My lips are dry and sore. I bite them because I’m nervous and on edge and just a wee bit stressed out lately and that makes them dry and then I bite them because they are dry. 

“Quit biting your lip,” I can hear my father saying as he’d tap my chin to remind me.

I’ve been traveling lately. Not a lot by some people’s standards, but I’ve spent more nights away from my house in the last three months than I have in the last three years, so.. yeah. 

I should say I’m torn about it. And while I hate the time away from my kids, I can’t help but love that it looks like I’m finally going to be doing different stuff at work. Fun stuff. Cool stuff.  Stuff where I can learn from smart people, make connections and branch into different responsibilities. 

It’s a risk too. I know I can learn a lot, but I’ve also been told that you “don’t make the same mistake twice.”  So, here’s hoping that when I screw up (and I will) that I only do it once.  No pressure or anything. 

This week when I was away, Cole got sick. Oh, how I hate that.  Craig had to battle a sick baby, taking him to the doctor, calling me to tell me it was an ear infection and I was four hours away.  When I came home, the little one barely let me out of his sight.  And Chessa? Well, when I picked her up at daycare, she ignored me. But after I got her home, when I walked out of the room to grab a drink, she sobbed. 

So, yeah. I’m torn. But I’m hoping we adjust. I’m hoping we find a way to make this work. I’m hoping that the opportunity is worth the risk. 

I’m hoping that after all the stress, all the flips and flops, all the tense moments and held breath that our luck is finally, finally starting to change.  But I’m still biting my lip.

With the first tentative sip to test the temperature, I stare at the computer screen.  My hands are wrapped around the heavy mug, the warmth from the cup just shy of burning my hands as the air from the space heater takes on the office. 

I think about the toddler who woke up at 4am and hope she’s not getting sick. I wonder what was up with Cole before I left – my normally happy baby was a wee bit cranky.

I stretch my neck left, then right, pressing my chin against an imaginary force.  

With a low breath, I push myself forward in my chair and open up my email.  I take another drink and visibly cringe at the number of new messages. 

With one hand I grasp the back of my neck and squeeze. Hard. I wonder how much sleep I got before Chessa landed in my bed.  Not enough. 

I sort my email by date, not sure whether to be discouraged or excited that only four of the new messages came in overnight.  The other unopened ones have been there a while. Gosh, I hope there’s nothing important in those messages. 

The temperature of the tea is now slightly less than scalding, so I take a longer drink now. 

I pick up my pen and notebook and pull out my post it pad. 

I have many to do lists.  One big one that stays in my notebook, full of scribbles, half thought out ideas.  From it, I make my daily to do list on a post it note.  These are things I have to accomplish in the next nine hours; meetings to schedule, brochures to write, fires to put out, phone calls to return, hoops to jump through. 

I’m seriously considering adding “puts out fires and jumps through hoops” to my resume. 

On the back of a receipt there’s a list of personal things I need to do.  Pay bills, buy socks for Chessa, tell the portrait studio I hated their pictures, finish up a freelance project, start another. 

I take another drink.  I turn off the space heater.  I tuck my hair behind my ears. 

It’s time. 

Time to start another work day. 

Linking up with Heather again!

Sometimes I love this space. Hard.

I love that I can connect with other mothers who I’d probably never cross paths with, stories I would never share, women I would never, otherwise know. 

I love that I can share stories about my kids, post pictures for family and friends. Pictures and moments that I can look back on that make me smile months and years later. 

I love that I can make you laugh, make you hold back tears, make you sigh because you can relate to a moment I describe.

I love that it gives me a place to talk about just how damn much l love those kids and being a mom.

I love that I can also whine about how those damn kids are making me crazy and how there are parts of motherhood that are kicking me right in the ass. 

But.

But sometimes I worry about this space and what it says about me.  That the glimpse I give you into one, albeit the largest, piece of my life might make someone think that that’s all there is. 

I try not to talk about work much. Mostly because I rather like having a paycheck. But also because it’s not appropriate or even that interesting. 

But once in a while, usually when things are “happening” in my professional life, I worry about a current or future boss or coworker would feel if (when) they come across this blog.

Will my rants about potty training and babies who don’t want to nap look like excessive whining?  (It’s not.)

Will my love letters to my kids make me look like I’ve lost my ambition for growth in the corporate world and make them wonder if I’m pining to be a stay at home mom?  (I’m not.)

Does being able to write a funny post about moments I fail at parenting translate to a person who can also develop strategy, plan logistics and write speeches for big wigs?  (I can.)

Does a click through to my Twitter feed send up a red flag that I spend entirely too much time on social media?   (Um….maybe.)

Thinking about those things makes me feel like I’m thinking too much about who is reading and less about the person writing.  And it also tends to make me a little quiet.

I’m trying to find a way to bring a little bit of that piece of me here. Because it’s important. Because it’s part of who I am.  I just haven’t completely figured that out yet. 

Am I crazy? Am I the only working mom who feels this way? 

Linking up with Shell!

Dear Chessa and Cole,

For the first time in eight weeks (Cole for the first time in your life) I left you all day long.  From 7:45 in the morning until 5:15 this afternoon, I turned your care and well being over to your Nauni and I went to work.  It was crushing for me.  There were tears in my eyes as I walked out the door, eternally grateful that when you, Chessa, started to protest about Daddy and I leaving at the same time, it was your father who stayed behind for a few minutes.  I think if I had seen you cry as I closed the door, I would have bolted back inside and back into my sweat pants.

The eight weeks I spent with both of you together was nothing short of wonderful. It was hard at times and exhausting every single day.  And there were some days I wanted nothing more than a hot cup of tea and mindless time in front of the television.  But being with you, getting to know you better, having more time for cuddling in our pjs, eating cookies and making wonderful memories out of ordinary moments was a gift that I will always remember.

For better or worse, I am a working momma.  You’ll hear me say many times in your life that I work to keep a roof over our heads, Pampers on your bottoms and food on the table.  And I do.  But I also hope that you’ll appreciate and understand that I work for more than that.  I work because I like it. I work because I’m good at it.  I work because I think it’s good for me.

And I think it’s good for you too.   Because if I feel like I am at my best as a person, I can be the best momma to the both of you.  I also happen to think that it’s good for you to spend time with people other than me all the time.  Like your grandparents, your father, the occasional friend of the family and eventually, a daycare or preschool.

Chessa, I hope that you will see me as a woman who works damn hard to get what she wants.  Someone who doesn’t take no for an answer very easily and someone who works best under pressure.  Someone who doesn’t let being a woman stop her from wanting, trying and succeeding.  Someone who has learned to hold her own in a boardroom.  Someone who doesn’t feel guilty about a new pair of shoes or spending a little too much on cute outfits for her babies because she worked to earn every penny she paid for them.  And I hope that you understand that you can do that too.   Whether you choose to or not is completely up to you.  But I want you to know that you can.  Your options are endless.

I know that the three or four hours I get with you each day are not enough.  I won’t kiss every boo-boo, feed you every meal, laugh at every silly thing you do or wipe away every tear.  But, I promise I will be at every baseball game you play and every recital in which you sing.  When you’re sick I will stay home and cuddle with you on the couch.  Chessa, I will let your daddy interrogate your first boyfriend and Cole, I will side eye the first girl that wins your heart.  When you have a bad day, I will blow off my meetings and bring you ice cream.

When you need me, I will be there for you.

When I’m not with you, I’m thinking of you.

Your pictures cover my walls.  Your faces smile back at me.  They calm me when the frustration of the job peaks.  They make my eyes fill with tears when I’m missing you a little too much.  They remind me of what it is that really matters.

You.  Both of you.

And doing the best that I can for you by spending forty hours a week in an office.

So. A book showed up at my house last week.  Hand delivered by our post woman who knocked at the door just at the beginning of naptime.  (I’ll forgive her this time. But remind me to put a note out there when the baby comes, ok?) This wasn’t just any book.  It was a text book.  A book that looks to be about 4,578 pages long.  A book titled “Advertising and Promotion: an Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective.”  Sounds enchanting, right?    

I guess this means I’m doing it.  I’m starting grad school next week.  After months of thinking about, wondering if I should, weighing the potential pros against the very real cons I’m going for my Master’s degree.  (and seriously, people, I don’t even know if that’s the right way to spell Master’s degree…. I clearly have work to do).  After the last few weeks where I looked for every sign in the world to tell me that it’s not too late to change my mind, after hanging up on a financial aid guy who was the fourth person to not answer my question and tried to direct me back to another website, after at least one near-sobbing phone call to my best friend because WHAT THE HELL AM I THINKING?  I’M WAY TOO OLD FOR THIS.  I’m doing it. 

Classes start next Monday.  It’s an online program through a major university and I have no idea what I’m in for.  Please send wine.  Oh, wait….  Chocolate.

I’ve never been particularly fond of the phrase, “if it’s meant to be, it will be”.  I’ve called it bullshit.  I’ve called that a cop out.  I’ve called that not fighting for what you want.  I always thought if you wanted something bad enough, you just found a way to get it. 

Then I grew up a little.  Lost things that I wanted really, really bad.  And then, I got more than I ever could have imagined.  Things I thought were lost, weren’t.  And everything worked out. 

I still don’t like that phrase.  But I will concede that life is about timing. 

Today, I need to remind myself of that.  I need to tell myself that my work life will work itself out at some point.  I need to not forget that starting a new job four months before giving birth may not have worked out well.  I need to embrace the downtime that I have right now and enjoy these last few months of quality time with my family of three.  I need to look forward to having a maternity leave that this time won’t include participating in conference calls and strategy sessions.  I need to hold out hope that once the maternity leave is over and I’m ready to feel passionate about work again, there will be work that I feel passionate about.

I don’t just work because I have to.  I do it because I’m good at it.  And I want to enjoy it again like I did a few months ago.  I want to be busy and involved and excited.  Whether that happens by staying where I’m at or looking for something new.  I need to believe that whatever is meant to be, will be. 

Even if I hate that phrase.

The upside (well not upside, but the thing that made it bearable and kept me from losing my mind) to my mother-in-law getting sick a few weeks ago was having the flexibility from my boss to work from home as needed.  The excited, if not naïve, Krista had visions of sleeping in until 6:30 (yes, that’s sleeping in), working on the couch in my sweats while C entertained herself with books and toys on the floor. I would be sending emails from my couch while chuckling at the opening of Regis and Kelly.  In my mind, I am just as productive at home as I was in the office.  And the not showering thing…well, that’s just a bonus. 

Wow, does reality suck. 

Here’s what working at home really looks like:

• Waking up at 5:30 anyway, because that’s the time I get up and sleeping in is as distant a memory as my disposable income and size 4 jeans. 
• Not getting anything productive done between 6:30 and 8:30 because almost one-year-olds want to be entertained.  And that laptop that Mommy is playing with?  Well that’s a whole lot more interesting than this tea pot, this mini piano or any of these books.  Who knew??! 
• Once the child does lie down, the wireless internet bombs.  20 minutes later, I’m connected, I’m online, I’m ready to work and then, the child throws her paci out of her crib and begins wailing. 
• As I open the door to retrieve the paci, the stench of a fresh dirty diaper slaps me in the face and for the first of many times, I find myself wishing I was at the office. 
• 10 minutes later, I’m back downstairs and have a good hour and a half to work and knock thing off of my to-do list.
• When she wakes, I put the laptop away (I’m not crazy enough to attempt working while she’s up twice in a four-hour period) and indulge in some cartoons and baby squeals.  But in the meantime, I miss a conference call because I’m not at my computer to have Outlook remind me.  Whoopsie. 
• Over lunch, I send an email to my boss to tell him I will be late for the 1:00 conference call if C isn’t down for a nap, because really, they don’t want me on this call with her in the background. 
• The one thing that goes my way is that the child gets tired early and I put her down at 12:55.  She happily plays in her crib and quietly falls asleep while I sit in on the conference call and try desperately to not fall asleep while discussing key performance indicators.  (Come on, you started snoring just reading that, right?!)
• However, C wakes up before the call ends and I watch her on the monitor and pray that she doesn’t start yelling loud enough for my coworkers to hear her through the phone. 
• Finally, my brother shows up to entertain the child while I retreat to my bedroom with Tylenol and my computer, rapidly throwing together a presentation that I have to give the next day.  However, I can hear her downstairs whining because she wants to go outside, so I stop working to go down and tell him to put sunscreen on her and give him toys she can take with her. 
• Back upstairs and on a roll with the presentation, the internet toys with me once again.  I consider throwing the computer out the window but wonder how I would explain that to IT and think better of it.  Instead, I call it a day, and go downstairs to my kid, little brother and to make dinner. 
• And, by make dinner, I mean order a pizza. 

Moral of the story – Children are distracting little buggers and “work at home” might only work if there’s not actually a child in the home.

I have a few rules for this blog. 

I don’t write about my family, outside of telling stories or showing my appreciation for them.  I know that as good as it would feel to open up this editor and pound out a post about a fight or an annoyance (like when Craig says he’s going to get up at 5:30AM and I spend an hour that I could be sleeping trying to wake him up… Oh, wait.  That doesn’t happen much anymore now that we have a baby alarm clock.)  I would inevitably regret posting it. 

I don’t use my child’s name.  I’m not sure where this started or if it will always continue this way.  I just sort of started using her initial.   

And, I don’t blog about work. Because?  Well, I’m not stupid. 

Except sometimes these rules get in the way of me sharing “me” with you.  Sometimes for months on end, you get sappy stories and funny pictures written at arms length because I can’t write about what’s going on in my 9-5 life.  I can’t write about upheavals that are happening at work.  Changes that have me wondering whether it’s time to make a career move.  Wondering if I have the stamina to undergo a second organizational change in 20-some months.  Wondering what I want to be when I grow up. 

I feel like I’m here, in this job, for a while yet.  And while the changes that have occurred have put me in a place where I’m far more uncertain about my job than I was three months ago, I still have a job.  I have a boss who is supportive and flexible and who constantly reminds me that my family comes first.  I still get to pay the mortgage, keep Pampers on C’s butt and wear cute shoes almost every day. 

If I’m honest, I feel a little lost at work.  But at the same time, I’m trying to embrace this new reality and enjoy the down time.  I’m thinking about working on my PR accreditation.  I’m grateful to get my nights and weekends back and not feel guilty for napping on weekends instead of working while the baby naps.  I’m beyond thrilled that I turned off work email on my phone and no longer feel like I have to check email at 8:00 at night. 

It’s still a work in  progress.  I still have moments where I search Monster and browse the newspapers.  (Anyone looking for a reasonably decent writer/marketer/PR professional with an affection for social media?  Anyone?) But I’m working on it. 

So, wish me luck.  I’m gonna need it. 

And if you work with me and you read this?  Well, you understand.

My poor family.  Because of my chosen career path they often get strong armed, guilted, persuaded into attending events that I’m planning.  In fact, Craig and I met at one of these very events just over eight years ago.  Remind me to tell you how he brought a girl to what I thought might have been our first date, mmkay? 

But that’s beside the point.

Over the years, my friends, parents, husband and in-laws have attended and been volunteered for all star football games, dances, craft fairs, golf tournaments and silent auctions. When I left my last job, they probably all did a happy dance thinking that their days of showing up for events they had no interest in were behind them.  But not so.  Turns out, I sort of missed event planning.  So I used my corporate marketing hat last year to pitch an employee-based 5K that would raise money for charity. 

And, once again, my parents and in-laws found themselves volunteering, Craig signed up his football players for service hours and I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off the morning of the run.  There’s something about that excitement the day of the event.  There’s a nervous feeling hoping that the weather holds out.  My mind spins, running through my lists of things to do, wondering what I missed.  And I hear “ka-ching, ka-ching” every time a car pulls in the driveway.  I love it. 

This year, the best part was not the couple thousand dollars we raised or the more than 150 people that showed up.  ::Fist bump to all the people that helped me pull this off::  No.  Instead it was looking out into the crowd and seeing this: 

Because with my mom and dad, my husband and my mother-in-law was my little girl. Smiling, giggling and acting shy when friends and coworkers tried to talk to her.   And it was the happiest I’ve ever been to see familiar faces in the audience.  I’ma working mom.  It’s who I am.  But seeing the face that I’m working for, having her be a (small) part of my “work day” made it so much better.  I know she won’t remember this, but I will.

Today this working mother thing is not working out.  I have IMs flashing at me from coworkers who want to know why their projects aren’t complete and missed phone calls from other staff members who have questions or problems to be addressed.  I chose to ask for forgiveness not permission this morning and forgiveness did not come easy.  But, I am picking my battles today.

My vow to not work on weekends has led to deadlines that are so far passed they’re wearing high tops and scrunchies.  I feel overwhelmed looking at my to do list. There is not enough of me to go around.  I am treading water today.

Or I was until someone scheduled a meeting that will put me home after C should have been fed and halfway to bed.  I don’t want to go to the meeting and miss half of the two hours I get with her a night.  And instead of handling it like a grown up or sucking it up and doing it anyway, I fight back tears and pray that no one walks in my office. Thus becoming the working mother I never wanted to be. 

So, someone tell me.  Drinking at lunch?  Surely it has saved someone’s sanity, right?