The other day, I was sitting in a corner of my local community center’s lounge, trying to finish writing an article on deadline while my daughter was in her gymnastics class.

A mom and her daughter came in a few minutes after I’d settled myself into my work. She must have a child in the same gymnastics class as my daughter, because they’re there at the same time I am every week. And, every week, the same thing happens: She starts talking loudly, either to her older daughter or on her cell phone, while moving furniture around to create a space in which her daughter can do her homework. If there are books on the small table in the lounge, she dumps them on the floor with an exaggerated sigh, and then (loudly) tells her older daughter to start her homework. She glares at the two or three other people in the room if we look up from our books or our laptops. She goes through her daughter’s folder, reading comments from the teacher out loud and announcing each grade on each test.

Which made me think: There should really be a set of rules posted somewhere, for people who have to work in public.
Read the rest of this entry

For years now — decades, really — I’ve challenged myself to make the most of my money. The ability to stretch a dollar or pinch a penny can mean the difference between feeling like we “have” and feeling like we “have not” when it comes to things like groceries and birthday presents for preschoolers’ parties; being the breadwinner makes the process easier in some instances (I know exactly how much money is coming in and going out) and harder in others (I know exactly how much money is coming in and going on).

I’ve found that, for my family, the most straight-forward and simple money-saving tricks work but, at some point, “just spend less money” or “cut out the things you don’t use” isn’t helpful advice. How do you spend less money when you’re spending it on essentials, like childcare when you work full time? What if you can’t cut out cable because you need to have high-speed internet access for your job?
Read the rest of this entry

A good friend once told me that she thinks it’s hilarious that I write about work-life balance when I  have so little of it myself. I tell them that I really write about juggling work and life, my full-time career and full-on family, which means that when it comes to balance, I’m the fulcrum on which it rests, not the one who actually achieves it.

But still, she’s right. And now that my primary office is inside my own house, the scales have tipped way over to the work side of things. Which means that I need to do a better job of going from “work mode” to “home mode.”
Read the rest of this entry

A recent study of 1,364 new mothers found that, over the course of about a decade, the moms who worked at least part time were healthier and happier than those who decided to stay home with their kids — especially when their kids were very young.

It sounds like the latest battle in the ongoing Mommy Wars, but it doesn’t have to be. The health benefits, the happiness… I think it all boils down to whether you’re doing what you really want to be doing.
Read the rest of this entry

I’m supposed to be on vacation this week but, as usually, I have once again discovered that I don’t know how to unwind. Even when I’m not at work, I rarely feel like I can just sit still and be; there are people to see and chores to do and the house to (fake) clean and kids to feed/amuse/maintain. And, after a while, I feel like a wind-up toy that’s stuck in the “on” position, gears rapidly working toward burnout.

The problem is that, with so much on our to-do lists all the time, we working moms have conditioned ourselves to believe that really taking care of ourselves is selfish, or at least not that important. When we do it, we justify it, almost as if we feel guilty about it: We “deserve” time to ourselves, we need to “make time” to exercise. Or, at least, I do.

And it turns out that I’m not alone.
Read the rest of this entry

Hi, my name is Lylah. And, in addition to being the Queen of Procrastination and the Empress of Clutter, I am a Control Freak.

This will come as no surprise to anyone who has spent more than an hour in my company.

It’s not that I need people to do exactly what I say when I say it (though, honestly? That’s kind of nice). It’s that I feel more secure when I know what’s going on, and I’m more likely to know what’s going on if I’m the one holding all (or most) of the cards.

Not realistic. Or healthy. And it only gets worse around the holidays.

Read the rest of this entry

Back in the day—that is, long before he and I were together—my husband was a vegetarian. So much so that when his first child was born, back in the early 1990s, he fed her soy butter and “not dogs” and lots of tofu.

By the time his youngest child was born, though, in the mid-2000s, he was letting the baby lick steak off of a fork at the dinner table. So when the kind folks at Tribe Hummus and Veggie Patch offered to let my family try a bunch of vegetarian goodies in honor of October being vegetarian awareness month, I thought that perhaps those long-dormant vegetarian tendencies might surface again.
Read the rest of this entry

Chris Brogan recently featured a brilliant post written by online marketing strategist Tommy Walker about the 106 excuses that prevent you from ever becoming great. It’s an eye-opening read, because I’ve heard myself say some of them time and again, but hadn’t really thought of the way I was undermining myself with my own words. Words like these:
Read the rest of this entry

We talk a lot about reining in our “to-do” lists. And one of my best motivation-boosters is my “have done” list. But while readjusting my cyber security levels on Facebook and elsewhere, I was struck by the idea of an “ignore” list. I use the option for trolls and unwelcome contacts online all the time. Why don’t I have one in real life?
Read the rest of this entry

“I Don’t Know How She Does It,” the movie based on the best-selling book about working moms and the juggle they face, hits theaters tomorrow. And while I identify with the character and disagree with the ending (of the book, at least), I don’t really feel like seeing the movie. I’m kind of tired of the whole premise: Woman determined to “have it all” faces burn-out or failure until she chooses one part of her life over the other.

People routinely ask me how I do it. “How do you work full-time with so many kids?” “How do you get back to work once the kids are in bed?” “How do you keep it all together?” I have a few answers:
Read the rest of this entry