I’ll just come out and say it:

We rarely eat dinner together as a family.

Our daughter is three and a half and she goes to sleep at 7pm. She eats dinner around 5:30-6 — either with me or the sitter, depending on the day. If I eat with her, I’ll snack on something — but it’s too early for me to eat a full dinner and my husband isn’t home yet at that point.

My husband and I eat dinner together, but it’s often in front of the TV. We both work hard and this is our only time to unwind. I know we should be sitting at the nice dinner table, savoring our food, and discussing our day, but 70% of the time we’re too wound up for that. Read the rest of this entry »

Here I am, writing this post while sitting on the couch next to my husband, during our daughter’s nap time, “relaxing” together and catching up on Project Runway episodes we missed. I have a great excuse for why my laptop is here: If I get a bunch of work done now, I can spend the afternoon with my husband and daughter, playing outside in the snow. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that the laptop is literally between me and my husband right now.

I’m a technology entrepreneur and technology — cell phone, laptop, phone — is a huge part of my daily life. I literally could not do my job if it didn’t exist. My husband is also in tech and his job requires that he work on the computer and carry a Blackberry, which also functions as a phone. Our kitchen counter at times looks like a gadget store, with both of our laptops, phones, and Blackberries laid out on it. Sometimes this makes me laugh, sometimes it makes me want to throw it all away.

But I’d be a total lier if I said that I use technology just for my work. Read the rest of this entry »

This past weekend something really fun happened–without any prior plans we got together with new friends for a playdate at our house. We’d just met them at our daughter’s ballet class, where their daughter also goes, and after talking for a while realized that A. our kids liked each other and B. we liked each other. So we decided to have an impromptu playdate.

It was great–no pressure to have a clean house or put out a spread to feed everyone. The girls had some quick-to-make pasta, the adults opened up a bag of trail mix and quickly cut up some cheese and bread. No activities were planned and we didn’t stock up on arts and crafts supplies, which meant that the girls just… well, played. I think everyone had a great time. (It was the opposite type of experience from what Trish wrote about recently.)

This got me thinking: Being spontaneous is really something of a luxury for busy working moms. Read the rest of this entry »