When it comes to picking up extra work, I’ve gotten more finicky with age. I won’t work on anything for just anyone and whatever price, and although that makes it seem as thought the extra money is less important to me now than it was when I was twenty-two, it’s actually more important, it’s downright integral. The difference now is that there’s not just a cost to the client but a cost to myself, and it’s not always easy to balance that out.   
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Some days it sure feels like I’m trying to do it all myself, but even in my darkest woe-is-me hours, I know that I definitely, definitely am not. It would be hard to overlook the hands-on support of my does-more-than-his-fair-share husband, and then there are the “it takes a village”-style friends and family who are a part of my son’s life too, but when I take an even bigger step back and look at all the balls I’m juggling on an average day, and I see how impossible it is to do that alone, I realize how much I rely on not just a village but a sprawling network of helpers (paid and not) to keep things running (relatively) smoothly, and I imagine most other working mothers do too.
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Yesterday marked the end of a glorious twelve-day vacation for my family, and for five of those days we were out of town staying in a house without internet access. Did reading that make your fingers twitch? Or did you feel your shoulders drop, your lungs exhale, your whole body relax?
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One good thing (the only good thing?) about having a Dreaded December Baby is that while everyone else is taking year-end stock of the previous twelve months, I also get to take stock of my latest year as mother to a kid born on December 14. Here are the top five parenting lessons I learned in 2010:
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My husband is a spontaneous, adaptable good sport who shines under pressure and thrives on improvisation. And since every yin must have its yang (or is he the yang and I’m the yin?), I’m his other half, the one who depends on structure and consistency and all the pieces of my life fitting together just so or else THE WORLD IS ENDING AND WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIIIIIIIE. For the most part we’ve found a way to make this work in our relationship, but unfortunately we don’t always get along with our jobs as well as we do with each other: He works regular hours in a building across town, and I work eight a.m. to whenever, and wherever, depending on what day it is and who needs me. I’m the one on call for sick days and holidays, I’m the one playing chauffeur, and I’m the one working late into the night because my nine-to-five was interrupted at 10:30 by a toddler spouting volcanos of vomit all over daycare.
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You know the saying “I’m working for the weeked?” I think it stops being true the second you have kids. Kids seem to be of the collective mind that oh-hell-no o’clock is the perfect time to wake up EVERY DAY, and none of them have even heard of Loverboy. What this means for me is that most of the time I’m not working for the weekend but working for the end of the workday; forget spending several days apart from my job, I’m excited for those several hours each night, when I might have some peace and quiet and time for myself at last before it all begins again in the morning.

Because I mostly work from home, defining the end of my workday is both harder and more important, and a lot of the time I don’t manage to do it very well. On thing I think might remedy that is having a consistent after-work ritual to help me shift the gears from workbrain to homebrain. I have some ideas, but I’m also taking suggestions. 
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Working moms sometimes get a bad rap. Other (mostly non-parent) coworkers complain that we get special treatment, that we aren’t as committed to our jobs, that we’re distracted, forgetful, and off our professional game since having kids. So what do we do? We buckle down, try harder, log extra time at night to make up for the hours we missed due to sick babies and/or piano recitals. We try to not just meet deadlines but beat them. In trying to prove that things haven’t changed now that we’re mothers, we try to be model employees in every way we can—attend every meeting, meet every goal, at least attempt to wear clothing not smeared with pureed mystery meat. But then…? The baby gets sick for the fourth time that month and peewee baseball camp gets moved from Thursday evenings to Wednesday afternoons and priorities shift and reshift and deadlines slip and before you know it half your business emails start with the words “I’m sorry.”

Man but it sucks when stereotypes ring true.
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A million and one studies have shown that families who eat dinner together–as in sit down, on chairs, at a table, with no t.v. blaring in the background–not only stay together [longer] but are closer, more communicative, more connected. The kids do better in school, the parents are less stressed out…heck, even the dog has learned how to retrieve Mom’s slippers without ventilating the toes. It’s as if eating together means feeding the family from an enchanted pot of magic beans. Got problems? Have dinner and poof! they disappear!
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While I was pregnant (and even before), I read a lot about the experiences of pregnant working women and, in particular, how they handled the Big Question: whether to continue working, either inside or outside the home, after the baby was born, and if so, in what capacity. Following maternity leave–six weeks? sixteen weeks? a whole year? however long it takes to pull your pants up and log in to your email account?–what were the experiences of women who went back to work full-time immediately, eased back into 40-hour weeks gradually, switched to part-time permanently, switched careers entirely, started working from home exclusively, or became stay-at-home moms, either putting their jobs on hold temporarily or giving them up completely? An analyst by nature, I knew that if a “right” answer was out there, I’d be able to find it, by golly.
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I never thought I’d become one of those women whose priorities so obviously shifted once I became a mother. Of course I’d want my family to think they were my top priority (because they are), but I also thought I could make my bosses and coworkers feel like work was my top priority, even if common sense told them it couldn’t possibly be. I just thought that in the best of all possible worlds I could be everything to everyone—the best mom, the best employee—and no one would feel like they were getting the short end of the me stick (except maybe myself, but oh, isn’t martyrdom the curse of the modern mommy?).

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