were in one car, were late for dinner already, and Nicholas was starving (and had to pee “very bad”).

Had this situation come up last year, I would have either had to hope the daycare at my hospital could take N as a drop-in for a couple hours, or turn the car around and take him to a grandparent, or asked my sister-in-law to meet me at the hospital to watch him. None of those things lend themselves to me being a very responsive media liaison. Instead, because William was with us (and fully comfortable and capable with N), they dropped me off at the hospital and went on to eat while I worked.

The feeling of having someone I can depend on so completely is still very new. William still reminds me that I don’t have to ask him to get N a drink or to take him to the bathroom…that N is just as much his son now as he is mine. And, yes, there have been times when I’ve had to stop myself from saying, “But that’s not how we do it!” And, yes, there have been times when I’ve been a little jealous if Nicholas lets William do something for him that I usually do. But for the majority of the last year, I’ve been thankful and appreciative.

What a difference a year makes.

As you may have read in my bio, I became a stay at home mom about a year ago, after my little boy’s chronic and recurring sinus infections literally had him on antibiotics constantly, and his immune system wasn’t functioning properly, never having a chance to fully recover between infections.  That was both a blessing and a curse for us: A blessing because it forced me to make the change I had wanted to make since before I even gave birth to my son, but a curse because it was all happening so quickly and there was so much fear in our hearts about the health of our son.  

What I soon found was that I loved being home despite having a little less money in the bank, Angelo was finally HEALTHY for the first time in nearly three years, and our home life was so much more peaceful and easy without my often demanding career in the mix.  My relationship with my husband became once again blissful, with no more silly, heated arguments about who was going to stay home with Angelo when he was sick, who was going to go in to work late or leave work early to take him to another of his many, many doctor appointments or medical tests, who was stretched more to their breaking point.  Personally, I was more serene, content, relaxed… happy.  Gone were the chest pains that had been plaguing me on and off for the prior two years (at age 32-33!), gone was that tight feeling of anxiety that often prevented me from really being able to take a deep, cleansing breath.  Gone were the stomach ailments brought on by stress and worry.  Suddenly, I was human again.  I was a person I recognized. I was me again.    

Given my newfound serenity it’s easy to understand how, before long, I had created in my mind a vividly painted picture of the future with me still being at home, caring for our son (and any future children) and our home, and never returning to the workforce again.  Ever.  

Don’t get me wrong - I loved my job.  I really did.  I always felt so fortunate to have found such a fantastic, progressive and opportunity-rich employer, to work for a very cool and compassionate boss who was always in my corner and helping me reach the next level in my career, and to have work that was interesting, exciting, challenging and full of growth potential.  But.  All the things I loved about my job were the things that made it hard for me to find the right balance with my home life.  Aside from that, I sort of stumbled into the area of work I was in (managing a political action committee), and while it was fun at time, I don’t really know that it’s what I’m meant to spend my life doing.    

I had been with my company for nearly eight years, and I felt hugely invested in it.  I wanted to do my best for them, to not let anyone down.  Unfortunately, that often meant taking work home with me and being available to take a call or address an email quickly, at any time.  It sometimes meant having to go into work early or stay late to finish a project, hold an important meeting, finish a critical call with a vendor.  And I had a tendency to take on everything they offered me, like the PAC, no matter how big or small, because I wanted to show them that I was leadership material, that I could be organized and efficient.  At a certain point, however, you reach critical mass and while you may realize it, they often don’t.  And saying “no” at that point sometimes doesn’t feel like an option.  I was there.   

So, with Angelo entering full-day kindergarten in September and no other children on the horizon at this point to factor into the equation, the question is what do I do with myself come September?  Dan wants me to return to work, and while I’ve agreed that it’s probably a prudent thing to do financially, I don’t want to go back to work full-time.  I want to have a little flexibility yet to help out at Angelo’s school and in his classroom, to be able to continue working out and taking care of myself, and to not have to put him in after-school daycare.  I also want to be able to have my summers off so I can be at home with Angelo and not have to put him in summer daycare.  There’s just one problem:  I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up!

My old employer has asked if I’d be interested in returning there.  I love them, I miss them, but - no.  I don’t see being able to truly work part-time and “leave work at work” if I were to go back there right now.  And I don’t think I want to go back into PAC management, although it might be a decent gig to do on a consulting basis while I figure out my true professional calling.  In all honesty though, I think that if I’m only going to want to work part time (maybe 20 hours/week) and if I’m going to want to still have my summers off, my best course of action in the short-term is to take a “normal” part-time job where I go to work, put in my hours, come home.  I’m not bringing work home with me, I’m not stressing out over it.  I’m just doing the job and collecting the paycheck while still having a relatively calm life.  

When I envision the perfect job in that scenario, I keep thinking that a job at my gym is probably just the ticket.  My gym membership would be free, I’d remain in an environment that would continue to motivate me to keep working out and getting more fit, but it would be an “easy” job to have on a part-time basis, and an “easy” job to leave in the summers.  Furthermore, I’ve enjoyed my gym’s Pilates classes so much that I want to become an instructor and teach a few classes myself.  There’s just one teeny tiny little snag:  That type of job won’t offer all that much in the way of pay.  Personally, I’m cool with that and I think ANY contribution I make financially should be viewed as a good thing after this past year of NOT contributing anything.  Dan hasn’t quite decided how he feels about that yet, but I think he’ll come around to my way of thinking.  I hope.  Maybe…? 

Anyway, stay tuned over the next few months as I figure out what my next career move will be.  It’s a little scary to think about going back to work, but it’s exciting, too, since this will be a fresh start for me, an opportunity to go in a completely different direction.  How cool is that?