HELP ME HELP YOU

Is what I’ve wanted to scream at my 3-year-old innumerable times. Sure, have a raging fever and spit out the Tylenol. That really hurts me. Well, actually it does hurt me. Maybe more than it hurts her, depending on what horrible time of the night it is. But why do sick kids make it so damn difficult to help relieve their misery with pain reliever? Seriously.

Why am I asking why.

Why not, right? If they make even the most mundane task, difficult, why not make something designed to help them feel better, difficult.

After a week of having a sick 3-year-old, I have since devised and modified some strategies for my youngest that previously worked on my older child when she was younger and sick. I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that I wondered a few times if some covert CIA prisoner training would help me learn how to trick my sick prisoner into taking her medicine and keeping it down. I’m not above questionable methods when operating on little sleep and even less patience. At one point I considered feigning a toddler dental emergency so I could get her mouth propped open and dose her up that way.  Seems harmless enough, doesn’t it?

I even conducted a 15 minute intense brainstorming session with my mother on how best to dose her up during the inevitable multiple-times night wakings, crying, with fever peaking and yet still refusing the medicine. The logic behind protesting medication is something I’d pay big money for in that toddler-tell-all that I’m sure will be a best-seller if one of these damn kids would just give it up!

So today, because it is kid-sick-season, I offer you my best-of approaches and I’d love to hear what schemes and trickery work for you because we all know these tricks have an expiration date and the savvy toddler will wait until the next illness at 3am to let you know this trick ain’t working any more.

The Syringe Sneak Attack: The Element of Surprise

This particular technique works only on the youngest of the toddler set, in my experience, and requires cat-like reflexes on the part of the drug administrator and the distraction only a solid episode of the Backyardigans or Dora can provide. The drug administrator must first do some warm up stretches, loosen up the arms, the fingers, maybe a few jumping jacks. Then evaluate the seating position of the toddler. Can he see you from his peripheral vision? Then abort the mission. Can you approach him on the right angle that works best with your hand-eye coordination? For instance, a sneak attack attempt with the loaded syringe into the left side of my toddler’s mouth results in a #parentingfail. I have to get it into her right side. Evaluate their seating position and vision limitations. Are they preoccupied enough? Is it the trifecta of dosage opportunities? If so, you must approach quickly, eject the medication at warp speed accurately into the back corner of their mouth and then move quickly away from said subject. Then enjoy the rush that comes with defeating your competitor in this match. The victories are small but meaningful to a tired parent.  If the element of surprise is foiled by an older sibling who rats out your approach or a show ending, forget it, the Tylenol will immediately be spit back out (hence why you move quickly away but not out of eye sight). If the toddler is closer to 3 than 2, in my experience, they are too savvy for this technique.

My neighbor tipped me off to this technique this week. I’ve mistakenly been attempting to dose up my kid quickly and just get it over with, despite how frequently she spits it right back out. Turns out, it can take 15-20 minutes to drink one tsp of Tylenol but if it gets it into her system, then I am prepared to pack my patience. The lynchpin to the success of this technique is bribery – what do you have that the toddler wants ENOUGH that they will participate in said game? In my house, as I’m sure in yours, it’s candy. Oddly, it must have something to do with the shiny lid to the breath mints, but the Icebreakers pulled up from the rear as what I would consider the LEAST appealing “candy” into the biggest motivator this week, along with marshmellows or life saver gummies. Typically we would rotate through all three, take a sip, get a piece, take a bigger sip, get another piece, and so on. This technique, while painfully long, tends to result in the least amount of drama chez moi. Another small victory but this time for both parties – kid gets candy and medicine, parent gets medicated kid.

Life savers, Icebreakers, Marshmellows & Medicine....all part of the fun

The O’Dark Thirty Slurpee: The Petri Dish of Deceit

 Finally, the piece de resistance, the most brilliantly executed scam to get her to take the medicine came from my prolonged brainstorming conference call with my mom. How to best get a sick, fever-ridden 3-year-old to take another dose of medicine at 2am when mommy’s reflexes are definitely not cat-like and no one has the patience for a prolonged candy negotiation yet it is critical that they digest another dosage so everyone can go back to sleep? This requires some advance work, some strategy and organizing all the tools to execute it properly. We discussed several options when finally my mom suggested the old faithful: Popsicle. Who ever says no to a popsicle? Even at 2am? So what did I do? Carefully considering the importance of her taking the entire dose and not diluting it too much with some kind of liquid, we agreed that I should cut a tip-off a popsicle, mash it up so it has the consistency of a slurpee, then put it back in the freezer. Then in the middle of the night, when she’s crying in my room, retrieve the petri dish of deceit from the freezer, quickly squirt the appropriate amount of Tylenol into the slurpee (clearly your tools and medicine is lined up ready for you), then innocently offer her a cool refreshing slurpee sip, which in the dark and their sleepy toddler haze, seems perfectly reasonable and quite lovely. It’s a win-win. This approach worked brilliantly for me, much to my great relief. I even lined it up ready for the next night but she fortunately didn’t need it.

Please tell me I am not alone in this agony. What techniques work for you?

For more ideas on how to scam your kid, “Like” Wired Momma on Facebook

Hypocritical much?

I think the same can be said for texting and driving. Ashley Halsey III of The Washington Post ran a story on Wednesday about how 35% of drivers said they’ve read or sent a text while driving in the past month and 67% said they talked on the phone while driving in the past month.  Interestingly, a deeper review of the survey data reveals that the majority of people believe OTHERS are more dangerous when they text and drive or chat and drive, than they are and so they overwhelmingly support laws against texting and driving. My state of Maryland just this weekend enacted the law banning texting and driving - we can now get ticketed as a primary offense for this behavior.

Back to the hypocrisy:  First of all, I don’t believe that only 35% of drivers have read or sent a text while driving (does this include stopped at a red light) because look around the Beltway or any major road in DC and I see it happening every time I drive. But more to the point, we are a culture of totally agreeing with the socially responsible answer when polled but we are quick to say everyone else should do it. Just like we mock “Washingtonians” for being terrible drivers in one inch of snow…are we a nation of hypocrites? It can’t just be symptomatic of people living in DC.

Here’s why we as parents should care DEEPLY about this issue of texting and driving – because our teens are doing it and our teens are dying. According to Allstate and The Hill, from an event they hosted last week on this important issue, more than 4,000 teens are dying on our roads and highways every year. Accidents on the road are the number one cause of teenage deaths. And 4,000 teens losing their lives equates to 155 lost lives a week. Why aren’t we calling this a crisis? Why aren’t our networks spending more time on such important issues like this, instead of the guilt or innocence of Casey Anthony or Amanda Knox?

This about sums it up....my friend shot this outside a Church on 16th St

Part of the impetus for The Hill and Allstate’s event last week was to support new legislation in the Senate that will require graduated licensing laws (GDL) for teens. Provisions of the Safe Teen and Novice Driver Uniform Protection (STANDUP) Act were recently added to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Reauthorization bill in the Senate. The STANDUP Act requires minimum standards of graduated driver licensing (GDL) laws. According to Allstate, state and national evaluations of GDL programs have found crash reductions for 16- and 17-year-old drivers in the 20 percent to 40 percent range. I think if you were to ask a parent who is mourning the loss of their child from a car crash, they would support a law that would reduce crashes by even one percent.

So, why does this matter if you don’t have a child old enough to drive? I think it matters to people whose children are too young to drive because the little ones are watching and learning and repeating what we do. I regularly am surprised by what my girls, who are 3 and 6, pick up from me when it was something I’d said or done days or even weeks prior to that date. Clearly our kids are watching and noticing when we chat on our cellphones and drive or when we check our emails at red lights or respond to one quickly. And in the vein of not mocking people and then being guilty, I will admit, I do that. I tell myself it’s okay if I’m stopped at a red light. But it’s not okay because do I really think my girls are going to make that distinction when they are teens learning to drive? Do I really want to be guilty of do as I say, not as I do, when it comes to their safety? Not to mention, I take the time to purchase the safest car seat, learn how to install it properly and load them into their car seats for every trip, so why would I risk their safety by being a distracted driver?

Again, hypocritical, anyone?

I absolutely love  the idea another blogger, Meghan Leahy, proposed recently on this very same issue: she suggests we make it a family pledge to not check email, respond to email or talk on the phone in the car.  Here’s why I love this idea – because if my kids are holding me to it and they know the rules – then I am going to hold myself to it. Look, I know it was one of Oprah’s big missions last year but I don’t answer to Oprah. Continuing my confessional theme today, even the new law isn’t as likely to change my behavior as my word to my kids and their ability to call out  my infraction. And seeing as how I seem to be inadvertently raising two snitches, they will GLADLY call it to my attention.

What do you think? Care to join me in the family pledge? Finally, you can get involved by visiting facebook.com/save11 for information and resources on contacting  lawmakers, inviting family and friends to take action, and lending your voice to this vital movement. Even a few minutes on that Facebook page will send goosebumps up your body because the words from parents who have lost a teenager are chilling and sobering. I really am certain that no email or phone call is worth it.  At least none that I am receiving are….

To follow along the never-ending fun and hotly debated topics on Wired Momma, “like” the Wired Momma FB page and follow me on Twitter @Wired_Momma

My youngest has devoted herself to defying the odds and surprising me with her physical stunts from a very early age. She started walking just after her 10 month birthday and within days, opted for scaling fences. Fast forward to stronger motor skills in the 2s and why wait for mommy to score a snack, why not just quickly scale the counter top when mommy walks away?

So eventually it became ridiculous that we were still imprisoning her in a crib, which she obviously would just climb out of wheneve she wanted too, and we moved her into a regular bed about 6 weeks ago. Everything was fine at first. Then maybe the total freedom and liberation that comes with a bed finally registered in her little ninja brain but she’s adopted some unsavory habits. Her morning wake time has shifted backwards, much to my chagrin, to more like a 5:20am-ish timeframe. My oldest woke at that time for years – like probably well over 4 years – and even now we have to strong arm her into staying in her room until 6:30am. She can often be found in our room asking why it’s “taking so long to get to 6:30″ as we unpeel each eyelid and wonder who we tortured in a past life.

Since the early-wake times have started with the youngest, our days can begin in one of two ways: Jarring and Punishment or Creepy and Stalker. With Jarring and Punishment she deploys this technique: With her ninja like skills she creeps down the stairs unheard despite the old hardwood floors, flips on the overhead light, loudly declares “WAKE UP  NOW” and then starts  yanking our covers off the bed.

It’s so pleasant.

When opting for Creepy and Stalker technique, again her stealth ability to soundlessly navigate through the house, gives me no warning as I emerge from the bathroom ready to head to the gym, only to discover a shadowy creature lurking in the doorframe of my bedroom, making no sound, as if she is stalking her prey. Let me tell you, before coffee and fresh air, even a petite 3 foot creature unexpectedly waiting for you in shadows can scare the crap out of you.

Eventually, beaten down and exhausted, I resorted to purchasing one of these “Tot Clocks” based on the recommendations from some friends and WM readers on the super awesome, totally amazing if you are missing it, Wired Momma Facebook page. By the time I purchased the Tot Clock, money was no object. I was willing to pay anything if it could stop the madness. Tot Clock arrived on Friday and we activated it before bedtime, mercilessly repeating to her that if she wakes and sees the bunny still sleeping, it means she needs to go back to sleep, and we optimistically set it for 6:30am before the bunny could switch over to awake time. True, it has been only 4 days, so it is too soon for me to declare #failure because the sleeping bunny in no way is luring her back to sleep yet. But a change has occured.

Dear bunny...can you try a little harder to get her back to sleep?

Instead of employing one of her cruel techniques to immediately wake us up once she’s awake, she instead roams the house like a night stalker. Usually buck naked. Often in search for her beloved and filthy pirate shirt that’s been worn for 4-5 consecutive days. One morning we found her quietly sitting in the living room reading Halloween books. It’s anyone’s guess how long she’d been sitting there.

Could any of us have imagined how strange children are before we had them? Anyone care to bet whether my little ninja returns to sleeping to at least 6:30AM before thorn-in-my-side-why-do-we-still-have-to-do-this DAYLIGHT SAVINGS arrives?

Apparently when it rains it pours because this wasn’t my only item from Plum this week - as soon as I saw the deal for the kids craft playhouse that they can decorate themselves, I knew my aspiring young Picasso’s would delight in it. True, I am actively trying to purge my home of more kid stuff and this particular item requires a certain amount of space but for a cold winter day (will they ever come?), this is just the kind of project I am psyched to have stored away until the time is right. I can’t decide if I’ll purchase the princess castle or the more traditional playhouse but the creative opportunities for little ones are limitless and each kid can pick two sides as their own – hopefully bypassing the territorial gang warfare that is common in joint craft projects. This deal is $20 for a $40 value and after spending some time on the site, the traditional kids playhouse is $40 and the princess castle is $49, so it really is a great bargain from Plum. The spaceship is also pretty adorable for the little astronauts out there. Really – is there a better price for peace and happiness on crappy indoor days?

Happy shopping!

Disclosure: Through my partnership with Plum District DC, I was gifted these items but would have happily purchased them myself.

I’m making the case that I think all of us are digital moms, whether we go to an office full-time or we don’t, we are bound to technology. It bleeds into our day, we work in spaces that seem unorthodox and counter-productive to work – like our cars waiting to pick kids up from school. Women who have quit their full-time job to “stay home” are doing so much work, some paid, some unpaid. Yet the label “SAHM” implies she is a dud, she doesn’t “do anything” and she probably wears mommy jeans.

Do they look like any moms you know? I didn't think so.

First, let’s talk about why women stop working full-time. I can speak for myself here. I wasn’t given any flexibility, I spent much of my time wondering why I was leaving my  kids all day for that  job, I wasn’t saving the world or curing infectious diseases, and I couldn’t reconcile how it was worth it. I was willing to risk “stepping out” and the financial security net that came with my  job, to try something else. Prior to making this decision, however, I fell into a camp that said I couldn’t afford it. Ultimately what I realized was that was an excuse, not necessarily the entire truth. For several years, I wasn’t willing to give up a lifestyle, I was afraid of how I would fill my time, I was worried about  my identity if I didn’t have the job. And until I was ready, I wasn’t sure I WANTED to be home. But it’s much easier to hide behind a financial reason than to tick off the list of what worries you. I wish more people would state the real reasons instead of using “I can’t really afford it” because many of us can afford it if we’re willing to make those tough decisions and I find it’s more helpful and constructive when I’m exploring my options when I’m honest with myself and my friends about my reasons.

So, now that the decision to stay home has been made, I’ve come to realize that the reasons why women stop working are never quite as simple as she wants to be home with her kids. I suspect the same is true for dads who stay home. The reasons are oversimplified in the media and in our quick labeling. But really, I think it’s a complicated and fascinating and important mix of factors: expense of childcare especially when you have more than one kid, career ennui (sweet scrabble word, right?), workplace that isn’t accommodating to the time demands that come with raising young children or seeking a different path in life. I think it would benefit all of us if we spent more time exploring the reasons WHY instead of just the sweeping generalization that career-focused and educated women are “opting out.” The WHY is the story and understanding the WHY might actually help impact some change in the workplace.

Which brings me to point number two – the digital mom – a woman who is likely seeking a different path in life. I was not surprised at all when I stumbled upon this Parenting article on today’s “SAHM”  digital mom. Turns out many of these women are a growing mass in our country, a small army of 10.1 million women-owned businesses. Our preschool parking lot is crowded with these entrepreneurs. They are starting their own catering companies, their own party planning businesses, their own PR freelancing shops, their own at-home daycares, their own blogs that generate some income. These women are working and many of them are doing it without hiring babysitters and nannies. These woman are also volunteering for school boards and working in classrooms helping teachers and planning school functions. All of this might be a far cry from steady paychecks, healthcare benefits and 401k contributions, but these women inspire me. They are starting new careers, they are forging new paths and the message they are sending their children is not one of opting out and forgoing their education and experience to make brownies. They are teaching their children that there are many ways to earn money, to gain experience and to work. Just like the leap of faith we take in getting married or having kids, opting out of a secure career and paycheck, is nothing if not a leap of faith.

And I believe it’s technology, smart phones, the internet, social media and the blogosphere that is helping these women forge new paths in life.

Forging the new path isn’t necessarily easy or obvious when you stop working, however. Personally I have slowly stumbled upon my new path. I certainly didn’t leave my job with a plan. Earlier this week Samantha Ettus from Forbes sent me a link to her recent post on this subject and I think she hit on one fundamental challenge facing many women: keeping in touch with your contacts when you do quit work. The reality is when you have very young children, it’s difficult to find time to do anything but care for them. But suddenly the  months blend together into years and the baby is off to preschool and kindergarten and we have more…TIME.  The very thing that was so  scarce for so many years is suddenly accessible. So keeping our relationships going through those foggy baby years really is critical to the “NOW WHAT” dilemma so many women face when the kids are suddenly in school and there’s time to be part of that 10.1 million women who are small-business owners and entrepreneurs. For me, it’s been as simple as keeping up with people on Facebook, occasional emails, holiday cards, coffee or happy hour mixed in – the trick has been just not going dark.

In the end, I think no matter what decision we make – whether it’s to remain working full-time, to cut back on our hours, or to walk away and figure out the “now what” later – I will at least keep telling myself that nothing is final, my  needs and my kids needs continue to change with time, and if you believe in your decision and the consequences of your decision, then you will enjoy parenthood and your days so much more. The grass is really only ever greener when you’re not confident in what you’re doing.

“There’s no such thing as work-life balance,” Mr. Welch told the Society for Human Resource Management’s Conference a few years ago. “There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.”

“Once you get off the escalator, you don’t get back on,” said my investor relations professor in graduate school, to a room filled with 20-something women who were eager to achieve career success and planned on eventually having children. We all looked nervously at each other after hearing what this woman, a wildly successfully IR PR professional for a Fortune 500 company, a Northwestern University graduate school professor and mother, had to say to us so very bluntly. Could she be right, we all worried?

Each of these statements are harsh, unforgiving, blunt and brutal. But are they wrong? Among the world of Type A, educated, successful, intelligent women, in this eternal quest for “balance” and “juggling” – are we creating expectations that just aren’t realistic?

Please tell me that this isn't what I look like handling my life

Balance implies equal parts, right? Juggling, well aside from the fact that creepy circus clowns are the only people who actually juggle, isn’t the idea of juggling meant to be fun? You’ve mastered a sport, you are having fun, you are showing off your talents. Do any of these things sound remotely like what it is like to have a career and a family?

Not in my experience.

Welch might hail from an 80s-era business philosophy of good-old boys and face-time in the office, things that we are slowly chipping away at with time and technology but is his statement actually antiquated and incorrect? I don’t think so. We individually decided to have children knowing that it would change our lives forever and dramatically. And from my almost 6 years in, the biggest consequence is not the lack of sleep, the unwanted lines appearing on my face, the amount of time I’ve spent cleaning hynies or even having to say that word, or wasted hours watching the same “Backyardigans” episode on repeat. The biggest consequence is the fundamental change in my career.

But I don’t view it as a permanent one or that I’ve been victimized in the work place. I actually disagree with my grad school professor that once you get off the escalator you can’t get back on. But it would be naive for me to think I’d get back on in the same spot and continue on the same path. The thing is, if I wanted that, I wouldn’t have stepped off.

Ultimately, we can “mommy track” ourselves and have more time to see our kids after school, take them to playdates, get them to the doctors when they are sick, volunteer in class and all these other things that happen during the business day. What I don’t understand is why this is viewed as a bad thing instead of the reality of choosing to create more time for our kids, to the detriment of our career.

Or, we can remain on the upward trajectory of high-achieving business success, the kind that shatters glass ceilings. And in making that choice, we know that someone else will spend more time raising our children than we are. But that is our decision. I guess what I’m saying is I don’t disagree with Welch and I don’t disagree with Judge Preska. Ask someone without children how they feel about working parents getting promoted above them if the working parent spends fewer hours in the office, travels less, and comes in late more?  Those people don’t care about our reasons because we decided to have the family.

Doesn't she look confident and in charge?

The good news is I think that we don’t need to be making final and ultimate decisions right now. I think the work place has evolved into an arena where you can stay in the game, take on less, but in time, ramp back up. I think that instead of spending our time on this eternal quest for the shangri-la of motherhood, the ultimate in work-life balance, we need to do what we talked about a few weeks ago -see the whole picture – see that there are ebbs and flows to life and own our decisions, be proud of them, and be at peace with the consequences of them. So may of us have periods of work intensity but perhaps it can follow with a period that is more family focused, we can get promoted but then maybe we want to remain at that level for longer than our pre-children selves imagined we would. We can try to stay home, realize we don’t like it, and return to work with more vigor and dedication than we had before but with a peace of mind that we are proud of this decision because we’ve tried the other way. We step off the escalator and let our future selves worry about how and when we get back on, knowing the financial implications this brings to our household.

I firmly believe that what makes you “supermom” is owning your decision, recognizing the consequences and accepting the reality that you can’t give it all to both. “Balance” is for the birds, as my mom would say. Own it, be realistic about the consequences, realize life constantly changes and be proud of it.

OK, so Pew Research announced some results back in 2008 that really disturbed me.  Here’s the cliff-notes version: When asked to self-score themselves as parents, on a scale of 1-10, a mere 28 percent of full-time working moms gave themselves a score of 9 or 10. 41 percent of part-time working moms gave themselves a 9 or 10 and 43 percent of at-home moms gave themselves a 9 or 10.

Why all the self-flagellation people? What good does that do anyone? Sure, I don’t know the full questions asked but let’s just presuppose the question was “Are you an awesome mom?” Why did almost 60% of part-time or at-home moms and almost 80% of full-time working moms declare themselves as NOT awesome?

What good is that doing anyone?

This is what I think an issue is – not the “mommy wars” (remember we are all totally bad talking about you if you go around trashing working or at-home moms). Why are mothers so damn hard on themselves? And let’s stop using cultural influences as crutches here – Oh, it’s my Catholic guilt, oh, it’s my Jewish mother guilt.

Please…as my dad would say…don’t buy a ticket on that bus.

In a moment of brutal honesty, I will tell you that I have plenty of nights where I lay there and seriously worry – was I too distracted today, should I have done that puzzle with her again, did I leave the TV on for too long, did I bark at them too many times – and on and on and on. This isn’t good. We could drive ourselves insane reflecting on and doubting every decision we make all day long while the sweet cherubs have visions of Popsicles and pizza and Halloween costumes dancing through their heads all night long.  And then roll yourself over when you are laying there fretting about the small stuff – what is your husband doing?

You think he's up all night worrying?

I thought so. Not a care in the world for old snore face.

So again – why the self-flagellation people? Why this quest for perfection? Why this insistence that we focus on all the areas that we fall short in the day instead of what we did that was super fun and awesome? How about all the stories you read for the 150th time, the lunches you lovingly packed, the 8th load of laundry you folded, the sweet frozen Trader Joes dinner you heated up? Why isn’t that all good enough?

I think that the quest for parenting perfection is laden with abuse, doubt and ultimately makes us worse parents, not better, because these kids can smell fear and insecurity and they know how to use it. It also enables you to be afraid of your kids because you are so worried about doing something wrong. Everyone responds better to confidence, kids, bosses and husbands included. Right? Am I Oprah or what?

I also think when we are riddled with doubt, we aren’t doing a good job of setting boundaries for ourselves.  So many women lack the confidence to say “No” when someone asks them to do something and the more we agree to other things, the more it chips away at the time we have for what’s making us insecure – which is most likely to be our work or our children. I’m a big believer in setting boundaries and not attaching guilt or doubt to them. Do I really need to volunteer on another committee at school? Do I actually need to attend that work event this week or won’t it go on just fine without me so I can get home and see my kids? Draw the lines and proudly stand by them, I say.

And so, in my quest to ban all mommy guilt and mommy wars from our dialogue, I challenge you to give yourselves 9s and 10s the next time Pew comes a calling. Instead of getting all tangled up in our short-comings, let’s realize we all have them, and instead be proud of the kids and how great they are turning out.  Tune in tomorrow for more totally fabulous work-life discussions and a little less Oprah.  In the mean time, what do you think? Would you have given yourself a score of 9 or 10? Are we too hard on ourselves?

1. Mommy Guilt is stupid and I hereby ban it. I ban you from this blog if you don’t agree to it.

Can we declare this idea dead now, people?

More on this all week but again, I ban you from my blog if you don’t agree to it. And we’ll all totally talk about you (not even behind your back) if you don’t agree to it.

3. There are so many reasons I am certain the “mommy wars” are dead but one is because I think we are all, instead, Digital Moms. It isn’t so much about working moms vs. at-home moms as it is how technology  is changing our relationship with  motherhood and with how and where we work.  Also, technology is dramatically impacting how we parent (both with giving our kids access to it – and making sure we aren’t on our stupid phones too much when we are meant to be spending time with our children.) There is no road map for the impact of technology on modern parenting – there are no long-term studies on how kids learn from using the iPad instead of pen and paper. There is no decade long research on quality time with kids when we are constantly interrupted by our phones. And it is technology that is transforming the space where old-fashioned stay-at-home moms are becoming obsolete. Technology has invaded our home life in such a way that for so many, an office is obsolete, and we work from home. In our yoga pants. And pick up our kids from school. We are digital. Our lives our digital. So even having this debate about the mommy wars is antiquated because who are these people who work exclusively 9-5 in an office (instead of in the office, in the car, during soccer practice, later at night when the kids are asleep) and who are these moms who stay home and “do nothing”? Technology bleeds between the lines of these once clearly-defined spaces rendering such labels as “working mom” and “stay-at-home”  mom meaningless, in my opinion.

Now that we’ve gotten our housekeeping items straightened out – here’s what we’ll talk about this week and I’d love to hear more from you because it was your comments and emails to me that have inspired me to keep digging into this topic of work-life choices and the obsolete “mommy wars.”

1. It’s not the mommy wars, it’s looking in the mirror and unfairly beating ourselves up.  So many guilt-ridden comments from moms questioning their choices between work and home life prompted me to dig a little deeper. These self-criticisms strike so deep and undercut the confidence of so many moms and unnecessarily, I think. I think we are far too hard on ourselves. So, I did some research and located a Pew research study. The results show that working moms rate themselves far lower as parents (only 28% ranked themselves 9 or 10 as parents on a scale of 10) than do part-time moms or at-home moms (over 40% rated themselves 9 or 10). These results are really upsetting. I want to talk about how we need to spend less time on this quest for balance and perfection and more time owning our choices and being proud of our decisions – it’s called life and imperfection – why are we so afraid to accept that?

2. The mommy track and sacrifices between work and family. The August decision by Judge Loretta Preska to dismiss the Bloomberg case involving discrimination against pregnant and working moms is the most current blow to the quest for work-life flexibility.  The female judge’s harsh words indicating that working moms should not be treated differently than anyone else certainly set a ripple affect through the blogosphere and chills down many working mom’s spines. Here’s what she said if you didn’t read it last month: “The law does not mandate work-life balance,” nor does it “require companies to ignore and stop valuing ultimate dedication, however unhealthy that may be for family life.”  Harsh but is it brutally honest? What I’d like to explore is not the woe-is-me victim angle of the struggles and demands of parenthood. But instead – are we realistic in what we want – do we honestly ask ourselves if we want to climb the ladder or are we willing to compromise our success at work for more time at home – or vice versa – sacrifice time with our kids to instead move-up professionally? Does anyone really believe they can “have it all” with work and family?  Do we realistically approach the reality that having children impacts a career or alternately, having a powerful career impacts our time spent raising our kids? Do we, as new moms, set ourselves up for disappointment?

3. Why women choose to quit their jobs, how no one really is a simple “at-home mom” anymore and the fear of “Now what?” when the youngest starts elementary school. I found some research that proves my suspicion that the June Cleaver at-home mom of yester-year really is extinct. Today’s digital at-home mom is one of 10.1 million women-owned businesses. She’s freelancing, she’s volunteering on boards and at schools.  The at-home mom is no-more. Turns out she’s really busy and probably earning money during nap time. I’d call that work.

4. And if we have time before the week is up….the myth of “free” time, the increasing role of dads in keeping the house and family schedule going (apparently, to the detriment of  their precious testosterone levels) and do we have realistic expectations of our limited free time when we have kids or are we complainers? Husbands included in this one.

This ought to keep us pretty busy all week.  As much as I love to hog all the time and attention, I really hope you’ll chime in.

Q: Tell us how long you have been in business for yourself?

Sure, I started seeing my own clients in 2004. I hired my first assistant designer in 2007 and by last summer, I had 3 people working for me as independent contractors. My operations manager is actually my sister. I always knew that I wanted to be in business for myself, well before I had children I knew this, and before I had the kids I really  had time to ramp up and work 24/7 on building my business. I was eager to work for myself but I knew I wanted to have a career that would allow me to see my kids right after school.

Q: We’ve been talking here on WM a lot about “balancing” work and family life and so, tell us how you, as the owner of your own business, manage to draw the line and really separate your work from your home life and give each one of them time?

It is so hard. Working for yourself, you get all the good and all the bad. It is very easy to get sucked in and believe that someone’s living room is a life or death emergency but with kids, I’ve had to learn to draw the line in the sand and keep the perspective that I have to set boundaries and stick to them. I worked out of my house at first when I had my first daughter and that worked out fine until she was almost 2. Then she was very aware of me being home, I practically had to sneak to use the powder room so she wouldn’t see me and I always worried that clients could hear a toddler in the background of phone calls. Now I have my own separate office space in Georgetown and I take Fridays off as my day to be at-home.

Q: I’ve found that it’s very difficult to stick to a shorter work schedule, that it takes a lot of confidence to say “no” to people and really stick to the plan of only working your set days of the week. Do you experience this and how do you handle it?

Definitely. Initially I worried that it took away the legitimacy of my business to work a shorter week. I would have my assistant handle calls because I didn’t want people to know I was home with the kids. I really was insecure about it but I kept banging myself on the head and reminding myself that this is my business and I can do whatever I want! Where I would then get tripped up was figuring out what it is that I wanted – did I want a bigger office, bigger staff or did I want to be home more? The reality is that you can put as much into it as you want but if you do good work, then you can take time off during the week and people will respect it. In my path to discovering that and believing in that, I blew plenty of nap times on conference calls and struggled with pulling myself away from work. I also worried when I saw my team, who didn’t have children, coming in earlier than me and staying later than me. But again, you realize that you put this stuff on yourself and we don’t need to put so much pressure on ourselves to be perfect and do it all.

Q: OK. I could talk to you about working and home life all day long. But we are here to also talk about what might be the end of me: playrooms. And why I want to set a Pottery Barn Kids catalog on fire after reading it. It makes me feel so inadequate in every way. How does one have a playroom that looks like a magazine?  

Note Liz's use of bookshelves with closed doors to hide kid toys and splash of color. Photo Credit: Angie Seckinger Photography www.angieseckinger.com

Well first, there were probably 20 stylists without any children in sight who made those playrooms look like they do in the magazine. And the problem is that we all have more toys and more stuff than we do storage. I have a small townhouse and my daughter’s room is also part playroom. The truth is we all need to purge and store. Head to the Container Store and purchase some bins that fit under a bed, I use those for storing art supplies, plastic food, and then use baskets for blocks and puzzles. Initially we had bins in the living room but we learned that the kids don’t play with  half the stuff in the bins because they can’t reach that far into the basket. Storing the toys also helps because when they haven’t seen them in a while, they will actually want to play with them. Organizers often tell clients to have more storage space than you do stuff – and this really applies to children’s playrooms. Learn to think of yourself as a toy collector and reality is that you will be adding to your collection over time. So if you purchase storage pieces that have space for more things, you will have space for them as your collection grows. The other thing I am discovering and reminding myself is that kids don’t need a room full of stuff all the time. Less is more.

Q: I love this idea of thinking of ourselves as toy collectors. Great advice! So how about colors – are there trends in color for kids playrooms – any popular colors?

I don’t really think there are trends for colors in kids rooms but I encourage my clients to look for inspiration pieces when decorating a room. One playroom I did for a client who had 2 sons was midnight blue and white with red accents. We used navy window treatments and painted a blackboard wall. It was a really cute room but it also didn’t look like a romper room. I had a catch-all room at my house where I used a graphic poster as my jumping off point and accented the room with red-white wallpaper and a red desk. The trick when doing these rooms is more about the appropriate storage. I once had a client who added a built-in window seat with a lid that opened up and they added 4 dividers inside. This was a great idea for the kids play room but then they learned the only issue was the depth – again -  like those large bins I used to have in my living room – the kids couldn’t easily reach all the way inside. So that is something to consider as you are trying to figure out storage and kids rooms.

The dining room chairs...vinyl.... Photo Credit: Angie Seckinger Photography www.angieseckinger.com

Q: More excellent advice and I know I regularly fall victim to thinking something is a great storage piece and then realizing it is way too deep for my little 2-year-old’s arms to reach inside. Let’s move on to talk about fabrics when decorating with kids. Any advice?

Sure. Obviously you want to look for stain resistant materials like ultra suede or leather. I often use nano-tex technology   to treat material on furniture for homes with kids or pets to really keep it stain resistant. Outdoor fabrics are now softer and I like to use them as well. I have a chair in my living room with outdoor fabric on it. Another cool way to go is vinylizing fabric. It will give it a really funky look, like vinylizing a banquette seat in a pretty bold pattern and then it wipes off easily. I saw it once in an Elle Decor magazine and thought it looked great. Since seeing it, I’ve done it for a client.

Q: Ohh – I love that idea and would have never thought of it myself. I can see how that can be funky and certainly kind of retro. How about carpets?

Dark carpets are a great way to go with children because you really can’t see anything on them. There is a company called Fiber Seal and they will come treat your carpet for you, it’s not toxic and it should last about 18 months. I put a cream carpet by my front door and used Fiber Seal on it and it really works beautifully.  You don’t have to be in the trade to use them.

Awesome advice from Liz Levin today. I really appreciated her insights not only in running a successful business while also spending time with her kids, but on how to think of ourselves as toy collectors and manage the chaos with style! For more design tips, here’s a link to 10 tips from Liz Levin featured on HGTV. Be on the lookout for more expert topics from the amazing moms living around us here in DC, and be sure to “Like” the Wired Momma FB page or subscribe to the RSS feed to easily keep up with my shenanigans and rants.

What does that mean, I used to wonder. I would stare at my baby wrapped like a burrito and swear with each passing minute that I would never again sleep uninterrupted. I wouldn’t shower with ease. I wouldn’t know what an impromptu night out on the town would mean. I would be trapped by this small cute blob that basically always needed something but didn’t give much back.

“Oh, she’s so adorable. Enjoy it now! It doesn’t last…”

I know, I know, I would snark in my head thinking of cruel things to bark back at this well-intentioned stranger….I  know….they grow up so fast. They all do except  mine, who won’t sleep and really fusses at inconvenient times.

I hated that cliché. I hated it as much as I hated “Sleep when the baby sleeps”

You know why I hated that one? Because I TRIED but she didn’t sleep LONG ENOUGH….where could I get the kid who slept when mommy slept? Why didn’t someone put that one on the menu? Aren’t they supposed to obey and respect their mother’s wishes?

But then came Monday. When my sweet smiling baby went from this:

Will she really ever grow up?

to this:

I never agreed to this happening so fast

In the blink of an eye.

I swear it was like someone pressed the fast-forward button times 5 and there went my sweet girl, proudly wearing the fall 2011 kindergarten accessory, the pinned on name tag identifying her name, her teacher and the color of her bus. With barely a glance back, she boarded that school bus and was off.

I totally cried behind my sunglasses, cursing that stupid cliché for being as right as it is annoying.  And then what did I do? It was like I was out to torture myself on Monday. I should have just gotten out a knife and taken up cutting.

On Saturday, pre-over-hyped (though we did lose our power) Irene, we went out and purchased a full size bed for our 2.5 year-old. I noticed her in the crib last week and realized how ridiculous it was that she was still being imprisoned. So big girl bed delivery was scheduled for Tuesday.  So what made more sense than to head to Babies’R'Us on Monday and purchase a side rail for the big girl bed.

Does that make sense to you? If it does, then you probably haven’t been in that store in a few years, like I hadn’t.

Immediately after crossing the threshold, I was drowned and suffocated by sweet baby smell, small cute baby onesies, little tiny size N diapers, cute little Halloween costumes….and there I was to purchase something to render my  home cribless…..a mere 24 hours after my oldest started Kindergarten…..the extra small baby things were mocking me. They were cooing and giggling and smelling good….

Could I get pregnant just standing there, I wondered? How could I not realize that going from Kindergarten to Cribless in the same week is just too much for a gal to take? What will the nursery look like without the beaver-chewed up sides of the wooden crib anchoring the room?

How did this happen?

(Friends…don’t forget to “Like” Wired Momma on FB to keep up with my rants and raves…I usually am not so emotional!)