I’ve had a major revelation recently about how to get my daughter to do more to help out at home.

She is seven and a half and for a while now we’ve had a chore chart going in an effort to get her to be more consistent about doing a few things to help. Nothing too crazy: Put away the dishes after dinner, make her bed in the morning, check her backpack for school, sweet the kitchen floor, feed her fish, etc. She is not terrible about remembering but I do have to reminder her, a lot.

The other day I wasn’t feeling well so I plunked down on the couch and said to my daughter, half kidding: “Could you please go and make me some tea and a snack?”. She has never done this and I wouldn’t trust her with the hot tea, but as soon as I said it she got really excited and ran to the kitchen. My husband was there and she asked him to help her get the tea ready and figure out what snack I might want. They came out and brought me some tea, cut up apples and some cheese on a tray. I kissed her and told her it was the best snack ever and she was so excited.

A few hours later I was in the kitchen finishing up making dinner and she came over and asked me: “Mama, do you want me to make you more tea?” I told her sure, so she went and got my husband, and they repeated the routine from before (she pressed the electric kettle button, he poured, she timed three minutes on the clock for the tea to steep). The next day she asked me again. And it’s now become a regular things she asks me and I don’t know which one of us likes it more.

So here is my revelation about how to get your kids to help out more:
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I am writing this on the plane, on my way back from a week-long business trip. I’m exhausted and it’s been a long week. I hate being away for this long and I also hate coming back feeling down and grumpy from all the travel/work stuff. My fam is psyched to see me and I’m dying to see them (and it’s movie night - no one should be grumpy on movie night!) So I’m determined to do something about this, to lift the business trip exhaustion fog and feel happier — and do it in a very short amount of time I have before I see my crew.

I’ve been studying happiness for a few years now, reading every book and article and study I can find. I am really interested in what we know about our own happiness (not a lot, according to one of my favorite happiness experts, Daniel Gilbert) and what we can do to feel happier (if you read one book about it, read Flourish). Time to put all this reading to work: Here are some quick small things you can do to feel happier, right now:

• Think of something good about your day today. It can be the smallest tiniest thing. Or it can be big. But it doesn’t have to be. Here’s mine: I got a kale, broccoli, apple and celery juice at the airport and it was great. Also, it was a lot healthier than what I’ve been eating this week, so I feel like I’m changing directions for the better.
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I don’t make a lot of New Year’s resolutions. I used to and I learned my lesson. The routine went something like this: Make too many resolutions. Set expectations too high. A few months later realize I’m failing. Feel bad. This was not productive so I stopped vowing to do things like lose weight or eat more broccoli or try to be better about remembering friends’ birthdays. (If you’ve been in a similar boat, don’t feel bad, it’s completely normal. Americans constantly overstimate how well they will stick to their New Year’s resolutions.)

No more big resolutions lists for me, thank you. But I do like the idea of having one theme for the year, one thing I’ll try to focus on. I guess you can call that a resolution but one is better than ten, right? So here’s my big theme for 2012:

Appreciate the good stuff more.

Yep, that simple. There is a lot of science that shows when you focus on the good things you have and are grateful for them, you are happier.
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The holidays are stressful.

However you slice it, there is too much to do in a short period of time (unless you’re a super-planner and got it all done in October), you’re running from one family gathering to another work function, and not seeing much of that me-time for a few weeks in a row. But this year I am determined to stop looking at the holidays as a series of to-dos and actually chillax and enjoy some of them. It won’t work 100% (I know already because I am stressing over this pile of cards I need to send out) but I think I can tame the holiday anxiety monster a bit.

Here are 5 things I’m going to try to do:

• Walk or do yoga every day. I’m going to be really stubborn about this. These are two things I do that calm my nerves and energize me to deal with whatever stress ball is aiming at me that day. So even though routine flies out the window in a few days, I’m going to figure out how to do some yoga or take a walk every day between now and New Years. Determination!

• Accept the fact that late is better than never. There is no way these holidays cards are going out on time. They are New Year’s cards, something we do every year because (1) New Year is great to celebrate and (2) this gives me extra time to send them out. But I am going to accept the fact that some won’t get to our friends or family until well after the New Year and that’s OK. Look at it this way: They will stand out from the plethora of other cards they’ve gotten… on time.
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I’ve come up with a new way to look at this whole impossible work-life balance idea today and I couldn’t wait to share it with you guys here.

For a while I’ve been using the term “work-life juggle” to refer to this hectic but awesome life we have as working parents. On any given day, I juggle work stuff, kiddo stuff, family stuff, household stuff, parents stuff, friends and other social stuff, and a bunch of other stuffs. Sometimes I juggle a ton of things at once, sometimes I get a break and it’s only a few. But when we say juggle, we mean that we’re juggling separate different things, holding just one or two of them at a time. And I think the reality is that we blend work and life constantly, like a kick-ass powerful blender (I prefer the red KitchenAid, but you can pick your favorite.)

For me, looking at my days this way makes me feel a lot less crazed and a little more happy. Take today, for example:

I had an early morning meeting that was work-related. But the person I was meeting is someone I’ve known for a while so I also consider him a friend. Spending time together is enjoyable, even when we talk about stressful work stuff. Plus we met at a coffee shop, so I got to enjoy one of my favorite coffee drinks while we talked. Work + friend + a little luxury = a great blend of a bunch of different things.
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This has been a nutty year on all fronts but one of the things I’m pretty proud of is that I’ve not thrown out taking care of myself out the window. That had been my usual pattern when things got stressful and as I’ve shared here before, to not great outcomes. Taking a morning walk, yoga at least two or three times a week, generally clean eating (which for me means less sugar, white stuff and serious daily doses of veggies, fruit, nuts and fish) — I’ve kept up with these habits (not perfectly, but that would be a silly goal) and they’ve helped me maintain some degree of sanity and dare I say, well-being!, during this year. I so so highly recommend you do one of them if you don’t already.

But there has been one thing which I KNOW is important for health and sanity that I’ve continued to struggle with: sleep. I just don’t get enough of it.
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We’re full swing into sniffles/cold/stomach flu season and if you have a kiddo, you know how it goes: They get “it” in germ land… I mean, school or daycare, and then the “thing” makes its rounds through your family. Not the most fun thing for a family to share, but that’s just how it goes.

We’ve had a few of these rounds already, mostly with minor colds. Each time when our daughter got sick I put myself and my husband on a regime of tons of vitamin C, zinc, and other unpleasantly-tasting herbal remedies recommended by friends and Whole Foods employees. A few times I think we did this early enough that both of us coasted through the colds much quicker and with much less negative impact than we anticipated.

But my vitamin-blast strategy doesn’t always work and that’s when I end up with a choice I have a hard time making: Suck it up and go to work or stay home.
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I realize this is one of those questions which is almost impossible to answer.

As soon as our kids become part of our lives we love and adore them and can’t imagine how we lived before we had them. (Well, that’s not entirely true — I still have some memories of getting a full night of sleep, deciding to meet a friend for dinner after work at a moment’s notice, and not worrying all the time, but you know what I mean.) We also don’t get to do our lives over so you can’t really know how things would have been if you’d had kids earlier or later.

Still, I’ve recently had this conversation with a few friends, so the topic is on my mind. One of my friends is in her mid 40s and she had her daughter at 38, which would probably be considered on the later side. She felt that having kids later in life was the right thing for her — she got established in her career, which made it easier for her to take a few years off and go back to work — and her husband — they got to travel and do all sorts of things that are harder to do with kids. Another friend, a guy actually, said that he felt he could have used a few more years of “maturing” (his word) before having kids.

I don’t quite know what my own answer would be.
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Our very good friends just had a baby, four weeks ago, to be precise. She is precious and amazing and they are tired and excited and overwhelmed. All par for the course. As we sat there, the little one napping on me an causing all sorts of nostalgia, my-friend-the-new-mom and I got into a bit of mom talk. Lack of sleep (sleep when the baby sleeps makes total sense), the reality of breastfeeding (much more painful and idyllic than she imagined), and trying to figure out how work and her other creative projects fit in now that she is a MOM and is completely in love with being one.

Boy, did that last one sound familiar. I didn’t want to be all grim about it, but what I told her is that even though my daughter is seven (OMG!) I don’t think I’ve got the winning formula down or even close to it. It’s something I juggle on a daily basis and sometimes, I don’t feel like I’m doing it very successfully. (I’m crossing my fingers that she appreciated an honest answer.)

I did want to be constructive so I shared some advice with my friend. I’d love to know what advice you’d give to a new working mom so please sound off in the comments.

• Don’t be a martyr. I did this, it’s stupid and it is not good for anyone in the family. I didn’t leave my kiddo’s side for 3 months until I went to work, save for a few doctor’s appointments or late night walks after she was asleep. My husband and I didn’t go out without her until she was nine months old. After I went back to work I pumped for 45 minutes at a time, 4 times a day, because my milk was running out but I was determined that I needed to keep my kiddo breast milk-only for a certain number of months. I can keep going for pages.
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I’m a maniac when it comes to finding ways to save time, get more organized (so that I can find more time) or figure out how to do something (so I can have more time). I’ve stopped wishing for an extra hour in the day since no one seems to be listening and instead constantly look for ways to create more time.

So I thought I’d share some of my recent little time finders here. They might seem trivial but believe me, they are working mom lifesavers. I promise, double pinky swear.

• Pre-cut ingredients for cooking. I cook a lot. It’s one of the things I’ve not let go even with a crazy job and a hectic schedule at home. Maybe it’s how I release my working mom guilt or more importantly, I really like our family to eat well and healthy. Cooking involves a lot of cutting: onions, carrots, celery, broccoli, you name it. Onions are my absolute least favorite things to cut (I am sure I don’t have to tell you why) and yet many things I cook include them. So when I recently discovered that Trader Joe’s sells pre-chopped onions I squealed in excitement (yes, really, right there in the store) and they are now a regular staple on our shopping list (along with pre-cut carrots and celery mix I use for soup starters). I realize that I am paying more than if I buy regular onions and chop them. But the difference isn’t big enough to make up for the tons of time (and tears!) I save when I use pre-cut onions.
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