I spend a great deal of my life trying to motivate other people to do things.  Whether it’s asking my children to pick up their rooms or encouraging writers to meet deadlines, I’m often relying on other people to do their part to make my day go smoothly.  Such is life when no man (or woman) is an island, I suppose; even the most resourceful and self reliant among us must learn how to inspire action in someone else at some point.

The question is not if we’ll have to motivate others, but how we’ll choose to do it.  Specifically, will we rely on negative or positive reinforcement?

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The summer break is over, our children are home from vacation, and the family is officially back into the routine of a dual income household with two school aged children.

Like most families, we do what we have to do to get everything done.  My husband and I rely on organizational systems that make sense for us, make compromises about what hast to get done and what can wait for another day, and practice a whole lot of cooperation in order to keep everything spinning.

You know what we don’t do?

Talk.

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Even though we are not legally married, my partner and I often refer to each other as husband or wife.  We never correct new friends or co-workers when they assume that a couple with a child and a mortgage payment would be a legally married couple.  For all intentions and purposes, we are married.  We just chose to not get legally married. 

As a career woman, those who assume that we are married don’t think twice about me having my “maiden name.”  And that’s okay.  I don’t mind when people assume we are married.  I don’t mind being called a wife.  I love Neville as a wife loves her husband. 

But there is one part of this whole “married, but unmarried” lifestyle that I never considered. What will I choose to be called as a mother?

Our son has his father’s last name just as I have my father’s last name.   But since Neville and I aren’t married, I wonder what I am supposed to be called?

Am I Ms. Roark? Miss Roark?  Mrs. Roark?  Mrs. <insert Neville’s last name here>?
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Hello my gorgeous, awesome, and totally put-together Full Time, All the Time readers.  It’s been a while hasn’t it?  I hope you haven’t forgotten about me while the fabulous Miss Britt held down the fort here.  I’ve been on an unexpected blogging hiatus.  I wish that I had witty reasons for my short-term leave of absence, but the truth is that life smacked in the face.  Then the gut.  Then push me down and kicked me some more.

In other words, I suffered through my first Summer Break as a working mom. Then right when I felt like I was getting it all in control, life sucker-punched me in the face with Kindergarten.

When my son finished preschool in June, we decided (and by “we” I mean, I thought I had the best idea ever) to let our son have a real summer.  We spent lots of time at the pool.  I spent countless hours shuttling between home and a morning-only summer camp.  We played outside with our neighbors.  Saw nearly every PG or G movie in the theaters. And my son finally found bravery to ride his bike without training wheels.  It was fantastic.

I also spent hours upon hours working late into the night to make up for the lost hours during the day. 
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I spent last weekend at a blogging conference in Chicago.  Although the conference was targeted primarily towards female bloggers, I had the honor of moderating a panel of three male bloggers, two of whom were also dads.

Although they were there to talk about blogging, it was something they said about parenting that I want to share with you.

Dads want to be parents, too.

Scratch that.

Dads are parents.

And they consider it just as much a responsibility and a job as mothers do.

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Maybe it’s because I was basically raised by a single mother.

Or maybe it’s just because I have a more dominant personality than my husband.

Whatever the reason, I’ve come to realize that I tend to think of my two children as my kids first, our kids second, and his kids when I am blaming their forgetfulness on his genes.

When it comes to making decisions about discipline, I am the long arm of the law in my house and I have final say on how poor behavior will be handled.  By the same token, when a child is sick or summer vacation leaves me with a 9 year old who needs child care during the day, it’s my job to figure out how to adjust work schedules and make new arrangements.

I’m not saying it’s fair - I’m just acknowledging that it’s how it is.

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I recently had the conversation with my boss about potentially going part-time.  With my son starting kindergarten in August, I’ve felt the overwhelming need to be at home.  It surely isn’t a desire to be a SAHM; I love and I need to work.  But there’s been this all-consuming feeling that I need to be home at least part-time. 

There are two people on our team that work part-time, so I know that my boss is open to the idea.  In fact, she herself has worked part-time in the past.  After the birth of her first daughter, she came back from maternity leave working three days a week and slowly moved back up to full-time.  She understands the need to work less hours.  But she also offered a very strong opinion on what it would do to my career.

Essentially, if I went part-time I would be giving up any and all opportunities to advance. 

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Gruff, unreasonable, and known to once make a co-worker cry, my spouse has been trying to make changes in his demeanor.  He knows the way he acts could possibly get in the way of future advancement. In the past year, he’s become a very different guy.  He’s made friends with co-workers (we’ve even invited a few over for dinner), goes to a monthly poker night, and has softened his tough-guy image. 

Except in one arena: he hates going out to lunch with his co-workers.  His team goes out to lunch as one big group about every two weeks.  They pick a fancier restaurant than my spouse is comfortable with and tend to rack up a big bill that often includes alcohol.  At the end of the meal, each person is expected to split the bill equally regardless of whether they ordered only a small plate or had three martinis plus an appetizer. 

My penny-pinching partner is practically having bleeding ulcers over paying 30 bucks for a lunch that he didn’t really enjoy. 

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I’m planning our summer vacation.  It’s nothing fancy – a trip to the South to see my Grandmother.  One week of hanging out in extreme humidity, eating her home-grown tomatoes, and drinking glass after glass of sweet tea.  To say I’m looking forward to it is an understatement.

Only one problem: my spouse can’t get the time off.  It’s not month-end close or end of year craziness.  It’s not that he doesn’t have the time off.  It’s because at his company people just don’t take vacation.  Like ever. At his company, it’s acceptable to take a day here or a long weekend there.  But an entire week off?  Practically unheard of.

My spouse isn’t alone.  In a study by Orbitz, the online travel company, one-third of respondents said they took five or fewer days of vacation in the past year. One in four said they felt their bosses did not encourage them to take vacations, and one in three said they stayed connected with their office via phone or computer while on holiday.

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I had to take a morning off this week to register my son for Kindergarten.  A month ago, I had to take an afternoon off to get the last of the immunizations required to register him for Kindergarten.  Two months ago I had to wake up at 5am to stand in line to get an appointment to register him for Kindergarten.  Plus I spent a few more hours filling out form after form, getting original copies of all our bills for proof of residency, and checking then re-checking we had everything we needed to register him for local public school.

If Kindergarten is this complicated, then I’m never gonna survive college applications.
The last two months have been so stressful in our house.  I’ve got a pretty good grasp on our day-to-day operations.  As long as there isn’t any emergency or last-minute schedule change, I tend to do pretty good at balancing what I’m balancing.  But the amount of work that went into just getting ready to register my son for school nearly put me over the edge.

How I am ever going to make it through the school-age years working full-time?

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