Self-Made Mom

I am not very political by nature, but you all should really check out the recap of the meeting and conference call my friends at Silicon Valley, Chicago and DC Metro Moms Blog had with none other than Elizabeth Edwards this past weekend.  It sounded like an amazing experience.  I hope if she decides to come to Chicago to meet us Midwesterners I can come up with something smart to say.

Considering all I can think to write about on the Chicago Moms Blog is how much I love the new show Dirty Sexy Money. G-d I am lame.

Tags: Silicon Valley Moms Blog, Elizabeth Edwards, presidential+candidates

When Nannygate and the blogging overdose occurred in one month, I decided to make some changes. To slow down on the blog, and the work stuff (as much as possible) and the extra-cirricular activities.  I noticed I had been doing everything paying half attention.  At best, I was able to take a call for work while pushing my son in his stroller. At worst, I was putting my son in front of the television so I could check a few e-mails.

Something had to give, and for the past couple of weeks I’ve implemented some changes, some life changes to my routine.  As you are all painfully aware. 

Then comes this post from two of my fine blog AND real-life friends, Sassafrass and CityMama, which totally hit home.  Two fine women taking control of their life, opting-in for the things that matter to them and being happier as a result.  And I know others are going to be on board with this plan as well.

I’m already starting on my project life change, but it’s nice to be in good company.  If you’re making a life change too, write about it and help us keep the conversation on this topic going.  My relaxed-self will be hear waiting for you.

Tags: Project Life Change, work-life balance, CityMama, Sassafrass

I can’t stay away from the blog for long. Not when Working Mother magazine comes out with their 100 Best Companies List and I miss posting about it by one day.  I HAVE to make my second (or is it third?) re-entry during a week when something actually newsworthy comes out about us working moms. (Isn’t that my thang?)

So here’s the scoop.  Devra pointed out that the list is stretching the notion of third-party credibility a little too far.  Susan doesn’t think that the “best” will get better without some pushing from the government.  Me? I know deep down that these lists are just a massive PR effort put forth by some low-level hack right out of college.  No, sorry.  Three years out of college. 

My major dilemma with such lists is why do people take them so seriously?  The criteria probably isn’t too rigid (I wish we could see the whole form on their website somewhere without me having to register).  And I’m actually thankful that companies on this list probably are doing more than most companies at least by the fact that they have the goal to be on this list in the first place.  There are worse things a company could pay a PR firm to do with its time do with its time.

That being said, I do see some room for improvement.  Some questions I’d love to add to the survey (of which I have never seen):

• How often does your boss roll his/ her eyes when you ask to leave 10 minutes early to pick your kid up from school?
• How often do you let your subordinates “work from home” on last minute notice?
• How many workers in the office have “I love mom” posters hanging on the wall?
• What is the ratio of women who are ”skinny bitches” vs. “trying to lose the baby weight”?
• What is the percentage of men who know not to ask a woman if she’s pregnant 10 weeks post-partum? (this one assumes a long, paid, restful maternity leave. Ha!)
• Do you have someone on staff to ensure that the snack machine doesn’t have any food with more than 5g of fat in it?

Who’s welcoming me back to the blogosphere?  Can I get a woo-woo?

Until I feel like blogging again…

Tags: working mother magazine, 100 best companies for working mothers, flexible work arrangements, working moms

Even though I haven’t posted here in awhile, I have been keeping up on some interesting developments across the blogosphere.  

• I’ve been following this story on the new mom who was denied a longer break during her medical licensing exam so that she could pump breast milk for her infant daughter.   Apparently judges in Massachusetts are ignoring the PRO- breastfeeding information their counterparts at the Dept of Health and Human Services are putting out.  The insanity of our government trying to control how a woman decides to use her body and then denying what they preach will continue to confound me.  Thanks to Boston Mommy and Alex for keeping this story going.
• Speaking of breastfeeding, you’ll get a kick out of this Facebook fiasco. They’ve deleted photos of breastfeeding mothers from their site.  Outrage has ensued.  Meaning 17,000 people joined a protest group.  I never was really into any of those social networking sites anyway.
• JUST IN- read this tonight in the New York Times: not surprisingly, a new study that came this week shows that “over the last decade, women have shown some progress in ascending the corporate hierarchy… but… we find that women make up only 2.6 percent of chief executives at Fortune 500 companies.” I have my annual review next month. Wish me luck.
• AND- my friend Susan posted this about a new study that came out from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research about the Working Mother 100 Best Companies for mothers.  Only 52 percent of these 100 so-called “best places to work for mothers” provided six weeks or less of paid maternity leave.  Twenty four percent of the companies on the list provided four or fewer weeks.  Seriously, who is coming up with the criteria for this list? MEN? At least I never put a lot of weight into these lists.  No, not when a main reason people get on it in the first place is because a junior-level PR staffer filled out a form correctly or something. I would, however, like to get back to the criteria of this list at some point when I’m blogging again.

Oh, and I had to share this awesome quote from Eva Longoria on whether or not she’d keep working if she had kids.  She says:

… it (working) doesn’t mean I would have to stop working.  But I would rather take some time off after giving birth and devote myself to being a mom for the early months. Having a child should be a very precious moment in a woman’s life, and I don’t want to worry about showing up on a set at 7:00 in the morning and have a nanny look after my baby during the day… I want to be a very loving and caring mother.

Ah, right, I forgot… those of us who employ nannies are anything but loving and caring.  Let’s check back with Eva when that cutie of hers is screaming at 3 a.m.

On that note, back to my black hole of nanny-hunting and non-blogging.

Tags: Eva Longoria, Facebook, breastfeeding, Harvard Medical School,Working Mother, Institute for Women’s Policy Research,

I know I’m officially on a “break,” but this was too good not to share with you all.

New nanny told me this morning that she has decided to move to the ‘burbs to be closer to her family and would rather not commute into the city for work. Especially in the wintertime.

Yes, I’m on the nanny hunt. AGAIN.

Yes, I’ll be telling dear husband we have to weigh ALL options, including day care this time around.

Yes, I came about two seconds away from not coming into work today or ever again.

Yes, I’m ready to pull my hair out.

Did that answer most of your questions?

I used to think I was cool when I had nonstop conference calls.  I used to relish in meeting after meeting. I used to dramatize every late night, every busines trip, every important person I met on the job. 

LOOK HOW IMPORTANT I AM I would exude to the world.

Even I couldn’t keep up with my busy self.

No more.  I’m throwing away my busy badge of honor.  I don’t think it’s cool anymore to be sooo busy.  Soo busy with the blog, that is.  I’m having another bloggy breakdown.

I don’t think it’s so exhilarating anymore to stay up late working on css sheets I don’t really understand.  I don’t find a lot of joy waking up feeling like I’ve had a hangover because I was up late cranking out blog posts.  I don’t like it that I don’t have time to sit and talk to my friends because I am writing.  Because I feel I have to write to keep up with the masses. 

That’s not what blogging is about.  This is not what I’m about.

And something’s gotta give.

I’m not the only one who feels this way.  My friend Jill over at Silicon Valley Moms Blog is taking a much needed (and deserved) break from her blog to tend to her paying job and family.  Not that she doesn’t love the blogosphere.  The blogosphere is seriously awesome.  She just had “the talk” with her family (my talk ended up with rules, so I get it) and they asked her to tone it down a bit for a little while.  As Amy put Jill’s hiatus so brilliantly:

… we cannot expect, in life, to get something for nothing. And something we pay with our time or our privacy.

I’m paying with my time.  My precious, sweet time.  I haven’t even been blogging a year, and I’m exhausted from it.  More exhausted than from my 1.5 year old. What is that saying?  I like to write, I like to meet people, I like to have these conversations. But I also like my non-existent spare time, which is increasingly less existent with every moment I blog.

I know us moms, including myself, pride ourselves on being busy and “doing it all” but to what end?  Why do we boast that we’re so tied up we can’t watch our favorite TV shows? Why do we joke (non-kiddingly, of course) that we don’t have time to get our haircut, eyebrows tweezed or take the laundry in? I haven’t read a book in 3 months and a newspaper in a week.  That’s not something to brag about.  My latest posts have been nonstop bitching.  I’m lethargic at work.  I have come to realize that there are things I can control, and things I can’t.  I can’t control how much work my boss gives me.  I can’t control if my nanny decides to quit. 

But I can control how I spend my non-working free time.  I can decide to put away the computer for an evening (or two or three) and veg on the couch.  I can clean up those closets that are long overdue, pull the dead plants that are rotting on my doorstep and take all my newspapers to the recycling bin. 

It’s still not that easy being green.

I don’t want the happiness that I get from my blog and writing to end.  But I can’t keep up with all of it at this blog-breaking pace.  I’m an all-or-nothing kind of gal.  I don’t like to do anything half-assed.  But I don’t know how you all do it.  How you make your blogs so great, go to work AND mother! That’s why I’ll be the first to admit it here:

 I cannot do it all.

I don’t know what this quite means yet. This is the first time I’m admitting this OUT LOUD.  I just know that I need to slow down for just a bit.  Take my own break.  Blog on my own terms, not by what I think this bloggy-crazed world thinks makes sense.  This isn’t a death knell.  I’m just being as honest as I can be with all my clothes on.

Maybe I’ll just start to blog about how I’m spending my non-blogging time.

I mean, I can’t quit this nonsense altogether, can I? Can you all save me from my breakdown?

This is why I have no time to read other blogs anymore - I’m too busy writing all over the web.  Ok, that’s a big exaggeration, but I have been doing a couple things on the side that you may or may not think are worth reading. At least you now know where I’ve been the past week.

Who agrees that you don’t really work when you work from home? Well sound off on my new post up at the Watercooler on Mommy Track’d.  You’re all lying if you say you don’t agree with me.

Think you’re stylish? I did, until I read The Little Black Book of Style by Elle’s Nina Garcia. You can read my deeper thoughts about it here.

[End: Shameless self-promotion]

Tags: parent bloggers network, Mommy Track’d, Nina Garcia

Said my husband to me while taking a walk with our son today:

Why is it that the weekend we have NO plans, junior gets sick?

I’m likening acclimating my son to our new nanny to Bush’s stance on Iraq.  We are making meager gains.  It has been such a trying week that I have had to resort to my last possible battle plan: hovering over the new nanny like a Chinook over the desert.  I watch her every move with distrust.  I stake out her operations to find the holes.

I’ve drawn the enemy lines and I’m ready to pounce at any misstep.

I can’t help it. I’m on the defensive here.  I’ve been badly burned in the nanny game, and I don’t want any sneak attacks or unpleasant offensives.  I’m looking for a peace treaty, but in the meantime, she’s encroaching on my turf and I need to defend my territory.  This battle will only end when the tears do.

Tags: helicopter parent, nannies, nannies and mothers

My son’s old enough to attend the tot services at our Temple this year and I’m taking him there in lieu of the regular two-hour shofar extravaganza. But my choice to tot and not attend the traditional service has me a bit ferklempt.

Am I copping out with the tot?

I’ve copped out before. Last year, I skipped fasting on Yom Kippur. The thought of going without caffeine and food while caring for a six-month-old was too daunting. I didn’t fast the year before either, but hey, I was pregnant after all. This year, I have no real excuse, so I’ll try my hand at not eating all day, even though my son will be shoveling in mac n’ cheese to his heart’s content.

I can live with that.

Trying to convince myself that attending the tot service is remotely similar to going to the real deal is a little bit more difficult.

For one, the tot service is shorter. I haven’t seen the prayer book yet for the kiddies, but it must be thinner than the chunk of the “High Holidays” prayer book that I leaf through every time before I sit down for services. (It doesn’t ever really change, though, does it?)

Also, since tots can’t keep their mouth shut there will be no expectation for me to be quiet either. Meaning, I won’t have to pretend to be paying attention when all I really want to do is gossip with my mom or friend about all the good outfits I’m looking at. No one will care if I’m whispering a bit, because it will be at a lower decibel than a screaming two-year-old.

I won’t have to worry about when I’m going to eat. We all know tots can’t go more than an hour without snacking, and well, neither can I. I wonder if I need to bring my own honey?

All joking aside, there are real reasons I’m opting for tot this year. I want my son to enjoy going to Temple with his parents. I want him to get used to the surroundings and the culture. I want him to meet other nice Jewish boys and girls. He doesn’t have to marry them, but some friends would be a good start.

And while the tot might not be the “real deal” it provides the perfect opportunity for my husband and me to kvell over our pride and joy for a whole hour. And who would ever want to opt out of an opportunity to do that?

Not this Jewish mother. Happy New Year.
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Cross-posted at Your Jewish Mother

Tags: tot services, Rosh Hashanah, your jewish mother