Work. Life. Unbalanced.

Yes, I leave my kids with strangers

2012-02-02T22:27:00.000-06:00

"I'm so lucky that I don't have to send my kid to daycare. I could never leave him/her with strangers all day."

Drives.me.nuts.

I've talked to working parents who have purposefully gone to great lengths to avoid daycare. Working opposite shifts from each other so that one parent is always home with the baby. (But rarely home with the other parent...) Putting up with a grandparent or other relative who provides substandard care. All because they believe that anything is better than daycare.

Don't get me wrong. I know that some grandparents/relatives provide great care. Some parents work opposite shifts because they need to or want to. Some parents aren't able to use daycare for reasons of finances, logistics, etc.

But I resent the implication that daycare is a last resort. Because it's not. The "lucky" kids are the ones who receive quality care all day long, whether that care comes from a daycare center or a nanny or a grandparent or a stay-at-home parent.

As for the idea that daycare = leaving kids with strangers? I mean, come on. It's not like I picked a random person off the street to watch my kids. Yes, daycare teachers are strangers... but if they're good ones, they don't stay strangers for long at all.

Case in point. Meet one of the "strangers" who I leave my kids with every day:

That's "V," and I'd like to tell you two quick stories about her.

#1: When Littles first started at her preschool, V was one of two teachers in her classroom. A few months in to the school year, as my due date with Noob approached, V asked me about plans for Littles when I went into labor. I said that since we have no family in the area, we were hoping one of our friends could help out, but we'd have to play it by ear. Without hesitation, V gave me her cell phone number, and encouraged me to call her if we needed any help with Littles. We didn't end up needing to do so, but it was a huge weight off my shoulders, knowing that we had backup from someone who Littles knew and trusted fully.

#2: We're expecting again! I'm due with "Q" in July 2012. We waited to tell Littles until after we heard Q's heartbeat for the first time. When we did, at a morning midwife appointment, my husband was so excited that he suggested going straight to Littles' school to break the news. V has moved out of the classroom and into the director role, so she was the one to answer the door when we got there. She took one look at our faces and said, "Are you pregnant?" And when I smiled and nodded yes, she screamed, "Congratulations!" and gave me a big hug.

So yes. If V is a "stranger," then I freely admit that I leave my kids with strangers every day. And I'm proud of it.

Another cool website for working parents

2011-11-08T21:23:00.001-06:00

As with Relish!, I originally tried Readeo through the Mamasource deals site, but it's now become a permanent part of my working mom bag of tricks.

Basically, Readeo allows you to read childrens' books on your computer. It provides a library of a bunch of books (I won't hazard an estimate, but suffice to say we've had the subscription for over three months now and are still discovering new books) and you can flip through them, pictures and text and all. Littles owns tons of real books and we check out books from the library, too, but since we discovered Readeo, she almost always bypasses the real books to ask for "books on the computer" for her nightly storytime.

That alone is probably worth the $9.99 monthly subscription fee. But what makes it great for traveling parents is that you have the ability to "BookChat" with someone on another computer. You can flip through the pages of the books together, and even bring in audio and video. (The video appears at the bottom of the screen with the book "pages" on it.)

So last week, while I was on a business trip, I was still able to do storytime with Littles. Littles loved it, I loved it, and it gave my husband a much-deserved break!

It's also great for distant grandparents and other family members. You can invite them to join the site and they can create their own guest accounts for free. Then, when they BookChat with you on your paid account, they will have access to the full Readeo library. (Guests not BookChatting with a paid subscriber have access to the book of the month, as well as a few other free books.)

Downsides? The audio/video quality is not as good as Skype or other dedicated video conferencing tools, but it's definitely serviceable, and the book-reading functionality more than makes up for it. Also, the site makes heavy use of Adobe Flash, so it's not usable from devices that don't support Flash, such as the iPad.

Readeo does offer a 14-day free trial, so sign up for it before your next business trip and give it a shot!

What's for dinner?

2011-09-13T22:19:00.000-05:00

I will be honest here. I have many talents. Cooking is most definitely not one of them.

Fortunately for me, I married a man who does enjoy cooking. Even so, in a household with two busy working parents and two kids who are typical eaters for their ages (that is, a little picky), "What's for dinner?" is often one of the most challenging questions of the day. And the answer is "Take-out" a little more often than we'd like.

As of late, we've started using a service called Relish! We originally found it through Mamasource deals site, and it's really helped us with meal planning and preparation.

I've discovered that what I like least about cooking is not the cooking itself, but planning and shopping. Relish! helps tremendously with this. Each week, it provides about 10-15 different dinner options. All you have to do is click a button to add them to your weekly menu. When you're done, it generates a shopping list for you. Easy! It also stores every recipe in a searchable database, so you can go back and choose favorites from a past week.

We've tried a lot of different meals over the last few months, and have found them consistently easy to prepare and absolutely delicious! Trust me, when I say they're easy to prepare... they're easy to prepare. To give you an idea of my lack of cooking skills, I've messed up cooking rice before. But Indian chicken korma? Spinach lasagna rollups? No problem.

Relish! also provides freezer meal options. This worked out well when both Hubby and I went out of town on business a few weeks ago. We were able to prepare a weeks' worth of freezer meals ahead of time for my mother-in-law, who was staying with the kids. Then, all she had to do was pull a meal out of the freezer and pop it in the oven, rather than hassling with cooking dinner with two kids under her feet. We've also used this for quick weeknight dinners, or just to have a home-cooked meal option even if we haven't had time to get to the grocery store yet.

One limitation of Relish! is that it's really geared towards dinners, not breakfasts or lunches. This is fine by me, as I usually just do cereal/yogurt for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch -- easy enough to plan for. But Hubby likes to eat more elaborate meals earlier in the day, and he says he's used other sites that provide good breakfast/lunch options.

Still, we both really like how easy Relish! makes dinner. So, if you're already in a good groove with your dinner preparations -- rock on! But if not, I highly recommend checking out Relish!

Easy.

2011-09-01T23:25:00.001-05:00

Twice in the last few months, I've had stay-at-home moms tell me that it's easier to be a working mom than a stay-at-home mom. The reason they always give? "At least you get to go to the bathroom by yourself."

The peeing-with-an-audience situation also came up in a Babble article posted by another friend, entitled "Stay-At-Home vs. Working Parents: Questions to help spouses bridge the communication gap." It's meant to be a humorous explanation of the different stresses that stay-at-home parents face, as compared to their working spouses.

Even working moms sometimes echo the sentiment that they have it easier, such as in a recent post by NPR Baby Project blogger Christy Lilley, as she prepares to return to work after the birth of her second baby:

I often think being a stay-at-home mom is harder than being a working mom.

After a particularly exhausting weekend with James [her toddler], going back to work feels like a break. Even though I'm working, I find little moments of time throughout the day to myself. Whether it's catching up with a friend on the phone during my commute or listening to whatever I want on the radio instead of Raffi nursery rhymes, working out at the company gym during my lunch hour, or reading the news online in between meetings, I savor these moments.

When I'm home, I have no time to myself. It's all kids, all the time.

Let me be clear: I agree that being a stay-at-home mom is hard. But I don't think it's inherently harder -- or easier -- than being a working mom.

In fact, after stating that being a stay-at-home mom is harder than being a working mom, Lilley goes on to discuss the many challenges that she faces as a working mom. The constant guilt. Working with people who are either single or have a stay-at-home spouse and therefore don't have to drop everything at 5 PM to get the kids from daycare. Being pulled in a million different directions, and feeling like you're doing neither of your full-time jobs (the one that's paid in money, and the one that's paid in toddler-hugs and baby-kisses) very well.

But she also talks about how much she enjoys her job. I enjoy my job, too. And so that is why for me, being a working mom is easier than being a stay-at-home mom, despite the challenges. If it were harder --if the enjoyment I got out of the job wasn't worth the challenges I faced in it -- then I would stay at home.

I have no personal experience aside from maternity leave, but presumably, it's the same for stay-at-home moms, no? A commenter on the Babble article stated:

I've been both a SAHM [stay-at-home mom] and a WOHM [work-outside-the-home mom] at different points in my life, and I have to admit that for me personally there is less stress as a SAHM because despite all my children's craziness, I madly, deeply and passionately love them and no matter how mad I get, my love for them covers all. Can't say the same for colleagues and bosses!

Exactly.

So, can we please quit with the whole "who has it harder" discussion? Forget stay-at-home vs. working moms. Being an adult is hard. Period.

I can envy my husband, who never seems to struggle with guilt because he works, and say that working dads have it easier than working moms. But I know he feels an inherent drive to be the primary financial provider for our family, even though he doesn't have to be. I don't feel that same drive.

He might envy his co-workers with stay-at-home wives, for whom going on a business trip simply entails a quick phone call home to say, "Hey, I need to travel next week," rather than the complicated coordination of travel schedules and daycare pickups and freezer meals that we have to go through whenever either of us has to go out of town. But surely he doesn't carry the same pressure that they do of knowing that they're just one silly mistake away from losing their family's entire income.

And while parents will often roll their eyes or smile knowingly to themselves when a childless person complains about how difficult his/her life is, the truth is, childless people have their own challenges. About five years ago, I went to a big meeting for my entire team at work. We were being asked to travel more and more, and some people who had joined the team when it was a low-travel job were not happy about it. One of them stood up and said, "I have three small kids, so it's hard for me to travel on short notice. I think that people who don't have family commitments like that should take on more of the travel burden." Another co-worker, a brilliant single woman with a lot more guts than me, replied angrily, "How dare you? I might not have kids, but I do have other things in my life that are just as important to me as your kids are to you. I don't want travel to take me away from those things, any more than you do."

(As an aside, that woman has been promoted multiple times over the last few years. The dad no longer works at the company.)

Yes, these days, I'm often up late at night blogging or exercising or sewing or pursuing other hobbies, because that's the only time I get to myself. Whereas before kids, I could fill my evenings and weekends with coaching/refereeing high school lacrosse and captaining my local Team in Training triathlon team and training for an Ironman triathlon myself and playing ice hockey and soccer, all on top of a job that required extensive travel, and still get to bed at a reasonable hour (or sleep in if I didn't). But I had to do all that to feel fulfilled, to feel like I was doing something with my life. Now I feel like I'm doing something with my life when Noob wakes up at 6 AM and I snuggle in bed with him and fall back asleep while he nurses. Or when Littles gets home from school and we go up to the playroom and dance like fools to kids' music before dinner.

So who has it harder? Who cares. Why can't we just celebrate the joys and vent about the stresses of our jobs -- inside or outside the home -- without comparing to the joys or stresses of other people's jobs?

Hanging up the horns, round 2

2011-08-09T23:56:00.000-05:00

Back in June, with my average daytime pumping output down to maybe an ounce a day, I decided drop my one pumping session. The pumping session was solely to keep my supply up and put milk in the freezer for donation, since Noob was drinking whole milk exclusively during the day, so it was no problem to drop that session. I dropped off my last milk bank donation shortly afterwards.

At the time, I was also pumping while on business trips. I'm currently on my third business trip in two months. On the first one, in mid-June, I brought my pump, but only pumped 3 ounces over two days. On the second one, two weeks ago, I brought my pump just in case, but ended up pumping only once, for a measly half an ounce. Back home, Noob did fine with no breastmilk.

So, last Tuesday, after dropping Littles off at preschool, I drove to the parking lot of a local 7-Eleven. There, I met up with the mom of a nine-month-old who is unable to nurse, who I had found through Eats on Feets. I handed over the remainder of my freezer stash, mostly milk pumped on business trips and therefore not frozen within the 24-hour window required by the milk bank. I really enjoyed meeting the mom whose baby would benefit from my milk. Donating to the milk bank has been great, but very anonymous.

Anyway. That donation meant I was officially hanging up the horns. I did not bring my pump on my trip this week.

When I reached this point with Littles, I wrote about a recent discussion over whether women should feel proud for breastfeeding their child, since after all, women have been breastfeeding for millenia. I said that I did feel proud, because women have not been pumping for millenia, and pumping was hard work!

I feel differently this time. Sure, I'm pleased that Noob is among only 10% of babies who are still breastfed at 1 year of age. But as I've explained in previous posts, I really didn't have to do a whole lot of pumping for him. He was home with family till just before his first birthday, and I work from home, so I mostly nursed him directly. And yes, women have been doing that for millenia. Not really an accomplishment, like something I should be really proud of doing.

I'm also pleased that I was able to donate over 400 oz of breastmilk (340 oz to the milk bank and a little over 90 oz direct to the mom I met last week). But again, I don't really feel like that's a special accomplishment. Women have been wet-nursing for millenia, too, and aside from my European adventures, it was really pretty easy to fit the extra pumping sessions into my day.

I am proud, and very very lucky, to work in a job and for a company that made breastfeeding so easy. Every woman should have the opportunity to breastfeed as long as she wants, even if she returns to work. It makes me sad that so many women find themselves in work situations that are not conducive or even openly hostile to pumping. It's just not right.

I'm also thankful that I still have the opportunity to nurse Noob. He's an early riser, usually waking up between 6-6:30 AM, and I am… well, not an early riser :) So most mornings, I get him out of his crib, bring him in bed with me, latch him on as we're both lying down, and catch a few extra minutes of sleep while he nurses. I love it, and I'm in no rush to end it.

But I do love the fact that this morning, I was able to go for a 30-minute jog on a beautiful trail next to a river, rather than spending 30 minutes pumping. It's been a great run, but I'm glad to be done.

Adventures in pumping, European edition

2011-04-18T21:10:00.001-05:00

Just from a quick peek at my tag cloud, it's obvious that I have quite a bit of experience with pumping while traveling. So when I found out I had to go on a business trip to Munich, Germany, I wasn't particularly worried about pumping during it. How much different could it be?

It turned out to be quite the adventure :)

Before the trip
This trip was for a large meeting with some business affiliates that are based in Europe. To keep costs down, most attendees shared hotel rooms. This poses obvious problems for me with needing to pump, so I contacted the group in charge of organizing the meeting ahead of time to let them know that I'd need a place to pump and also a refrigerator in my room.

(As a quick aside: I have shared a hotel room while pumping, on two trips earlier this year with the lacrosse team that I coach outside of work. I had to coordinate with my roommates so that I could take over the bathroom a few times a day. Certainly not preferable, but it did work out.)

I felt a little awkward, especially since the main organizer was a man. But the other four members of the group were women, so I figured at least one of them had to have breastfed at some point.

There was a moment of confusion when the male organizer thought that I meant I was bringing Noob with me -- as in, bringing him into the actual meetings! He gently suggested that I might want to have someone to watch him during the day! I reassured him that it would just be me and my trusty breast pump, and he made the proper accommodations.

The outbound trip
I flew to Munich via London. My outbound flight left at about 9:45 PM on Sunday, so I was able to nurse Noob normally all day Sunday before getting on the plane.

I opted not to pump at all on the trip to Munich. Noob nurses little enough now that I'm not in discomfort if I go for a while without nursing/pumping, and it was much easier not having to deal with pumping on the plane. I might have tried to pump during my layover in London, but as it turns out, my director (my boss's boss) was on my flight from Dallas. We ended up chatting for most of the layover. It was nice not having to find an excuse to slip away to pump.

In Germany
I arrived in Munich a little before 6 PM local time (11 AM Dallas time) on Monday, about 18 hours since my last nursing session. I eagerly got my pump out... and realized that despite all my careful planning, I had forgotten one very important thing: A converter to allow my pump's AC adapter to run on European voltage. Oops.

Normally, I would have been able to use my pump's battery pack, which I always leave in my pump bag. The suction isn't the best, but it would have allowed me to pump enough to stay comfortable while I searched for a converter. Unfortunately, I had pulled the pump part of my Medala PISA out of the larger bag for this trip, to save on space in my jam-packed suitcase.

I quickly searched Medela's web site (in German, of course!) and figured out that there were a few "apothekes" (drug stores) in the area that were affiliated with Medela in some way.

I set off for the nearest one, which was in a shopping area directly underneath my hotel. It was a tiny shop, so I was surprised to see that they did have a sizeable display of pump parts and other breastfeeding supplies. They did not have any PISA adapters... but they did have an Avent manual pump available. These retail for around $30 in the USA. At this store, it cost €61.99 (just under $90).

Whoa.

But I was already late for a meeting, and I knew that the store would be closed by the time it was over. I didn't have time to shop around for the best price, nor did I want to wait to pump until it reopened the next morning. So I bought it.

I had trouble at first because the Avent only comes with a standard size (24mm) breast shield. I typically use a large (27mm) or extra large (30mm) shield with my PISA, so the smaller shield was very uncomfortable. But I found that I was able to insert the larger Medela shield into the Avent shield. It didn't look pretty, but it worked! This is not the greatest picture, but you get the idea. The clear plastic (and the white handle) is the Avent stuff and the cloudier plastic is the Medela shield:

Once I got that figured out, I actually liked pumping with the Avent. I got a decent amount of milk, and it didn't take much longer than pumping with the PISA. Actually, when Littles was the same age that Noob is now, I had retired my PISA and was pumping with a manual pump (Medela Harmony) on all my business trips. It might be time to retire the PISA again! The PISA bag takes up nearly half of my rollaboard suitcase -- compared to the Avent, which is just what you see above -- so it would be nice to get that space back.

Anyway. The Avent turned out to be so effective that I ran into another problem: I ran out of room for all the milk I pumped! I didn't bring milk storage bags (I had forgotten them, too, in my PISA bag -- yeah, I don't know where my brain was when I was packing!) and so by Thursday morning, I was down to my last storage bottle. I looked at a couple of stores to find some sort of container for my milk, and eventually saw the following box on a shelf at a different drug store:

Based solely on the picture, I quickly discerned that this box contained something breastfeeding-related, and then I read the (tiny) English text to confirm that it did indeed contain breastmilk storage bags. So that picture was a very effective advertisement! But I don't think it would fly in the USA, because it shows -- gasp! -- a naked breast! Funny how different things are in Germany :)

On Friday, with all that milk pumped and safely stored, it was time to head home.

The return trip
I had brought a small cooler bag to carry the milk home, along with a box full of sandwich size Ziploc baggies. I got the hotel bartender to fill up a baggie with some ice, then put it in the cooler bag with the milk before heading to the airport.

It just so happens that the male organizer of the meeting was on my flight from Munich back to London. I had met him during the meeting itself. He turned out to be a jovial older British man, quite open and likeable. As we were waiting to clear security, he said, "I just have to ask, because we were all wondering. I understand that you have a baby and that you had to pump milk. But what was the refrigerator for?"

I was confused by the question... "To keep the milk cold." Duh?

Him: "You're actually bringing it home with you?"

Me: "Yep. It's right here in my backpack."

Him: "It will last that long without refrigeration?"

Me: "Yes, it's in a cooler bag with ice, and anyway, it's good for about 10 hours at room temperature."

Him: "Wow! You learn something new every day!" Turns out that none of the female organizers have kids, so none of them had any clue about breastmilk pumping and storage :) Although one is pregnant now, so I guess she'll learn soon enough!

I was glad that the topic had come up prior to clearing security, because security turned out to be a pain. I got to the metal detectors, pulled out the cooler bag, and discreetly informed the security agent that it contained breastmilk.

Agent: "What?"

Me (a little louder): "Breastmilk."

Agent: "WHAT?"

Me: "BREASTMILK!"

So much for being discreet. At that moment, I was relieved that my director and his boss, who were flying out at the same time, had gone out of a different terminal and weren't with us at that security checkpoint. Nothing like discussing your bodily fluids in front of the people who control your promotions.

After that exchange, the agent directed me to put the cooler bag through the x-ray machine. This is something that I haven't been doing as of late when flying in the States, just to avoid any potential risks of exposing the milk to radiation. I simply tell TSA that it is "liquid medication" and they hand-scan it. But putting it through the x-ray machine is probably fine and I really didn't want to have the "liquid medication" discussion at that moment.

On the other side of the x-ray machine, another agent pulled the cooler bag off and said, "What is this?" in broken English. I replied, "Breastmilk," and she gave me a confused look. So I pulled an actual bag out, since the German-purchased bags helpfully had "breastmilk storage bags" printed on them in four different languages :) She gave me another confused look and said, "Where is your baby?"

Ummmmm, at home?

She called over a supervisor and we had the exact same conversation, including asking where my baby was. Eventually, they did a swab in the cooler bag and on the pump, to test for explosive residue. (TSA often does that in the USA, too.) When it came back clean, they sent me on my way.

Whew.

Just before boarding the flight, I asked at a small eatery for some more ice for the cooler bag. The cashier pointed to the front of the eatery and said "Ice." I was confused, as all I saw was a cooler for ice cream." The cashier was confused, too, and said, "Ice" again. "Ice cream, yes?" Ohhhhhh! I said, "No, I need actual ice" and she figured it out and gave me a cup full of it :)

And finally, my milk and I were safely on our way to London.

I had an overnight layover in London, which was good from a milk storage perspective, as it allowed me to dump out the ice and chill the milk safely into the fridge. The "fridge" in this room was actually the automated minibar, so I had to be very careful not to move stuff around, to avoid getting charged for it!

The next morning, I filled up two more baggies with ice at the hotel ice machine. I placed one at the bottom of the cooler bag, then put all the milk bags in, then put another baggie on top. This was at about 7 AM London time (1 AM Dallas time). Then I headed for the airport for the 10-hour flight back to Dallas.

I was a little nervous about clearing security in London. After all, Heathrow is the airport where the original liquid explosives plot was uncovered. But thankfully, compared to Munich, clearing security in London was a breeze. I did have the milk x-rayed again, but it didn't attract any extra attention.

On the flight, I was stuck in a window seat, so rather than disturbing my seatmate by getting up to ask for ice, I simply asked the flight attendants to give me a cup of ice whenever they came around doing beverage service. They were very accommodating. I kept the box of baggies in my seatback pocket, so I could dump the ice into a baggie and place it into the cooler bag, which I kept under the seat in front of me.

The milk was still nice and cold when I got home at around 2:30 PM Dallas time. The oldest milk was about 5 days old at this point, and had been refrigerated (not frozen) the entire time, but I did a quick sniff test and it smelled just fine. So into the freezer it went!

Overall, my first impressions were right: It really wasn't that much harder to pump while traveling internationally vs. domestically. But next time, I think I'll bring my pump's battery pack, my manual pump, and my milk storage bags :)

Where I pumped today (well, yesterday)

2011-03-18T21:00:00.001-05:00

I was in my company's office in Los Angeles this week for a team offsite. On Wednesday, I pumped in the "quiet room," as this office calls it. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture, but it was a pretty standard setup with a couple of chairs and a power outlet.

On Thursday, I went to pump late in the day and discovered that the quiet room was locked. Fortunately, my teammates had all left for the day, and the conference room that we used all week had no interior windows and a locking door. So I just locked the door and used that room to pump.

Probably the best view I've ever had while pumping :)

Breastmilk donation

2011-03-17T19:36:00.000-05:00

Pumping for Littles was such a stressful experience that I eagerly anticipated the day when I would able to stop. If you had told me back then that with my next child, I would not only continue pumping past his first birthday but would actually do it for other babies, I would have laughed in your face.

But that's exactly what I'm doing right now.

It all started about three months ago, on Facebook, of all places. My friend E, who has a son just a few months younger than Noob, posted that she had just become a breastmilk donor with the Mothers' Milk Bank of North Texas. I had heard of breastmilk donation before, but given that I have a very average milk supply (I've always made just enough to feed my nursling, not much extra), I never thought it was something I could actually do.

But when I looked into it in more detail, I found out I was wrong. The milk bank asks for a commitment to donate 100 ounces of breastmilk, which does not have to be all at once. I've always maintained a freezer stash of around 100 ounces for Noob to use when I travel on business. I figured that as he started cutting back on nursing past his first birthday, I could slowly cut back on my freezer stash (since I wouldn't need as much to cover him during my business travels) and donate the excess to the milk bank.

So I registered with the milk bank. It's a pretty straightforward process. I had to fill out some paperwork (asking about everything from my average caffeine consumption to the extent of my European travels) and get a blood test done. Everything was paid for by the milk bank. They even gave me collection bottles to use for donation.

It has turned out to be mutually beneficial. Obviously, the milk bank -- and more importantly, the preemies and other fragile babies that it serves -- benefits from getting my milk.

But it has worked out well for me, too. A few weeks after I signed up with the milk bank, Noob went on a nursing strike. For a full week, he only nursed first thing in the morning, and completely refused to nurse the rest of the day. I was worried that this was a sign that he was close to weaning fully, but I did want to keep my milk supply up, just in case he did decide to return to the breast. Thankfully, breastmilk donation gave me a great reason to keep on pumping through the nursing strike. I was able to bank up to 10 ounces of breastmilk each day during the strike. And when Noob did start nursing again, my milk supply was still there for him.

These days, my nursing/pumping schedule looks something like this:

At home - weekday	At home - weekend	While traveling
Morning - Noob nurses During the day - Noob gets a sippy cup of milk. We're working to transition him to whole milk; right now, he gets sippies that are about 1.5 oz breastmilk/4.5 oz whole milk. I pump to get milk for the next day. Any extra goes to the milk bank. Evening - Noob sometimes nurses when he gets home from his sitter's. Night - I pump again. All of this milk goes to the milk bank.	Morning - Noob nurses Late morning (after first nap) - Noob nurses Afternoon (after second nap) - Noob nurses Night - I pump for the milk bank.	I'm traveling this week and following this schedule: Morning - Noob gets a 6 oz bottle of thawed breastmilk. I pump. During the day - Noob gets a sippy of breastmilk/whole milk. I pump. Night - I pump. Since I'm cutting back on my freezer stash, I plan to donate all the milk I pumped this week. On future trips, I may need to use the pumped milk to replenish my freezer stash for the next trip, but whatever I don't need will get donated.

At this late point in Noob's nursing career, I'm not sure how much longer my supply will hold up, but as long as it's still here, I'm taking full advantage of it.

I just dropped off about 150 ounces at the milk bank last weekend. And I haven't even really started cutting back on my freezer stash yet, so I think I'll be able to donate at least 100 ounces more before it's all said and done.

Here's my donated milk all packed up and ready to go. Yes, those are wine bags -- E's brilliant idea for transporting the milk :)

Not bad for someone with a very average milk supply :)

Interested in donating?
I know most working moms do maintain a freezer stash, so I really encourage everyone to look into donating it when you're done pumping, even if you don't pump specifically to donate, like I'm doing. There may be a milk bank in your area, but if not, see if you can work with a more distant milk bank. I know the Mothers' Milk Bank of North Texas provides shipping containers and reimburses dry ice purchases for moms who need to ship their milk.

There is also Eats on Feets, which helps moms who have breastmilk find nearby moms who need breastmilk. Direct "milk sharing" is free from the minimum donation requirements and other hoops that milk bank donors must jump through. I'm considering donating some of my milk in this way, as the milk bank's pumping requirements are more stringent (because the milk goes to very sick babies) and not all of my pumped milk meets those requirements. Mostly, it's hard for me to freeze milk within 24 hours when I'm traveling, as the milk bank requires. The milk is still perfectly safe for healthy infants (after all, Noob drinks it :), so if I can find a baby who could use it, I might go that route.

Every pumping mom knows that breastmilk is liquid gold. Better for it to go to a baby than down the drain!

Interesting article

2011-03-16T23:29:00.000-05:00

Regrets of a stay-at-home mom

Consider this a warning to new mothers: Fourteen years ago, I "opted out" to focus on my family. Now I'm broke

http://www.salon.com/life/pinched/2011/01/05/wish_i_hadnt_opted_out

I'm posting this link here mostly as a reminder to myself :) I often get caught up in the short-term downsides of being a working mom, like how I have to miss Montessori Night at Littles' preschool in a few weeks for my third business trip in a 5-week period, or how pitiful Noob sounds when he cries as I leave him in the morning. I sometimes find myself thinking, "Gosh, I wish I could just quit. Put an end to this nonsense."

This article is a good reminder to me to think long-term. Yes, my kids will only be this little for a short period of time... and that's exactly why it's important for me to keep working through it. Short-term, yeah, maybe I'd be happier if I weren't working. But what about five years from now, when both kids are in school? I know I'm in a field that I can't just walk away from for a few years and pick up right where I left off. Working might not be the easy choice right now, but if I look just a few years down the road, I know it's the right one.

This comment on the article really blew my mind. I've bolded the parts that I really liked:

I didn't even love being home with my kids. Love my kids, but was grateful to work part-time with sane adults. (No brickbats, plz. I'm a good mother-- ask my kids- but this idea that kids need one woman devoted to their comfort 24 hours a day is pretty recent. Certainly my mother, grandmother, and greatgrandmother didn't do that, and their kids turned out just great.)

But all the part-time jobs were "family friendly," and that meant lousy pay and no benefits. So here I am, 50 with a chronic illness, a husband who lost his job AND our health insurance, and a bunch of part-time jobs none of which offer health insurance. And the only jobs I can get are similar jobs, all underpaid and unbenefited. And I can't get insurance coverage-- insurance companies don't offer private insurance to those who have pre-existing conditions. Six months from now, I'll be able to get the new health care bill insurance-- I am crossing my fingers that nothing goes wrong in between.

And you know, I could actually have given something to the world, not just my kids (who didn't much appreciate it anyway, to tell you the truth-- they think their dad is the cool one, because he went out and earned the money and got his name in the paper and all that). The loss of human potential is something no one factors in, but it's increasingly important to me as I realize I don't have a lot of time left to help people with my rather unique set of talents.

oh, and the husband? He never liked my choices. He "let" me do it, but he always wished aloud that I'd get a good job and make good money, and why did I keep talking about us being equal partners when he was the one working all day and I was the one with the "Freedom".

So-- no respect from kids, husband, society, employers. No benefits. No pension. Nothing on my resume but low-skill, low wage part time jobs. And minimal-- very minimal-- Social Security contributions.

When you're 30 and facing this decision, look forward 20 years. The kids will be grown, and trust me on this, they'll remember about 2% of those wonderful experiences you gave them. Kids know when they're loved and taken care of-- and you can do that just fine with a full-time, full-benefit job. Husband might still be around, might not, but don't assume he'll thank you for your choice to stay home. Or he might have moved on, and you're alone without health insurance.

Just look ahead. Make your choice not just on today but on the future too. And remember that you count, and your future counts, and factor your own well-being long term into your decision. You might still decide to stay home, but you might also think about how to mitigate the dangers -- like insist that your husband deposit 10% of his salary into an account that's just for your future. Take courses to qualify you for a new position (yes, you can do that part-time... you can even do it on line). Teach your kids to respect your choices. Go back to work when they go off to school, or work part time, or work every other year, or try to find a company with flex-time. Get on early with a forward-thinking big company that will promote you even if you work part-time.

You count too. Your future counts. Don't forget that like I did.

So... that is my reminder to myself. If it's a good reminder to you, too -- great :)

Desperation

2011-03-09T23:34:00.000-06:00

This post is part of a series on finding child care.

In my previous post, I talked about how we thought we had lined up a spot for Noob at an in-home daycare, only to find out that the spot wasn't available, just two weeks before Hubby's return to work.

Once that happened, I knew that in-home daycares weren't an option. I had already contacted every one within a reasonable distance from our home, and no one had openings.

Hubby and I talked seriously again about the Bright Horizons daycare center that had been our favorite center option. We both really liked it. But there was just one problem that I simply couldn't overcome: In the toddler room, the kids only got one nap a day. And Noob most definitely needed two naps! I think that sleep is so important to young children, and I had a really hard time compromising on that point.

Since the one-nap-at-1-year policy is pretty common in daycare centers, I asked some other daycare moms about how their kids did with that transition. For the most part, they said it went fine. I knew Noob would adjust OK if he had to. But I still felt like it wasn't the best choice for him.

One of the other moms told me, "Taking one nap just gives him more time to participate in that great educational curriculum at daycare!" That comment hit me in completely the wrong way. Noob is 1 year old. This might sound odd, but I totally don't care what he's learning. Sure, I don't want him plopped in front of the TV or stuck in a crib by himself all day, but at his age, day-to-day life is enough of a learning experience for him! He just needs to feel secure and loved, and to get plenty of one-on-one interaction. He doesn't need a college prep curriculum -- and he certainly doesn't need to sacrifice his sleep for the sake of any curriculum!

It was yet another sign that, as I mentioned in a previous post, the daycare centers we visited just didn't fit our parenting "style."

I couldn't get past it. Even Hubby could see it, and conceded that we needed to find a different option.

(As an aside, two months down the road, I'm really glad I stood my ground on this point. Even now, Noob does fine with one nap some days, but usually takes two very solid naps totaling 3-4 hours -- and still has no problem falling asleep for the night before 8 PM. I have to think it would not have been healthy for him to force him down to just one 2-3 hour nap.)

But given our short timeframe, our options were running thin. Feeling a little desperate, I decided to post an ad on craigslist. I had no time to waste interviewing people who wouldn't be a good fit for our family, so I was very upfront about a few of the "non-mainstream" things that are important to us: Healthy food options. Acceptance of extended breastfeeding. Minimal TV. Cloth diapering.

I only got one response back. I think I scared a lot of people off :)

The response was from a 21-year-old woman named "A." She was living with a roommate "L," and watching L's daughter, "S," who was right around Noob's age. A was fine with the things I had mentioned in my post and she actually used proper English spelling and grammar, which is rare to find among craigslist posters/responders :) (I know that sounds nitpicky, but when a post has a ton of spelling and grammar problems, I feel like that person simply isn't very professional.) And her home was conveniently located right on the route we already took to drop Littles off at preschool.

Despite all that, I didn't have high hopes, just because there are a lot of crazies on craigslist. But, well, we didn't really have any other options, so I figured A was worth a visit.

I was surprised when I ended up loving her. When I visited, L was there, too, and they were watching the child of one of their friends. It was obvious how much they both enjoyed being around and interacting with kids. Now, A did not offer a college prep curriculum :) But I definitely got the sense that A would provide the security, love, and interaction that I wanted for Noob, and that she would respect Hubby's and my preferences as parents.

Hubby visited separately (I had been so convinced that I wouldn't like A that I told him not to waste his time coming on the initial visit with me!) and felt much the same way. So we told A that we wanted to go with her.

I quickly got background checks processed for both A and L (since L only works part-time and would be around a lot when Noob was there), and called references. Everything looked good.

A week later, Hubby returned to work, and Noob went off to A's.

In-home daycare search

2011-03-08T22:58:00.000-06:00

This post is part of a series on finding child care.

In my previous post, I explained how I explored the daycare centers in my area, finding only one option (a Bright Horizons franchise) that I was willing to consider for Noob.

As much as I liked Bright Horizons, there were a few logistical hurdles that I had trouble overcoming. Most of these centered around the fact that Noob would start there at 11 months of age, which is around the time that kids transition from the infant to the toddler room. I didn't want him starting in the infant room, getting used to the kids and teachers, and then having to move to a new room just a few weeks later. But at the same time, I wasn't sure he'd be ready for the toddler room, where he would need to be walking well, completely off bottles, down to one nap a day, etc.

So I wanted to look at the in-home daycares in my area as well, knowing that they would provide more flexibility while avoiding the quick-transition problem.

Unfortunately, there aren't many in-home daycares in my area. And they can be hit or miss, to say the least. Some are fabulous, and some are downright scary. Fortunately for me, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services provides an excellent tool for weeding out the scary ones: Search Texas Child Care. This web site allowed me to locate every in-home in my area and, more importantly, view any daycare licensing violations that it had received.

So, the place where TV and video games were the only activities offered, or the place where the licensing inspector had to move knives and scissors to a location not accessible to children? Yeah. I didn't have to bother visiting.

But I did find that in the suburb just to the north of us (where Littles' preschool is located), there are a couple of in-home daycares that have been around since the early 90s and have a clean or nearly-clean inspection record. That was promising!

Unfortunately, when I first started looking in September (about four months before we needed care), none of them had openings :( They also did not have a waitlist or any formal means for me to be notified if something did come available.

Not so promising.

I decided to wait and see whether anything came available as Noob's start date drew closer. In late November, I contacted all the places again. To my surprise, one place did have a new opening!

So Hubby and I went to visit. We both really liked it. The provider was located just around the corner from Littles' preschool, and she had been in business for almost 20 years. It was clear that she loved what she did!

She had converted her garage into a room for the daycare, where she had lots of educational toys and materials for the older kids (roughly ages 1+). Her daughter assisted her and took care of the infants, who mostly stayed in the living room. It matched up very well with what I wanted for Noob... a smaller, homey atmosphere, but with plenty of activity and stimulation, a limited number of providers, and flexibility in meeting his changing needs.

She provided a couple of references, which I called, and they all raved about her. I called her back to say that we would take the spot.

We waited to hear back.

And waited.

I started to suspect something was wrong.

Sure enough, she came back to say that the child who was supposed to be starting in preschool, thus opening a spot at her daycare for Noob, was in fact staying at her daycare through the end of the school year.

It was mid-December. Hubby was going back to work in two weeks and we still had no child care lined up for Noob.

In my next post, I'll talk about what we did next!

Where I pumped today

2011-02-13T23:47:00.000-06:00

I'm up in Seattle this week, for the same semi-annual technical training conference that I attended back in July, shortly after my return to work. This time, though, Hubby is not attending, so I'm all alone up here -- he's back home with the kids.

Again, the conference kicked off with a Sunday session. Thankfully, this time, they opted to do it at one of my company's offices, rather than at Benaroya Hall. Since all of my company's offices have rooms for pumping, that meant I had a dedicated spot to pump, rather than having to pump in the bathroom.

The setup in this office was similar to the one in most of the other offices I've visited up here, with three cubicles and a curtain for privacy.

Much better than a bathroom! And unlike back in July, when Noob was still exclusively breastfed (no solids) and I had to pump three times during the day to get enough milk for him, I only had to make use of this spot once. I love pumping for a nursing toddler. So easy.

Uncharted territory

2011-02-09T23:17:00.000-06:00

Noob turned 1 last week! Normally, a baby's first birthday marks the point where s/he can transition to cow's milk instead of breastmilk or formula. With Littles, I was so sick of pumping that I stopped when she was 11 months old, and used up my freezer stash while we transitioned her onto milk.

But since Noob was at home for the first 11 months of his life, I haven't really had to pump much at all -- he mostly nursed directly. Also, my current job is much more conducive to pumping than the job I had when Littles was nursing.

So I'm not sick of pumping, and so no reason to stop doing it. Noob also recently had an allergic reaction after accidentally being given peanut butter, so now that we know he has one food allergy, we're a little gun-shy about introducing other high-allergen foods, such as cow's milk.

As a result, Noob is still drinking breastmilk exclusively -- no other kind of milk. He nurses in the morning. His sitter gives him a bottle during the day, and I pump once. Then he nurses when we get home in the evening. It's very manageable!

This is uncharted territory for me, so I'm not sure how things will change over time. Should we transition him towards getting a cup of breastmilk during the day, rather than a bottle? When should we think about introducing cow's milk, and how will that fit in with his breastmilk consumption? Will he drop nursing sessions on his own, or will I eventually need to nudge him towards weaning like I did with Littles?

I'm curious to see what the next few months hold for us!

Searching for child care, round 4: Noob

2011-01-17T22:09:00.001-06:00

I've blogged before about our various searches for child care for Littles. We recently went through yet another search -- this time, for Noob.

We knew from the start that Noob would not require outside child care for quite a while. Between my maternity leave (20 weeks), Hubby's paternity leave (12 weeks), and some assistance from my mother and mother-in-law over the summer in between our two leaves, we were able to keep Noob at home until just before his first birthday.

This meant that we weren't in any particular rush to line up child care for him. Still, while I was on maternity leave, I started visiting daycare centers in our area. I figured that I would pick my favorite and put money down to hold Noob's place. Then, as his start date drew closer, we could look at in-home daycares, nannies, and other options that could not be reserved well in advance. (Sending him to Littles' preschool was not an option, as it does not start till age 2.)

I was already familiar with virtually all of the daycare centers in our area from visiting them during previous daycare searches. I already knew that my top choice would probably be the same Bright Horizons franchise that we had almost picked on two separate occasions for Littles. In fact, I had visited Bright Horizons so many times without sending Littles there that I was a little embarrassed to go back again.

But none of the other daycare centers appealed to me. I finally realized the fundamental problem: Hubby and I have a certain parenting "style," and I couldn't find a center that fit that style. Sometimes, it was obvious, such as at the center that served Frito pie (Fritos corn chips, "mystery meat" looking ground beef, beans, and bright orange cheese) as a lunch, when we try to minimize fried foods and provide at least one fruit/veggie at every meal. Or the one that had an hour of TV time listed daily in the infant room, when we try to avoid screen time for our kids until age 2 and limit it past that point.

Sometimes, it was just a feeling. Many places felt very "institutional." I felt like Noob's basic needs would be met at all of them, but I didn't feel like he would be loved on and nurtured like I want.

I want to be clear that I am not anti-daycare center. I consider Littles' preschool to be a daycare center, and it doesn't feel "institutional" at all. I'm sure there are similarly non-"institutional" daycare centers out there that accept infants. I just didn't find any of them close to my home.

Anyway, after visiting all the places except Bright Horizons, I had only found one other that I would consider, a Children's Courtyard franchise. As luck would have it, both places are on the list of daycares available for backup care through my company. We had two stretches during Noob's time at home where we needed backup care, so I was able to get him in to both centers for a few days each. This was an excellent way to "test drive" both places.

The Children's Courtyard was one of the places that felt very institutional when I visited, and my test drive confirmed this. I peeked in to both infant rooms each day when I dropped off and picked up, and not once did I see a caregiver on the floor just playing with a child. They were always feeding a bottle, or feeding solids, or changing a diaper, or filling out a daily sheet. Not surprising, as they keep a 2:10 caregiver:child ratio in the infant rooms -- the maximum allowed by the state. Infants have a lot of needs, and from what I observed, the caregivers were busy meeting those needs, with very little time left over for anything else.

As for Bright Horizons, I was glad to have the opportunity to visit without actually having to visit :) and I was truly impressed by the care Noob received. He cried a little at drop-off each day, and the teachers were great about holding him while I left; at Children's Courtyard, they had plopped him in an Exersaucer. One day, when I came to pick him up, I was surprised and pleased to find the director of the facility lying on the floor with Noob and two other babies, just playing with them as their regular teacher prepared a bottle.

I knew that Bright Horizons was the only daycare center I was willing to consider. But again, I was embarrassed to put down money knowing that I might back out again. So the weeks went by, and we still had no confirmed child care lined up for Noob.

In my next post, I'll talk about how I looked at in-home daycares as an alternative to Bright Horizons.

Where I pumped today

2011-01-13T20:32:00.001-06:00

My team here in Seattle moved to a new office building, so I've spent the last few days wandering around feeling like the new kid in school. It also gave me the chance to check out a new pump room.

It's interesting seeing the contrasts between different pump rooms, even within my company. Since I work in a male-dominated field, many of the pump rooms seem to be very lightly used. One sign of the light use? The receptionists at those offices have to look up the pump room location when I ask.

But my team's new office houses my company's sales and support arms, which tend to have more women. So when I asked the receptionist where the pump room is, she didn't have to look it up... she pulled out a stack of cards that had the pump room numbers and combination written on it, and told me, "Use the one on the fifth floor. It's nicer than the one on the second floor."

She was right! It's pretty darn nice...

I love the comfy couch (in the bottom right corner of this picture), and the artwork on the wall :) It also has a mini fridge for storing milk.

Oh, and if you're curious about what three days' worth of breastmilk looks like...

That's probably around 60 oz worth, all in freezer bags. The cooler bag is the little one that came with my Medela Pump in Style Advanced. For my flight home tonight, I'll put some of this milk in another cooler bag, so that I can fit ice packs in there to keep the milk cold.

Pumping changes

2011-01-12T00:56:00.001-06:00

Business trips give me a good opportunity to see where my milk supply is at. I've had trips in July (Noob was 5 months old), October (8 months old), and November (9 months old). On these trips, I've generally pumped first thing in the morning, twice during the work day (around 11 AM and 3 PM), and once at night back in the hotel. I usually got about 12 oz at the morning session and 6 oz at each of the other sessions, for a total of around 30 oz. Meanwhile, back home, Noob was eating 4-5 six ounce bottles each day, so I was able to keep up with him fairly easily.

Over the last two months, Noob has dropped down to just 3 nursing sessions each day, as his solids intake has increased. So on my current business trip, I'm pumping 3 times a day as well: first thing in the morning, once during the work day, and once at night. Today, I got 8.5 oz in the morning, a a little over 3 oz during the work day (this was a short session), and 9 oz at night, for a total of just under 21 oz -- a definite decrease compared to my last business trip. Back home, Noob ate 17 ounces, so I'm still keeping up with him.

What I Wore Wednesday

2010-12-15T23:44:00.000-06:00

This week, I experimented with using my mobile phone to take pictures, rather than my camera. Because I'm lazy, and my phone auto-uploads the pictures to SkyDrive. That way, I don't have to plug in my camera to grab the pictures.

Let's see how they turned out.

Wednesday - Meetings in the office

Typical of most IT companies, my company's dress code is... well, come to work dressed, and you're OK. I remember when I first interviewed here, back when I was in college, and I wore a suit. Haha. My interviewers were dressed in ragged jeans and giant t-shirts. That was the first and last time I wore a suit to the office!

I normally wear either jeans or khakis when I come into the office. Every now and then, I'll wear a skirt, and when I do, I usually get asked at least once, "Do you have an interview today or something?" :)

Sweater - Esprit. I bought this on a business trip to Dubai back in 2006, after British Airways lost my luggage :)

Khakis - J. Crew

Thursday - Meetings in the office

This is my $36 Gap outfit that I mentioned last week :)

Sweater - Gap

Jeans - Gap

Friday - Working from home

I forgot to take a picture! I was in jeans and a geeky t-shirt, so it's probably for the best!

Saturday - Lacrosse team holiday party and various errands

Shirt - Ann Taylor. My friend Jamie turned me on to this store a few years ago and I love it! They have lots of great clothes that are stylish but also comfortable, versatile, and reasonably priced. This shirt is so stretchy that it actually lasted me well into the second trimester of my pregnancy with Noob, but still looks good even when I'm not pregnant. Littles told me, "Mommy, I like your flower shirt." High praise indeed!

Jeans - I think these are my Old Navy jeans.

Sunday - Shopping with the kids and lacrosse meeting

Sweater - Gap. Another sweater that I've had since college, possibly earlier.

Jeans - Gap.

Monday - Meetings in the office

Shirt - Ann Taylor

Jeans - Gap. Yeah. I re-wear jeans a lot.

Tuesday - Meetings in the office

Sweater - Bass.

Jeans - Gap again. Hmmmmm.

Wednesday - Meetings in the office

Sweater - Old Navy. I love this sweater, love the color, love how soft it is (cashmere). It was a steal off the clearance rack! It was in the 70's today, so this sweater was just perfect, a little warmer than a t-shirt but not too hot.

Jeans - Old Navy.

Hmmm, the phone didn't do too bad. The lighting in our bathroom just sucks :( Oh well. It's the best place in the house to take pictures, from a mirror perspective, so I'll have to deal with the lighting.

Recharging

2010-12-10T21:24:00.001-06:00

I went through a training program for work about a month ago where, among many other things, we talked about "recharging" -- little things that we can do throughout the day to restore our physical/mental/emotional energy so that we can keep working through our to-do lists.

My favorite recharging ritual? As I posted previously, Littles currently goes to preschool from 9 AM-2 PM, while Hubby is home on paternity leave. When she gets home, I usually take 5 minutes to step away from my computer, give her a hug, talk to her about her day, ooh and ahh over anything she brought home with her, and maybe even read her a quick book before naptime. (Hers, not mine, unfortunately!) It gives me a nice little break, and I return to work refreshed and ready to tackle the last few hours of my day.

Hubby's paternity leave will be over in less than a month, and Littles will be back to full-time at preschool. I'll miss that little ritual.

Where I pumped today

2010-12-09T23:14:00.000-06:00

My company has two office buildings in Dallas. I already chronicled the pump room in one building in a previous post. Yesterday and today, I had a meeting in the other building. Yay, a new pumping location to check out!

The pump room in this building is normally locked, and you have to go to the security office to get them to unlock it. Kind of a pain. Funny, the security officer had to enter like fifty zillion codes to get at the key. Hello? It's a key to a pump room, not to starting nuclear war.

The room is small and bare bones, but comfortable:

After I pump, I typically put my cooler bag and my pump parts (inside an opaque bag) in one of the office fridges. Last night, my meeting wrapped up after hours, and when I went to get my pumping stuff out of the fridge, I found that the area where the fridge was in was locked. Whoops! I had to call a security guard to get it unlocked so I could retrieve my milk!

What I Wore Wednesday

2010-12-08T23:57:00.000-06:00

My friend Ashley does a series on her blog called "What I Wore Wednesday." Each day, she takes a picture of her outfit for the day, and then on -- wait for it -- Wednesdays, she posts all the pictures from the week. She's been encouraging all her friends to participate as well, but... well, most weeks, I (shhhh!) rarely get out of my pajamas. I consider that to be a major perk of working from home!

But I had an onsite visit with a customer last week, and then I have meetings in the office this week and next week, so I do have to get out of my PJs. Booooooo. But that means I no longer have an excuse to skip out on WIWW. So here ya go, Ashley, this one is for you!

I will warn you upfront: I have no style at all. Stacy and Clinton from What Not To Wear would be horrified by my closet. Horrified. I'm cheap, which means I hate spending money on clothes. And working from home, I don't need a huge wardrobe. So I rarely buy new clothes. I've realized recently that a lot of my clothes were purchased when I was in college. Some, when I was in high school. Yikes. I also hate accessorizing, and I hate makeup. I just don't have time to deal with all that in the morning.

Is anyone still reading? OK. Here goes :)

Thursday: Onsite visit with customer

Shirt - Gap
Sweater - J. Crew (ugh, this lighting is awful. It's actually navy in color.)
Pants - J. Crew

Customer visits mean no jeans, sneakers, or flip flops. Oftentimes, if I'm visiting a customer for the first time, I'll err on the side of being more dressy than I need to be, and will put on a skirt and a nice shirt. But I had worked with this customer before and knew that a more casual look was fine.

I couldn't figure out a good way to take pictures of my shoes. I have two pairs of Skechers shoes (one black, one brown) that I usually wear when I go onsite. I wore the brown pair this day. When I'm not onsite, I'm usually in an old pair of running shoes.

Friday: Working from home

Shirt - Ironman race shirt :)
Jeans - Old Navy

I actually got out of my PJs today, because I did preschool drop-off for Littles. (Since Hubby is home on paternity leave, he's normally the one to do drop-offs and pick-ups.) I really could do drop-off in my PJs, because Littles' preschool does drop-offs from car line, so I don't even have to get out of the car... but I do try to get dressed anyway!

Saturday: Lacrosse coaching/playing

Jacket - Boathouse
Pants - Bacharach

The pants are actually from my college lacrosse team, but they match the colors of the school that I coach! It works out well! I usually wear jeans when coaching, but this day, I was playing as well. So I wore these pants with shorts underneath, and took the pants off when it was time to play.

Sunday: Christmas tree shopping

Sweater - Bass (I'm pretty sure I bought this sweater when I was in high school... maybe when I was a freshman in college)
Jeans - Gap

I had only one pair of jeans (the Old Navy pair I wore on Friday) until just a few weeks ago, when I bought this pair. They were originally $70, but they were marked down to $40. I also had a Groupon for $50 at Gap that I purchased for $25. Since I didn't get any money back if I didn't use the full value of the Groupon, I threw in a sweater to put me over $50. The sweater was originally $34.50, but on sale for 40% off. All told, I got a $70 pair of jeans and a $34.50 sweater for $36 total. Did I mention I'm cheap? Those are the kinds of deals I need to find before I'll buy new clothes!

Later Sunday: More lacrosse coaching

Shirt - Gildan
Jeans - Gap

I don't think you can really see, but on my shirt, it says "[School name] Lacrosse" and has two crossed lacrosse sticks. I put my Boathouse jacket over this.

Funny, it's really rare for me to wear my hair down when I'm coaching. I did this day, just because I had blow dried it to look decent in pictures while Christmas tree shopping, so I saw no reason to put it back for the games. All my lacrosse girls were like, "Coach, did you get a haircut?" I guess it looks a lot shorter down vs. in a ponytail!

Monday and Tuesday: I wasn't feeling well (I stayed home sick from work on Tuesday) so I had other priorities besides taking pictures of my outfits!

So there ya go! I'll try to do a little better next week at taking pictures every day!

No, it's not at all like being laid off.

2010-11-18T17:28:00.001-06:00

I've been on a crazy stretch of travel. My last five weeks have been: 3 days in Seattle, 2 days in Austin, 3 days doing an onsite visit at a local customer site (at least I got to go home every night during that one!), 3 days of training in Atlanta (followed by a few days of visiting with my parents), and then 2 days back in Seattle earlier this week.

I flew from Atlanta directly to Seattle on Sunday night, and got to chatting with my hotel shuttle driver about my traveling. I said, "Thankfully, my husband is home on paternity leave. So he's in a better position to handle all my travel than he would be if he were working at his normal job and had all of that stress on top of taking care of the kids."

The shuttle driver was very confused. "Oh, he's not able to find a job? Is that like being laid off?"

Ummm, no. Paternity leave is not at all like being laid off.

Eventually, I helped him understand what paternity leave was. So then he asked, "Oh. Is that going alright? Your husband taking care of the kids?"

Ummm, yes. Why wouldn't it?

And why do I suspect that no one asked Hubby during my maternity leave, "So, is that going alright? Your wife taking care of the kids?"

Daycare during maternity (and paternity!) leave

2010-11-15T23:19:00.000-06:00

After five months back at work, my maternity leave seems like a distant memory. But Noob is still at home with family! When I returned to work in late June, my mother-in-law came out to watch Noob for most of the summer. My mother also watched him for two weeks in there, in late July/early August.

Then, at the beginning of October, Hubby's paternity leave started. We're lucky enough to work for a company that gives up to 12 weeks of leave to new dads, including 4 weeks fully paid. So Hubby will be off work until early January, when Noob will be 11 months old.

We did choose to leave Littles in preschool for this entire time. It wasn't required; she wouldn't have lost her spot if we had pulled her out for all or part of this 11-month period. But we thought that was a long time for her to be out of school. She loves her friends there, she always has fun, and she learns a lot. We didn't want to deprive her of that for nearly a year.

It also gave each of us more time to bond with Noob one-on-one. And I know that in the early weeks, I appreciated having some Littles-free time to catch up on sleep, or to get things done around the house so that I could sleep later!

What we did do was cut back on Littles' preschool hours. Prior to Noob's birth, she went to preschool full time, roughly 9 AM to 6 PM, Monday through Friday. The preschool day itself went from 9 AM to 2 PM, and then in the afternoon, she went to extended care, where she could take a nap and play until pickup time.

As soon as Noob was born, we cut her back to just school days, 9 AM to 2 PM. Then, in the beginning of April, as Noob started sleeping more and I felt like I could take on a little more, we cut her back further to just four days a week. So now, she goes to preschool only 20 hours a week, compared to 40-45 hours previously.

It's a really nice balance. She still gets plenty of preschool time, but she also gets that extra day at home to do something fun or just hang out and play. These days, she's skipping her nap more and more, so it's great to have some extra time with her in the late afternoon, rather than having her stay at school until 5 or 6 PM. It's also a little cheaper, about 75% of the full-time rate, so that works out well, too.

Truly full-time pumping

2010-11-10T23:01:00.001-06:00

For the most part, during my nursing "career," I've managed to avoid truly full-time pumping -- that is, pumping all day, without nursing at all. Prior to Littles' first birthday (when she cut back to two nursing sessions a day), I only had one day when I did not nurse her at all, during a one-day business trip when she was 9 months old. As recently as early October, it looked like I'd have a similar record with Noob.

But I've ended up traveling a lot over these last few weeks, so I've gotten reacquainted with my pump, big-time!

This week, I'm in Atlanta for some training. My parents live here, so Hubby (who is on paternity leave right now) and the kids flew out with me, and we're staying a few extra days after the training is over to visit with my parents.

We decided that during the 3 days of training, it would make sense for me to stay in the hotel where the training is occurring. This is for a variety of reasons, but certainly one big reason is that it makes pumping a lot easier, because I can run up to my room during the day to get it done.

So I've been pumping full time. Here is what my pumping schedule has looked like for the past few days:

Tuesday
8:00 AM - 30 mins, 12 oz
12:15 PM (lunch break) - 20 mins, 6.5 oz
2:45 PM (break from training) - 10 mins, 3 oz
7:00 PM - 7.5 oz

Total = 29 oz
Noob's consumption = 27 oz

Wednesday
7:30 AM - 20 mins, 10.5 oz
9:55 AM (break from training) - 10 mins, 3 oz

I should have pumped at lunch, but I chose to spend the time doing some networking instead. That is one thing I really hate about pumping during events like this: Since I work primarily from home, I usually seize every opportunity I can get to network with people face-to-face, but having to pump means that I spend practically every free minute during the day "networking" with my pump, not my colleagues. But today, I had a friend who I really wanted to catch up with. Pumping could wait.

2:45 PM (break from training) - 10 mins, 3 oz
4:30 PM (after training) - 20 mins, 7 oz
5:00 PM - Nursing! Hubby brought the kids to my hotel to say hello. The visit was brief, as I had to jump on a conference call, but it was wonderful to see them.
11:30 PM - 20 mins, 3.5 oz

Total = 27 oz
Noob's consumption (not counting the nursing session) = 25 oz

As for milk storage, at home, I store milk in the plastic bottles that came with my pump (in the fridge) or glass bottles (in the freezer). This is an eco-friendly and cheap option at home, but it doesn't work well for extended trips. I can't store milk in the plastic bottles, because I need them emptied so I can pump into them again. And glass bottles take up too much room when you're talking about storing nearly 30 oz of milk per day.

Instead, I've been using Lansinoh milk storage bags. I pour the milk into the bags immediately after pumping. That frees up my plastic bottles for more pumping. And they are much more compact than bottles, which comes in handy when traveling home with my milk. On one trip a few weeks ago, I managed to fit 2+ days of milk (over 60 oz) into the small cooler bag that came with my pump.

Anyway, I'm excited for my training to end tomorrow, so I can spend less time with my pump and more time with my kids!

This could only happen to me... while pumping

2010-11-03T23:49:00.000-05:00

This week, I had a (rare) onsite visit with a customer. As always, it was a struggle to figure out how to slip away to pump. Actually, I didn't figure it out: I just waited till the end of the work day to pump. Thankfully, Noob is down to just two 6-ounce bottles during the workday, and my supply seems to be a little more resilient with him compared to what it was with Littles. So I'm actually able to pump enough for both his bottles in one session. At least for a few days -- I'm sure it would kill my supply if I kept that up for too long.

Anyway, I brought along my hands-free pumping bra today so that I could pump on my drive home. I pulled over to the most remote corner of the parking lot that I could find. It faced out towards an empty field, and there was just one car nearby. Perfect! So I took off my regular bra, put on my pumping bra, and got my pump all hooked up. Since there was no one nearby, I didn't bother to put on my nursing cover or be particularly discreet while doing all of this.

I looked over to turn on my pump... and saw something in motion out of the corner of my eye. It was that one nearby car, pulling away.

Whoops.

I don't think the occupant could have seen too much, since my car door and my seat would have blocked most of his/her view, but who knows.

What is it about a pumping mom in a parking lot that seems to attract other people like a moth to a flame? Seems like whenever I pump in a parking lot, even if I pick the quietest corner, someone always decides to wander around nearby. C'mon, I'm already pumping in a car for goodness sakes, can't I get a teeny tiny bit of privacy?

Where I pumped this week, last week, and the week before!

2010-08-28T15:02:00.000-05:00

No more travel since our return from Seattle, but I've still had to pump on a number of occasions...

This week: In the bathroom at the auto dealership while getting some work done on my car. Fun, fun, fun, as bathroom pumping always is. Still, worth it to avoid having to entertain Noob at the auto dealership for nearly three hours.

Last week: In the pump room of one of our Dallas office buildings...

Very basic, just a sofa/padded bench, a table, and a clock. It's directly off a women's bathroom, so there is convenient access to a sink for washing pump parts. There are also lockers in the bathroom, perfect for leaving my pump between sessions... which I realized after I left my pump in the pump room itself after my first session one day, and it disappeared! Imagine my shock when I returned for my next session and couldn't find my pump anywhere. I finally asked the receptionist if anyone had dropped off a black shoulder bag that had been left in the bathroom, and she said, "Yes! The cleaning people turned it in." What the heck? Whatever. After that, I used the lockers.

I also had a rare in-person encounter with another pumping mother :) She was finishing up her session one morning, just as I was coming in for mine. Always nice to know there are more of us out there.

The week before: I was in the other Dallas office building, teaching a training session. Teaching is often tricky because breaks are short and infrequently, and if you're the teacher, you can't exactly slide in late from a pumping session. Thankfully, for this particular training, there were two 2-hour sessions each day with a long lunch break in between. So I could easily pump before the first session and pump during lunch. After the second session, I could either pump again or go home (about 5 minutes away) to nurse Noob. It worked out very well.

Another thing that worked out well was that there was a small conference room directly across the hallway from the room where I was teaching...

It had completely frosted windows and a locking door, so it was perfect for pumping. Less time spent walking to the pump room = more time to pump! I did discover the hard way that the locking door did not unlock when you opened it. So I locked myself out the first time I used it. Whoops. Fortunately, security got it opened again pretty quickly, and I was careful not to make that mistake again!

Ahhhh, pumping. Always an adventure.

Where I Pumped Today returns with a vengeance!

2010-08-09T23:24:00.001-05:00

Longtime readers may recall that when I was pumping for Littles, I did a series called "where I pumped today," documenting all the weird and wonderful places that I ended up pumping.

Pumping for Noob is much easier, because most days, I don't have to pump at all! Since we have family watching him at home right now, and I mostly work from home, I'm able to nurse him directly most of the time. It's so much easier than pumping!

Of course, on my business trip to Seattle two weeks ago, I wasn't able to do this, so I did end up pumping most days. To make things even more fun, my meetings during my trip were spread across various locations around the city. I logged a lot of miles with my pump, and pumped in a lot of different places!

On Sunday, I had a meeting in Benaroya Hall, which is normally the home of the Seattle Symphony. Despite the large number of attendees, I was not surprised when I inquired about a pumping room and was told that, well, there were always the less-frequently-used bathrooms on the second floor...

I pumped in bathrooms pretty often with Littles, but never took pictures of them because, well, no one likes to see pictures of bathrooms. But no more sugar-coating. This is the life of a working/pumping mom.

For my first session, I set up in a stall. This is my pretty typical bathroom pumping setup -- I hang the pump from a purse hook, and try not to let my pump parts touch anything. It's really uncomfortable because there is nowhere to sit, so I have to pump while standing. Also, stalls usually don't have power outlets, so I have to use the battery pack for my pump. The suction isn't as strong, so it takes longer to finish pumping.

For my second and third sessions, I got bold and decided to pump out in the main part of the bathroom. This way, I could use a power outlet. Thankfully, no one walked in while I was pumping. There was no way to avoid putting my pump bag on the floor, so I just dealt with it. Ick.

As is always the case with a long day of meetings, just finding the time to pump is a challenge, but I did pretty well this day.

Alright, if you're still with me... no more bathroom pictures. Promise.

On Monday and Tuesday, I worked out of the office building that houses the offices of my Seattle-based co-workers. It has its own pump room, which is typical of the pump rooms in my company's Seattle offices. There are two cubicles with curtains. Each cubicle has a chair and a desk. There is also a small refrigerator for pumped milk and pump parts, and shelves for storing pumps. This room does not appear to be used very much; I never saw another woman's pump or milk.

On Wednesday morning, I had a meeting at one of our offices downtown. The pump room in this office was very similar, although it also had a small sink for washing pump parts. I also saw another pump in there -- always nice to know there are other pumping moms out there! Unfortunately, I didn't have time to snap a picture of this one.

On Wednesday afternoon, I had to go to the convention center for another meeting. As I explained in my post about this trip, my company was running a big convention this week (which was part of the reason why I was there in the first place). So I asked about a pump room at the convention information desk, and was happy to find out that one was available! It was a small room, perhaps serving as a storage closet under normal circumstances? But it was furnished with comfortable couches and a table for my pump. Very nice, and much appreciated!

Thursday was my worst day for pumping. I had a meeting starting at 9:30 AM in yet another office building, so I went over a little early and did a quick pump session. This building had pump rooms on three out of four floors, so the rooms just had a single cubicle, rather than the double-cubicle style of most of the other pump rooms in our offices. There was also a sink and a small refrigerator.

My meeting ran until about noon, and then I had to grab lunch with my co-workers and head over to a team outing. So I didn't get the chance to pump any more that day :( By the time the outing was over and I got back to the main office, it was nearly 5:30 PM and I was dying to pump! I pumped about 12 ounces in one sitting!

On Friday, thankfully, I was out of meetings and back in the main office, and able to pump regularly again. My supply took a definite hit from the limited pumping over the course of the week, but starting Saturday, I was able to nurse full-time again and now my supply seems to be right back where it needs to be.

I'll be in our Dallas office a lot over the next two weeks, so stay tuned for a few more installments in the "where I pumped today" series!

Seattle

2010-08-08T21:19:00.001-05:00

Twice a year, my company holds a big technical training conference for employees in Seattle. It attracts folks from all over the world! My fellow program managers and I don't really need to attend the conference ourselves, but one of the teams that we work closely with sends a number of people. So we run some sessions for them at the conference. Since the sessions bring remote employees like myself into town, our management usually uses that week to hold our quarterly team meetings and other events, so that we don't have to make multiple trips. Works for me!

This summer's conference was scheduled for the last week in July, so I anticipated that it would be my first business trip after my return to work on June 21. In early June, we found out that Hubby would be attending the conference himself. I quickly confirmed with my manager that I would need to be in Seattle as well that week, and that it would be OK for me to bring my family. We started making plans:

Flights: Noob is home with family for most of the summer -- mostly my mother-in-law. (She's a teacher, so she's off work for the summer.)But the Seattle week happened to be the first of two weeks where my mother planned to come watch Noob. She was flying in from Georgia, and booked her ticket to go to Seattle before coming to Dallas. We also bought a ticket for Littles.
Hotel: I booked a two-bedroom suite at a Residence Inn very close to my company's office. We've stayed at this same hotel in the past while traveling with Littles, and it always works out well. There is plenty of room to spread out, and having a full kitchen makes meal preparation/eating with kids much easier.
Child care: Although my mom would be in Seattle with us, she did have some work she needed to do. With Littles out of preschool for the week, we knew that she would need some help with the kids. We used our company's backup care program to locate a nanny, "J," who would come to the hotel in the mornings, allowing my mom to get some work done. My dad also planned to fly out later in the week to help -- he wanted to see the kids anyway, and Seattle has much nicer July weather than Georgia does!

With all our plans in place, we took off for Seattle on Friday night, on Noob's first flight ever!

I brought along about 25 oz of breastmilk. About 15 oz was frozen milk from May, and 10 oz was refrigerated milk that I had pumped over the previous day or two. The frozen milk started to defrost on the way to Seattle, and therefore had to be used within 24 hours. So Noob got bottles all day Saturday, rather than breastfeeding, and I pumped. So at the end of the day, I had 25 oz of refrigerated milk that just had to be used within the next few days. That was more than enough milk for an average day away from Noob, along with some extra in case I fell short pumping.

The extra milk did come in handy, as I had a difficult time with pumping all week. I was in a lot of meetings, and often had to delay or skip pumping sessions. In fact, by Wednesday, I actually had to make a special trip back to the hotel in the middle of the day to drop off the milk I had pumped that morning, in order to ensure that Noob had enough milk to get him through the rest of the day. If I do a trip like this again, I'll definitely pump more in the days before our departure, so that I can bring more refrigerated milk with me as a safety cushion.

The child care arrangements worked out reasonably well. Noob did fine. At his age, as long as he's kept fed and rested, he'll be OK, and J and my mom did a good job of that. Nights were a little tiring for me, as the best way to keep him quiet with so many other people sharing the hotel room with him was to pull him into bed with me and nurse him all night. But that worked out fine, as I still got a good bit of rest, and having him nurse so much was good for my milk supply anyway.

Littles was more of a challenge. J had a different approach to dealing with Littles than Hubby and I do. Not in a bad way, really. To give an example, if I take Littles to the park, she never wants to leave. So a few minutes before it's time to go, I'll tell her, "OK, Littles, 3 more minutes, and then it's time to go home." She'll often respond, "5 more minutes," and I'll say OK. Of course, she has no concept of time, so a minute later, I'll tell her, "OK, 1 more minute," and she'll respond, "2 more minutes." And so on. But this gives her enough of a heads-up that she almost always leaves on her own accord within a reasonable amount of time, even if it's a little longer than 3 minutes. J, on the other hand, went to the park with her and told her "5 more minutes" and then counted down exactly 5 minutes. Again, this wasn't a bad approach, just confusing to Littles because it wasn't what she was used to.

On top of it all, obviously Littles was dealing with being in a different time zone. She was also missing both Hubby and me tremendously. I was working very long hours, and Hubby was actually staying in a different hotel -- he was downtown, close to the convention center, while the kids and I were out in a Seattle suburb close to my office. All in all, it was a bit of a rough week for her, and she definitely was not on her best behavior.

I felt a little bad for my mom. She doesn't get to see the kids all that often, so I know she was really looking forward to spending this time with them, but she ended up getting a bit of a raw deal under the circumstances. For example, when she came in to say "Good morning," Littles would cry "Mama!" and cling to me. It wasn't that she doesn't love her Nana, because she does, but just that she associated my mom with my leaving, and she didn't want me to go. Thankfully, my mom hung in there, and was a huge help on a couple of nights when I had dinner meetings. And then she flew home to Dallas with us and stayed with us the next week, where Littles got back on her normal routine and did much better overall.

All in all, it was a hard week in many ways, but I'm glad we brought the kids along. Really, the only other option would have been to leave my mom at home alone in Dallas with both kids. That might have given Littles a little more consistency, but she still would have been acting out some due to missing Hubby and me -- she does that even when just one of us is away. Pumping would have been a huge struggle for me. And it would have been a lot to ask of my mom, to care for both kids alone for a whole week. At least in Seattle, even working long hours, I could help her in the mornings, as well as most nights. So really, everything worked out as well as it could, under the circumstances!

Big girl

2010-06-08T22:30:00.002-05:00

Hard to believe it's been a full year since Littles started at her preschool.

This morning, when I dropped her off, she put her lunch on the shelf and her school bag in her cubby, then pulled out a mat and chose a Montessori work to do. All by herself.

Another girl, B, was hanging back in a corner of the room, fingers in her mouth, watching the other kids, a little unsure of what to do. She is new to the class, so I'm guessing she just recently turned two. She looks so tiny! Watching her this morning, it struck me that that is what Littles looked like a year ago.

And now look at her. My big girl.

Her teachers report that she's doing really well with her own work and is also great at helping with the other kids. She'll stay in the introductory room through the summer, and then move up to one of the primary rooms in the fall.

Just a few months ago, the idea of moving up made me really nervous. I still saw her as that not-quite-two-year-old who I dropped off a year ago. Now I can see that she's ready. She's grown and learned so much in her current class, and we'll miss her teachers tremendously, but I think she'll thrive on the challenges that the primary room presents.

Maternity leave

2010-06-07T09:56:00.001-05:00

Long time, no post, I know. I've been busy.

Noob arrived a few days before his due date, on January 31st, and I have been on maternity leave ever since.

I'm lucky to work for a fabulous company that offers up to 20 weeks of maternity leave to new mothers, including 12 weeks fully paid. I'm currently two weeks away from my return-to-work date.

I've enjoyed my maternity leave tremendously. Much more than I did with Littles. Some of this is likely due to our changed family circumstances. When Littles was born, Hubby was working long hours at a startup company, and had a 45-minute commute on top of it. He also traveled monthly. Now, he works shorter hours at an office that's 5 minutes away, and last week was his first business trip since Noob's birth. He is around a lot more, which takes a load off my shoulders. It also makes me happy to see him with his kids so much more. His new job gives him more time to be the amazing daddy he's always been.

Some of this is likely due to the fact that I'm enjoying Noob's entire newborn stage more than I did Littles'. He is a ridiculously easy baby. Not that she was difficult, by any means, but he's even easier. And now I know that even the occasional difficult moments are just... moments. They'll pass quickly. And all those wonderful moments? They'll pass even more quickly.

And some of this, I think, is the confidence that comes with having 2+ years of working motherhood under my belt. I remember checking my work email a lot in the early weeks of my maternity leave with Littles. After all, work was what I had done for, well, my entire career. I didn't know how to let go. I didn't want to let go, because I knew I was good at my job, but I didn't know if I'd be any good at this motherhood thing. In some ways, I didn't want to be good at it, because then maybe I would feel like I should do it full-time. I didn't want to enjoy myself on maternity leave, because then maybe I would think I should make my leave permanent.

Now? I know that I'm good at this motherhood thing. Being home for this long, I've discovered that I really could be a stay-at-home mom. I love it that much. I can't justify my decision to work by saying, "I'm not cut out to stay at home." Because I am.

But that doesn't mean that I will. That's the confidence that I have now that I didn't have with Littles. I can admit to myself that I would love to stay at home, but I can still choose to go back to work -- because I love working, too. And I know my kids will be just fine either way.

This time around, I've barely looked at my work email while on maternity leave. I have a different job right now. It's OK that I'm good at it. It's OK that I love it. It's also OK that it's temporary.

Missing out

2009-11-19T23:59:00.001-06:00

One of the frequently-fired missiles in the mommy wars goes something like this: "As a stay-at-home mom, I'm able to attend all of the class parties at my kid's school. I see all the kids who don't have a parent there because both parents work. I see how sad those kids are."

I always roll my eyes at that. "Well, I have a flexible work schedule. I'll be at every party. No problem. It's called work-life balance, duh."

At the orientation meeting for Littles' preschool, we got the calendar of all the important dates for the year, and I dutifully sat down and put every single party for the entire school year into my calendar. I wasn't going to miss a single one!

Fast forward about two months. I received a calendar placeholder for my training in Seattle this week, went to accept it -- and realized that the last day of training conflicted with Littles' very first class party.

An enormous wave of mommy guilt washed over me. I immediately pulled up an instant messenger window to tell Hubby to please, please, please make time to go to Littles' school on November 19th for a special Thanksgiving lunch.

He agreed. Mommy guilt assuaged.

That is, until my normal pre-bedtime phone call with Hubby and Littles tonight. Turns out it wasn't just lunch; the kids put on a little play for the parents. Littles' class sang songs, and apparently Littles (who loves to sing at home) just stood there and didn't sing anything!

I giggled at that with Hubby, and then it hit me: I missed my daughter's first school play :(

I pressed Hubby for more details, but I could hear Littles wailing for bedtime in the background. He said, "I'll tell you all about it when you get home."

I can't wait.

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Thursday edition

2009-11-19T23:44:00.000-06:00

A guy in my training class had free speaker phones to give away! They hook up to your laptop -- definitely handy for all my conference calls at home. Woo-hoo for free gadgets!

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Wednesday edition

2009-11-18T23:24:00.000-06:00

I talked to Hubby and Littles a couple of times tonight. They had a daddy-daughter dinner at a local restaurant, and it sounded like they both enjoyed it.

It reminded me of one of the definite upsides of all my traveling over the past few weeks: Littles has grown noticeably closer to Hubby. Not that they weren't close before, but there are just some subtle differences, like how Littles no longer asks for me to do both bathtime and story time at night. (Hubby and I always split those responsibilities when we're both home, even when Littles protests.)

Don't get me wrong, Littles and I are still very close. It's not like she's rejecting me for being gone. It's just that in my absence, her relationship with her daddy has had space to grow. And that's a beautiful thing for me to see.

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Tuesday edition

2009-11-17T22:39:00.000-06:00

Finding the handful of sleeping positions that are actually comfortable at 29 weeks pregnant is a lot easier when you have a king-size bed with lots of pillows, all to yourself!

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Monday edition

2009-11-16T22:18:00.000-06:00

My flight to Seattle was full of soldiers coming home on leave. Not sure from where, but I'm sure they've been away for a lot longer than I will be this week.

When we landed in Seattle, a lot of the soldiers had family/friends waiting right at the gate. (I guess TSA relaxes the restrictions on non-travelers behind security for soldiers coming home. Good for them.) Just in front of me, a dad nearly got bowled over by his three kids, running over to embrace him in a big group hug. Their mom stood off to the side with a smile on her face, taking it all in.

I took it in, too. It made me tear up. It was beautiful, and perfect.

I'm glad I got to witness that, as it warmed my heart. And it made me thankful that my travels are relatively short, infrequent -- and safe.

I hope that dad comes home for good soon.

Influences

2009-11-09T21:51:00.001-06:00

I've heard the various insults often hurled at working moms, and for the most part, I can let them roll off my back. I'm very happy with my life, Littles and Hubby appear to be happy with theirs, and so I have a great deal of confidence that I'm making the right choices for my family.

But there is one that never fails to get a rise out of me, which is some variation of: "How can you put your child in daycare, and let someone else raise her?"

In a past post, I explained why I am raising Littles, focusing on the influence that I have on her life, even though she does spend a good chunk of each day away from me. Perhaps the biggest influence that I (and Hubby) have is that we choose where and with whom she spends that time.

I mean, I happen to believe that Hubby and I are pretty darn good parents, but I do not believe that we are the only influences that Littles needs in her life. Not for a minute! There is so much she can learn from others.

Case in point. Littles was playing around in my bedroom last Sunday as I put away laundry. I was in the closet hanging some things up when I heard her say, "Plie, passe..." I looked out to see her holding onto the bed for support, leg raised in a perfect passe. That would be the influence of the weekly dance classes we enrolled her in through her preschool.

Another example. As I posted yesterday, we went to the birthday party of K, one of Littles' preschool classmates. When we first arrived, we ran into K's older brother M. Both of us recognized M from school, although we hadn't connected him to K. Anyway, he was climbing all over the railing on his porch while simultaneously chatting his head off about anything and everything, as only a four-year-old can do. And something clicked in my head: If Littles has been hanging out with this kid all afternoon for the last few months, no wonder her gross motor skills and her verbal skills have both grown immensely!

Also, one of the preschool teachers was at the party helping out, and it was neat to see her in action for an extended period of time. It was clear that Littles is totally comfortable with her. And you could tell just by watching her how much she cared for the kids. Not that I ever doubted it, but I left thinking, "I am very glad this person is in Littles' life."

This is not to say that Littles would be completely deprived of all these wonderful outside influences if I (or Hubby) didn't work. Preschool is certainly not the only way to expose Littles to others! Hubby and I have plenty of friends of all ages who we see regularly and who impact Littles' life.

But, well... Hubby and I do work. And although I still feel strongly that we are raising her and we are the primary influences in her life, I'm more than happy to get a little help from her amazing preschool.

Littles in a different light

2009-11-08T21:48:00.001-06:00

Probably my favorite working-mom blog is My Mom Genes. I made the mistake of reading it on a break from my meetings in Seattle last week, and came across a post called Reassurance, where one of the writers talks about watching a slideshow put together by her three-year-old daughter's daycare teachers:

"...we were getting a glimpse into who our children are when we’re not with them. My husband and I saw [our daughter] in a different light. This is who she is when she’s out in the world. Here, she’s not holding our hands, and she’s not being guided by our direction. She’s smiling, sharing, climbing, running, creating... she shines."

It was a mistake to read this at that moment because it made me tear up while surrounded by all my co-workers. Thinking about my baby girl, too, being out in the world. Not holding my hand, not being guided by my direction. And from the occasional glimpse I get, she shines as well.

Hubby and I got more than just a glimpse tonight. Littles got her very first invite to a birthday party for a preschool classmate. The birthday girl was K, who is one of Littles' best friends at school. A lot of other kids from school were there, along with one of the teachers.

As I watched Littles over the course of the evening, it dawned on me: This is who she is when she's out in the world.

I often joke that she was super-active in utero and and hasn't slowed down since, but tonight, I saw her sit quietly next to her teacher with her legs crossed and watch a magic show. I thought back to when Hubby and I first visited her preschool, and how we were amazed to see all the kids sitting quietly during circle time. "Littles will be the one running laps around the room while the other kids sit," we smirked. But out in the world, she does sit.

She climbed out of my lap at dinner and went to chat for a few minutes with a girl named A. Hubby and I compared notes as to what we knew about A -- really, very little, except that she's not in Littles' class but does attend extended care with Littles (after the school day ends at 2 PM). Even though Hubby and I barely know A, she and Littles clearly know each other well. Out in the world, Littles is making friends, all on her own.

Littles is normally shy in large group situations like this one, particularly around adults. Not tonight. The kids all made paper "corsages" and I watched Littles go up to multiple strangers to say, "Look at this! Look at my flower!" Out in the world, without my legs to hide behind, she's outgoing and friendly.

Another excerpt from the My Mom Genes post:

"I’m happy to report that my daughter is a little girl whom I -- and others -- love to spend time with, and will be a woman I can’t wait to know."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Thursday edition

2009-11-05T10:14:00.000-06:00

Donuts at the hotel's breakfast buffet. A pregnant woman's dream come true.

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Wednesday edition

2009-11-04T09:49:00.000-06:00

Trees in Texas simply don't change colors like they do further north. Having spent the first 20+ years of my life living in the north, I miss "real" fall. It's trips like this where I get my fall foliage fix.

This morning, I watched the sun rise all pink and orange over the mountains and the brilliant red and yellow trees. Gorgeous.

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Tuesday edition

2009-11-03T09:17:00.000-06:00

The screaming toddler at breakfast this morning was not mine :)

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Monday edition

2009-11-02T23:27:00.001-06:00

Business trip two of three. This is the longest one, four hotel nights plus a night on a red-eye flight home.

I'm glad I'm traveling today because I enjoyed sharing my pregnancy with my co-workers. The last time I was up here, I was about 13 weeks along and barely showing. So some of my co-workers just found out about it today!

We're also experiencing a mini baby boom in my organization -- there are a lot of people who have either had babies recently or are expecting babies in the coming months. There are two guys in particular whom I talked with a lot today. One has a one-month-old at home, and another is expecting his first in about a month. So we were talking about shopping for baby stuff and dealing with crying newborns and other fun topics. It was fun to share in their excitement and confusion as first-time parents, and really has me looking forward to going through it all again :)

I almost didn't make it home

2009-10-23T23:59:00.001-05:00

My recent travels have been so problem-free that I was due for a bad trip.

I left my conference early yesterday to stand by for an earlier flight, in hopes of making it home in time to put Littles to bed. I arrived at the airport at 11 AM and found out that the 8:35 AM flight was delayed till 2 PM. I knew that would make standby difficult, since presumably everyone on that flight was trying to get on to another flight.

Sure enough, the 12:55 PM and 1:55 PM flights went off completely full, with no standbys clearing.

Fine. I had a confirmed seat on the 3:40 PM flight, which would still get me home around 9ish, plenty of time to relax with Hubby before bedtime and then see Littles off to school the next morning.

At around 3:30 PM, the gate agent announced that there was a mechanical problem and they were investigating. Maybe 15 minutes later, she informed us that the plane was going out of service and the flight was cancelled.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The 8:35 AM flight had also just been cancelled, so rather than go to the ticket counter and deal with the madness of two full flights attempting to get rebooked, I just called customer service. Initially, the representative tried to grab a seat on a nonstop US Airways flight later that evening, but she came back and told me, "I'm sorry, that US Airways flight is now sold out. The best I can do is a confirmed seat on our 6 AM flight tomorrow morning, arriving at 10:43 AM."

Pre-Littles, I would've happily grabbed a cab back to the strip and enjoyed an extra evening in Vegas on someone else's dime.

Instead, having gone from "I might see Littles tonight" to "I won't see Littles tomorrow morning" in the space of a few hours (and having way too many pregnancy hormones coursing through my body), I just broke down in tears in the middle of the airport.

I decided to go to the ticket counter to see what they could do. My hope was that I could get on a flight to the west coast (Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Seattle), because then I knew there were red-eyes that could get me home by 6 AM or thereabouts -- it would be a long night, but I'd be able to see Littles in the morning.

The line at the ticket counter was long and was not moving, so I called customer service back to see if anything had changed. The representative went to look at the same nonstop US Airways flight that the first one had inquired into, and I patiently waited on hold, knowing that the answer would be "Oops, nope, it's sold out."

I was shocked when she came back to tell me that she had found a seat for me! I didn't believe it until I physically walked over to the US Airways ticket counter and got my boarding pass.

I got home shortly after midnight last night. Bless that agent. Bless her, bless her, bless her.

When I walked in the door, Hubby told me that I might want to check on Littles, as she was grunting a few minutes earlier and might have pooped in her sleep. Sure enough, she had. I've never been so happy to change a poopy diaper :) Hey, it bought me a few sleepy minutes with my little girl.

We were late to school this morning because I was having so much fun playing and just being with her. It is good to be home.

Why I'm glad I'm going home today!

2009-10-22T00:54:00.000-05:00

Even if hotel room service is more relaxing than Littles' version, I must admit that I treasure those few extra moments that I get with her on her "room service" nights.

It's nice to have time in the morning to shower and blow-dry my hair, but I prefer having time to hear what Littles has to say over breakfast.

While watching the beautiful sunrise over Vegas yesterday morning, I was reminded of a Lone Star song:
"I've traveled here and everywhere,
Following my job.
I've seen the paintings from the air,
Brushed by the hand of God.
The mountains and the canyons reach
From sea to shining sea
But I can't wait to get back home
To the one He made for me.
'Cause everywhere I'll ever go
And everywhere I've been,
Nothing takes my breath away
Like my front porch looking in..."

And I can't wait to get back home to Hubby and Littles tonight! It's always the best part of traveling :)

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Wednesday edition

2009-10-21T11:04:00.001-05:00

The view of the sunrise over Vegas from my hotel room this morning was beautiful.

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Tuesday edition

2009-10-20T20:26:00.001-05:00

Getting ready this morning took less than an hour, including a shower and blow-drying my hair, and it did not involve changing any diapers!

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Monday edition

2009-10-19T22:46:00.001-05:00

Today marks the beginning of a one-month stretch where I have three business trips. Three! Ugh.

Even the fact that this week's trip is to Las Vegas doesn't help. I'm not a real fan of Vegas anyway -- a city built around drinking and gambling is not much fun for a pregnant woman who doesn't gamble. And I was just here with Hubby for a vacation (our first one ever without Littles) about two months ago, so everything I see here reminds me of him and makes me miss him even more than usual.

But it is what it is, so I might as well look on the positive side by starting a new series called "why I'm glad I'm traveling today."

So why am I glad I'm traveling today? I just enjoyed a lovely room service dinner, where I ordered exactly what I wanted (no debating over what would work best for sharing with a picky two-year-old) and did not hear a single "I don't want it!" "Want more milk!" "Want a spoon!" "No, want a little spoon!" "I'm all done! All done! ALL DONNNNNNNNNNNE!"

Meanwhile, I was on instant messenger with Hubby, who was having his own "room service" experience. That's what we jokingly call it when Littles tries to stall on going to bed by making fifty zillion requests over the video monitor. "I want water!" "I want my Cinderella!" "Yucky water!" "I want monkey!" "I need to go potty!"

I will say, my version of room service was a little more relaxing :) So that is why I am glad I am traveling today.

Childhood vaccines and the working mom

2009-10-10T22:54:00.000-05:00

I have a very long post on vaccinations brewing in my head. So before I get into all that, I thought I'd give some background on where I'm coming from with regards to vaccinations.

Littles was fully vaccinated through two months of age. She received:

First full day of life: Hepatitis B vaccine
4 weeks of age: Another Hepatitis B vaccine
2 months of age: diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (DTaP), inactivated polio (IPV), pneumococcal conjugate (PCV), Hib, and the oral rotavirus vaccine

The two Hepatitis B vaccines weren't too bad, but the week or so after her 2-month shots was awful. It's hard to explain. There was nothing "wrong," nothing where I could take her to the doctor and say, "What is going on with this?" The best way I can explain it is that she just wasn't my baby. Normally easygoing and happy, she was really fussy and out of it. She would pull off when nursing and just scream like she was in pain. It was awful.

Luckily, she came through it. But between her 2 month and 4 month checkups, I started doing more research on vaccinations. To make a very long story short, Littles did not receive any more vaccines until she was 16 months old.

Since then, we've been vaccinating on a delayed schedule. Littles gets two vaccines at every checkup. Hubby and I sometimes have preferences as to which ones she should get, our doctor gives us her two cents, and then we decide together what to do. At this point, she's only missing three shots, although those will probably get delayed a little longer than usual to squeeze in her seasonal and swine flu vaccines (highly recommended by our doctor this season, due to my pregnancy).

I was a little nervous when we started vaccinating again, but the difference between getting 5 vaccines at 2 months of age and getting 2 vaccines at 16 months of age is... well, huge. The worst that has happened is that Littles has had some bad leg pain on the night after receiving the vaccines. But even through that, she was still my baby. Thank goodness.

Hubby and I haven't discussed what we'll do with regards to vaccinating Noob. Honestly, I'm not sure that waiting until 16 months to resume vaccinating Littles was a good idea, so I lean towards starting earlier with Noob. But I do still want to space them out -- I don't want Noob ever getting five vaccines in one day.

To bring this post back to the working-mom theme of this blog, one common misconception I see is that unvaccinated/partially vaccinated kids cannot attend daycare -- obviously, a huge issue for working moms. This is not always the case.

Nearly half the states allow philosophical exemptions to vaccinations. Here in Texas, that meant that in order to enroll Littles in preschool, we had to fill out a state-provided form indicating which vaccines we do not want her to receive, get it notarized, and submit that to the preschool along with her (obviously incomplete) vaccination record. Part of the deal is that if there is an outbreak of a disease that she's not vaccinated for, she may not be permitted to attend preschool until the outbreak is over. We'll take that chance, thanks.

If you're not in a philosophical-exemption state, all other states provide a medical exemption for school enrollment, and all but two states (Mississippi and West Virginia) provide a religious exemption. From what I've heard, both of these exemptions are much harder to obtain than a philosophical exemption, but it is something to look into if you feel very strongly about avoiding or delaying vaccination.

I have much more to say on this topic, but I'll leave it at that for now. The bottom line is that I do believe in vaccination in general. (If I didn't, then I never would have agreed to resuming vaccinating with Littles.) I'm just not happy with the way it's implemented in the USA today, for a variety of reasons.

So much for settling in

2009-09-22T22:16:00.001-05:00

Mia woke up in the middle of the night on Sunday and had a hard time settling back down, and kept rubbing her ear. She woke up in the morning complaining, "hurting in my ear." Off to the doctor we went, and sure enough, she has a nasty ear infection. Probably due to the runny nose due to teething. She's on antibiotics and keeps asking for "medicine for my ear" (Motrin) as well.

So this week is shaping up to be a little off too. One of these weeks, we'll get back to "normal."

Preschool transition redux

2009-09-19T21:50:00.001-05:00

I did a post a few weeks ago about Littles' preschool transition. Well, lucky us. We got to go through it again.

Littles had started in her preschool's summer program. This actually worked out really well, as there were fewer kids and the entire program was a little less formal, so it was a good way to ease her (and us!) into it.

The "school year" officially started last Tuesday, the day after Labor Day. That meant lots of new faces, new processes (for example, a teacher now comes to get her from our car, rather than us parking and walking her in), and new rules (for example, she has to get there by 9:10, and she has to wear a uniform).

So it was almost like doing the transition all over again! Last week was rough, very comparable to her first week in school. She barely napped and was super cranky in the evenings. Normal bedtime is 8:00 PM; last week, she was out before 7:00 PM almost every night.

I also had my first parent-teacher conference :) On the first day of school, we got a note asking us to send pull-ups with Littles. As I mentioned in a previous post, we had been sending cloth diapers that function as pull-ups. Her teachers said they were too hard for Littles to pull on/off and just too much hassle for them, now that the school year had started and there were more kids. Hubby and I were pretty furious, since we had been using them for over three months at that point, with no mention of any potential issues with them.

I asked for a meeting with her teachers and we all sat down after school one day to talk about it. Long story short, once I told them that Littles had been doing pretty well with using the potty at home, the encouraged me to ditch the cloth diapers and the pull-ups, and start sending her to school in underwear.

Poor Littles! She was just getting used to everything around the new school year and we had to throw another big transition at her! On top of it all, she is cutting her last 2-year molar and it is a tough one! So this week was also pretty rough, due to all that.

But she did great. I am so proud of her. She had some #1 accidents on Monday and Tuesday, but the rest of the week, the only #1 accidents she had were when she didn't pull her pants down quite far enough when going on the potty. #2 is another story entirely, as she refuses to go on the potty at all. But we're working on it at home whenever we can, and it's great to have the support of her preschool teachers because most of her #2's are actually at preschool.

Hopefully this week, we'll be able to settle in a little bit and not have so many big changes going on!

Lunches that don't require reheating

2009-08-26T21:31:00.001-05:00

I'm doing this post partially because this question comes up a lot on the mommy boards I frequent, and partially so that I don't lose this information myself :)

When we first selected Littles' preschool, I posed the following question in a number of different parenting forums:

My daughter will be starting preschool in June, just before her second birthday. Her preschool has no facility for refrigerating or reheating lunches. Anyone else in the same boat? Any suggestions for things that will keep well in a cooler bag with an ice pack, and then will taste good without being reheated?

I got lots of great responses, which I've compiled in a list below.

Be sure to cross-check this list against any rules at your preschool. For example, Littles' preschool does not allow nut products, and they ask that we don't send yogurt tubes, just regular yogurt in a cup. Also, if your preschool provides any snacks, you might want to figure out what types of snacks they usually serve. At Littles' preschool, it's almost all refined carbs (Goldfish, Cheerios, animal crackers, etc.). So we try to minimize those kinds of carbs in her lunch, because she gets plenty at snacktime.

One big tip that I got was to heat food at home and send it in a Thermos. We purchased two Foogo food jars, which can safely keep food hot for up to 5 hours. We pack her lunch at around 8 AM for her to eat at 11 AM, so we're easily within that 5-hour window. (Tip: I found the cheapest prices on these food jars at Wal-mart. They only sell them online, but you can get free shipping using their Site to Store option.)

The full list of suggestions:

Sandwich suggestions beyond the ordinary deli meat/cheese on bread:

Waffle with cheese and thinly sliced ham
Whole wheat bagels or mini bagels with cream cheese or Laughing Cow cheese
Tortilla roll-up with chunks of chicken and cheese
Hummus (I’m thinkin’ this would be good as a tortilla roll-up with some veggies, too!)
Chicken salad, tuna salad, egg salad - try it in a pita
"Homemade Lunchables" - send your typical sandwich meat/cheese with crackers instead of bread
Cream cheese and jelly
Peanut butter and jelly, almond butter and jelly

Main courses that can be served cold:

Pasta salad - toss cooked pasta with veggies and Italian salad dressing and parmesan cheese, serve cold. Or try cold noodles with peas.
Cut-up pieces of roasted chicken or turkey
Tofu cubes
Hard boiled eggs
Search for "bento boxes" for tons of ideas. I found this blog by a mom of a preschooler that has lots of creative kid-friendly bento box ideas: http://lunchinabox.net/. She has a great post on lunchbox food safety, too, BTW: http://lunchinabox.net/2007/05/08/food-safety-for-packed-lunches-updated/

Hot food in a Thermos:

Soup
Mac and cheese
Rice, noodles
Soy chicken nuggets
Mini corn dogs
Beans
Leftover pasta, Spaghetti-o’s (one mom said her child likes these straight from the can!)

Veggies:

Edamame tastes good cold.
Cooked veggies – send warm in a Thermos (carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, green beans)
Some parents said that their kids don’t mind cooked veggies served cold, or canned veggies served cold.
"Use frozen peas/corn/broccoli - they will thaw in time for lunch and are delicious cold! (I promise!)"
Raw veggies: cucumbers, cherry or grape tomatoes, carrots/baby carrots/shredded carrots for younger kids, celery
Send some sort of dip with veggies
"If you want soft veggies - Walmart sells veggie cups (by the same makers of the fruit cups). It is veggies w/water. The carrots are perfect - they are small squares and are soft. My son loves them. They also have green beans, corn, and peas. I’ve only found them at Walmart, but wish they sold them elsewhere - they are perfect for young children."

Fruit:

Raw fresh fruit
Apple sauce
Fruit cup
Canned peaches
Mandarin oranges
Banana
Apple slices
Fruit bar
Fruit leather
Dried fruit

Sides/snacks:

String cheese, slices of cheese, cheese cubes
Yogurt - try throwing in some granola or Cheerios on top. Or try GoGurts (yogurt tubes)
Granola bar
Fig Newtons
Veggie Booty or Veggie Chips
Tortilla chips
Pretzels
Cashews or peanuts
Goldfish crackers
Raisins, yogurt-covered raisins
Blueberry muffins, made with squash puree rather than oil

Unfortunately, right around the time that Littles entered preschool, she also entered a bit of a picky-eater phase. We're now used to veggies coming home untouched, no matter how we prepare them, and she's hit and miss on main courses too. Oh well! We'll keep trying stuff.

The preschool transition

2009-08-23T20:54:00.001-05:00

I've been meaning to do a post for a while on Littles' preschool transition -- but, well, life has been busy. Due in large part to the news from my previous post :)

The transition went fairly smoothly. The first week, the main issue was napping, or lack thereof. She didn't nap at all on Monday or Tuesday. By Wednesday morning, she was so exhausted and sluggish that I thought she might be getting sick! As you might imagine, she was also super crabby at night, so for that week, we mostly brought her home, got dinner on the table immediately, and put her straight to bed.

She did nap on Wednesday and then again on Friday, and she's been doing well with napping since then. Every now and then, she has a day where she naps poorly or completely skips her nap, and then she's crabby in the evening again, but it's fine as long as it's not every night!

The second week, I was in Seattle, so I don't know how she did, but I didn't hear any major complaints from Hubby.

The third week was rough because she started clinging to me and crying at drop-offs. Luckily, this only lasted for that week, and then she was back to being happy at drop-offs. In fact, she gets really excited and says, "My school!" when we pull into the parking lot.

(Now, we have the opposite problem, which is that she throws a tantrum when we come to pick her up. Literally, screaming "No! No! No!" the minute she sees us, stamping her feet, crying, even hitting. Makes me feel like Mom of the Year, let me tell you :( This little "phase" has been going on for a couple of weeks now, and I wish it would end already.)

Another minor transition issue (warning: this may be a little TMI!) was that she refused to poop at preschool for the first month or so. She used to poop regularly after her nap, but I think the napping issues that she had threw her "schedule" off. She wasn't actually constipated -- she just pooped at random times at home, rather than daily after her nap at sschool. Then, suddenly, one day in early July, she pooped three times in one day while at preschool, and she has had no issues in that department since then :)

All in all, the transition was smoother than I thought. I actually expected the napping issues and the crying at drop-off to last longer than they did!

Overall, I'm glad that we made the move when we did. Littles really seems to enjoy all her new friends and the activities that they do. Hubby and I have a few little quibbles with the school (such as sending her home one day with a huge fruit-punch face, after we had specifically requested "no juice"), but as I've written here before, no child care situation is perfect. Littles is clearly safe, happy, and surrounded by people who care for her -- those are the important things!

Guess what's in my belly?

2009-08-19T23:07:00.001-05:00

That's right -- for those of you who didn't already know, I'm pregnant again! The little one who we're calling "Noob" is due in February 2010, which puts me 16 weeks along right now.

Working has been much easier during this pregnancy, compared to when I was pregnant with Littles. With Littles, I was still doing a lot of onsite customer work, traveling almost weekly throughout the first trimester. I also struggled with a lot of pregnancy-related nausea and fatigue. Let me tell you, it is no fun to be onsite with a customer while you're praying that your breakfast stays down and your eyelids stay open.

This time around, the nausea and fatigue weren't as bad. Plus, I'm working from home, so even when I did feel lousy, it was much easier to manage.

The one part that sucked is that my nausea/fatigue tended to kick in right around 5-6 PM. So Littles would come home from preschool and I'd barely have the energy to get off the couch and play with her. But I really had only maybe 2 weeks where I just couldn't overcome the fatigue, a far cry from 8 weeks of feeling like absolute crap when I was pregnant with Littles.

So anyway, that's the big news! Hubby and I are already talking through issues like maternity/paternity leave, child care, and nursing/pumping... more posts to come on all of these topics, I'm sure! :)

Bad ideas

2009-07-26T23:13:00.000-05:00

Bad idea: Having Hubby and Littles drop me off at the airport for my flight to Seattle tonight. As we drove up, Littles asked hopefully, "Go airplane?" and it broke my heart to tell her, "No, Mommy can't take you this time." :(

Really bad idea: Picking up a copy of Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper at the airport. One of the central characters is diagnosed with leukemia at age 2 -- exactly the age that Littles is right now. As I read the passages describing her mother's emotions upon hearing the diagnosis, I imagined going through that with Littles. I seriously had to stop reading, because I was crying so hard that I was afraid my seatmate would wonder what the heck was going on.

Now all I want to do is go hug my beautiful, healthy little girl... but instead, I'm stuck in this stupid hotel room alone :(

My worst day as a working mom

2009-07-15T21:18:00.000-05:00

I was in the office today and had lunch with one of my friends, who had her first baby back in January. She just started back at work a few weeks ago, so not surprisingly, it didn't take long for our conversation to drift to the topic of working motherhood.

She is pretty unhappy right now, for a variety of reasons, and talking fairly seriously about quitting her job to stay home with her daughter. Listening to her struggles took me back to my early months back at work.

I started this blog about three months after I returned to work, which means you all were spared the depths of my working-mom despair. I've talked a little bit about it, here and here, but... well, it was bad. Sometimes, I look back and I'm just amazed I made it through and that I am so genuinely happy right now. That's what I tried to get across to my friend.

Specifically, I told her about my worst day as a working mom.

It was in December, the week before Christmas, so Littles was 6 months old and I had been back to work for just under two months. I was working in the same job that I had had before going on maternity leave, which was an onsite product support position. Pre-baby, that job often took me on the road for overnight travel.

Luckily, while I was on maternity leave, an amazing opportunity opened up. A customer located just 20 minutes away from my home purchased a block of "dedicated" hours -- basically, they paid big bucks to get a support person assigned to work through support issues with them. I hoped to be that person, as it would guarantee little to no overnight travel for me.

That week before Christmas, there was a big meeting at the customer site to discuss plans for a big project that would require a significant amount of support. I was invited to sit in on the meeting. All the project bigwigs would be at the meeting, and I saw this as an opportunity to make a good impression and solidify me as their dedicated support person.

The meeting was scheduled from 8 AM to 5 PM. Since Hubby was out of town, this meant I had to ask Maria, our nanny, to come at 7:30 AM so that I could leave Littles with her and get to the meeting. Since it usually took a few minutes to get Littles settled with Maria, I told the meeting organizer that I'd likely be a few minutes late. Not much I could do about that -- I felt bad enough making Maria come an hour early as it was. But I also felt bad wandering in a few minutes late, knowing that the reason for my late arrival likely hadn't been communicated to all the attendees.

As usual during onsite customer visits, pumping was a huge pain. The meeting ran all day, with just some very brief breaks and a working lunch. I didn't even have enough time to make it out to my car, so I pumped in the bathroom for the first time. The female bigwigs from the meeting used the same bathroom, and I worried about what they thought when they heard the "whoomp-whoomp" of my pump. In my head, they were saying, "Why is she pumping in the bathroom? She's so stupid." "She breastfeeds? Yuck. That's so gross." (No one actually said anything to me, but I worried nonetheless.)

I also stressed about not being able to pump often enough. I had had a bout with the stomach flu about two weeks earlier, which had killed my supply, and my freezer stash was dwindling dangerously low. I was pretty sure I was just days away from supplementing with formula. It was a very bad time for me to have a day where I could barely pump at all.

So it was a stressful day for all those reasons. But the kicker came at the end of the day.

As I said before, the meeting was scheduled to run till 5 PM. 5 PM rolled around and the leader showed no signs of wrapping things up. Then, at 5:30 PM (the time that Maria expected me home), we launched into an entirely new -- and extremely important -- topic of conversation. This was not something that could be covered quickly. I knew it could take hours.

I sat in the back of the room squirming. With Hubby out of town and no family or friends anywhere nearby, I was the only one who could pick up Littles.

There were no openings in the conversation for me to explain why I had to leave. And I was on the verge of tears anyway, and didn't trust my own voice.

Finally, at 6 PM, I got up and just walked out. (I later found out that the meeting ran until almost 9 PM.)

I ran to my car and sobbed the entire way home. I felt like a complete failure, as an employee and as a mother. I just wanted to make it all stop, quit my job and stay at home and stop feeling pulled in so many different directions. It is very lucky that I was at a customer site and not at my own office, because if my boss had been there at that moment, I might have quit my job on the spot.

That was absolute rock bottom for me. I teared up today as I was talking to my friend about it, just remembering all the emotions I was feeling at the time.

It turned out that I hadn't made a terrible impression on the bigwigs -- or if I had, no one said anything or acted badly towards me. I was able to act as their dedicated support person for the next few months, until I moved into my current job, and it kept my travel low and my life somewhat sane.

On the mom front, Maria didn't mind my late pickup at all. And I made it through the last few days before Christmas (and then my remaining months pumping at work) without having to supplement with formula, so there were no long-term ill effects from that day of not pumping enough.

And now... here I am. Happy with my working mom life. If you had told me on that December drive home that I would be here today, I never would have believed it.

I'm so glad I stuck it out.

Cloth diapers and the working mom

2009-07-03T22:28:00.002-05:00

We’ve been using cloth diapers for about 9 months now, starting when Littles was about 15 months old. I find that a lot of people have misconceptions about cloth diapers, especially how it works with daycare and busy schedules and other pieces of a working mom’s (and dad’s!) life, so I figured I’d share a little bit about our experience.

Cloth diapers? Are you crazy? Sorry, I don’t do diaper pins.
That makes two of us! If you haven’t seen modern cloth diapers, take a peek at the selection at a store like Jillian’s Drawers. There are many different types, none of which require pins (a nifty device called a Snappi replaces pins for old-fashioned prefold diapers), many of which fasten using velcro tabs just like a disposable.

Pockets and AIOs and fitteds… oh my! Getting started is so overwhelming!
I felt the same way! So I started with the Changing Diapers Changing Minds (CDCM) trial program from Jillian’s Drawers.

How does the trial work? You pay for seven different cloth diapers, along with a few accessories. You keep them for three weeks. At the end of three weeks, you ship back any or all of the diapers for a full refund, less a $10 program fee. If you choose to keep all the diapers, you get a $10 refund.

A trial isn’t the cheapest way to get started, but it’s the most risk-free, since you can return everything if you find that cloth just doesn’t work for you. You also might be surprised by which diapers you end up liking, and not liking! I know I was.

Once I figured out what I wanted, I started browsing the Diaper Swappers forums. This is a great marketplace to buy and sell used cloth diapers. It’s extremely overwhelming at first, so I don’t recommend it to complete cloth newbies, but I got the hang of it pretty quickly and found it to be a valuable resource for finding new diapers -- and saving a ton of money.

Wait, wait, wait. Used diapers? Gross!
Well... not really. I mean, it's not like they come to you with some other baby's poop in them! (That would be gross!)

I always wash new-to-me diapers once with bleach to kill any lingering nasties, then put them through another complete wash cycle before putting them on Littles. I've never had any issues.

And the savings are huge. All told, I've saved close to 60% of retail by buying used.

Speaking of price, are you really saving money compared to disposables? Aren't cloth diapers really expensive?
You can save a ton of money with cloth diapers, especially if you start early in your child's life.

To throw out some numbers, I estimate that we would need to spend a minimum of $9/week on disposable diapers for Littles. That's about 6 diapers/day, at about 20 cents/diaper. (Extremely conservative estimates.)

I've spent about $450 on Littles' current stash. This includes not only the diapers themselves but also things like absorbent inserts for pocket diapers, covers for prefolds and fitteds, accessories such as Snappis and wetbags for dirty diapers, etc. Factor in the occasional pack of disposable diapers (e.g. to use while traveling) and laundry costs, and let's call it an even $500.

That means we need to use cloth diapers for about a year just to break even with Littles. We might very well make it, as we've got nine months under our belt already and Littles doesn't look like she'll be potty training anytime soon.

Let's say that we do make it to a year and break even. All that work, just to spend the exact same amount?

Well, no. We plan to have more kids, so we can use Littles' diapers on them to save even more money.

Even if we weren't planning to have more kids, we could always sell Littles' diapers when we're done with them to recoup some of our initial investment. (Try that trick with used disposable diapers!)

And, of course, if we had started cloth diapering Littles earlier, we would have saved even more.

All told, I know we'll end up saving a nice pile of money. And Littles' stash isn't even particularly cheap -- I could have probably put together a fully functional stash for half that price.

If you're looking into cloth diapering to save money, here's a nifty calculator to help you figure out your savings.

Alright, so they're cheaper, but I've heard that cloth diapers really aren't better for the environment.
Yep, this page from Huggies quotes a study sponsored by the UK Government Environment Agency that found that disposable diapers have a similar environmental impact to cloth diapers:

"[The study] showed that using cloth diapers uses more water, energy and detergents, and disposable diapers contribute more solid waste to landfill... Both diaper alternatives were found to have similar, overall impacts on the environment with the differences being the stage of each product's life cycle where the impact occurs."

OK, so the overall environmental impact is the same. Case closed, right? Well, not exactly.

It's important to read through the full study and not rely on a summary because the study makes certain assumptions. Here is a link to the full study. (It seems to move around quite a bit, so apologies in advance if you click on this in the future and it doesn't work.)

As the Huggies site points out, the study finds that "the main source of environmental impact [for home-laundered cloth diapers] is the generation of the electricity used in washing and drying the [diapers]." (page 120)

But now, hop up to page 56 and look at the assumptions made with regards to washing and drying:

75% of cloth diapers are laundered in a water temperature of 60°C/140°F, including 32.1% that are laundered at 90°C/194°F.
19% of cloth diapers are tumble dried.
9.5% of cloth diapers are ironed.

The problems with these assumptions? At least for me:

I never wash my diapers in water hotter than 140°F. In fact, most pocket/AIO manufacturers recommend water no hotter than 140°F, as it can break down the waterproof layer in those diapers faster. And 194°F? Forget about it!
I always line dry my diapers.
I never iron my diapers.

So without a doubt, my energy usage will be lower than the "average" based on that study. And again, the study found that the main environmental impact of cloth diapers is in washing/drying, so if I can cut the environmental impact of washing/drying... well, that's very significant.

In contrast, there's no way to cut the amount of solid waste you contribute to a landfill by using disposable diapers. (Well, I suppose you could just use one diaper a day or something, but that would be gross.)

Even so-called "green" disposables aren't much better than regular disposables when it comes to the amount of solid waste generated. In theory, they are biodegradable (unlike regular disposables), but in practice, "nothing degrades well in a landfill."

What about the laundry? I work full-time and barely have enough time to keep up the house as it is!
Again, that makes two of us :) But cloth diapers really don't take that much more time, compared to disposables. Here's a breakdown:

Pee diapers go directly in the pail. No difference between cloth and disposables.
Poopy diapers need to be dumped in the toilet. This takes maybe a minute. You can cut down that time by using flushable liners -- the liner catches the poop, and then you dump it all into the toilet.
This wasn't a big deal for us, as we always dumped poop out of disposables to cut down on the smell. And it's worth noting that you're supposed to dump poop out of disposables too, for health reasons.
Taking the pail down to the washing machine takes no more time than taking out a load of disposable diaper trash.
It takes me about 5 minutes to put the diapers on the drying rack to dry. (I could cut that time by tumble drying, but as noted above, that increases the environmental impact.)
It takes me about 15 minutes to stuff the absorbent inserts into the pocket diapers Littles uses at daycare. This is easy and can be done while talking on the phone, watching TV, etc. (I could also cut that time by using all-in-one diapers instead, which don't require stuffing.)

All told, it's about 20 minutes of extra work each time I do diaper laundry. I do diaper laundry once every three days, so we're talking an extra 40-60 minutes of work each week. That's far less time than I spend on our other laundry! It's entirely doable, even with a full-time job.

Did you ever consider a diaper service instead of washing your own diapers?
We did, very briefly, when I was pregnant with Littles. We quickly eliminated it because it's as expensive as disposables, if not more so!

Now that I know more about cloth diapering, I would never even think about doing a diaper service, for many reasons:

Diaper services only provide prefolds, which are the "old fashioned" diapers that many people think of when they think of cloth diapers. They don't provide the more modern and easy-to-use pockets and all-in-ones. That said, I actually really like prefolds... but for working moms, they're a no-go at most daycares.
As we realized previously, it's expensive! The local diaper service here in Dallas charges $75/month for 80 diapers/week, which is what's recommended for a newborn. Compare that to the cost of 80 disposables/week: That would cost around $70/month if you pay 20 cents/diaper. And compare that to the cost of purchasing 30 prefolds (enough to go 3 days between laundering) and washing them yourself: Even new prefolds only cost about $2 apiece, so you'd spend just $60 upfront, less than either of the other two options -- and that would be all you would need to spend on diapers for the first six months or so! (You would still need to buy covers, but you need to buy covers with a diaper service too.)
It's not very "green." Most diaper services wash diapers at extremely hot temperatures in order to properly sanitize them so that they can be used on multiple babies. Some also use bleach and other additives regularly. Laundering at home, I can wash at lower temperatures because the diapers are just used on one baby, and I can minimize the use of additives like bleach. That lowers the overall environmental impact.
The downside of having someone else wash your diapers is that you end up with a week's worth of dirty diapers sitting around your house!

What about daycare?
When we first switched to cloth, we were sending Littles to a stay-at-home mom during the day. I approached her about trying out some of our diapers, and she agreed. She preferred velcro, so I ended up purchasing 8 BumGenius diapers just for her to use. I also provided a wetbag for her to put dirty diapers in, as well as some disposables for her to use when she wanted. I also told her that she didn't have to dump poop if she didn't want to (although she usually did anyway).

To be honest, it was not a raging success. Although our sitter never said anything explicitly, I strongly suspect that she really didn't like using cloth. Over time, she used disposables more and more. It wasn't uncommon for Littles to come home in a cloth diaper, with only one diaper in the wetbag (i.e. the one I had put on her that morning). We also had a lot of problems with leaking, and our sitter always seemed really annoyed by it. In my opinion, any logical person would have taken the leaking as a sign that Littles needed to be changed more frequently, but I suspect our sitter wanted the excuse to not use cloth.

But we liked our sitter otherwise, and so it wasn't worth raising a stink over. The last straw came in April, when Littles had a week where she leaked just about every day. At that point, we knew we were just weeks away from switching her into a new preschool, so we switched to disposables exclusively for the remaining time with our sitter.

As for her preschool, we are using cloth there too. When we initially decided to go with that school, I decided to approach the director about using cloth diapers. I started by looking up the Texas state licensing requirements to see what they had to say about cloth diapers. In Texas, there are no rules against using cloth diapers; the only requirement is that each soiled (i.e. poopy) diaper must be placed in a separate bag.

So I took that information to the preschool director. Her only concern was about possible smell, but I assured her that I would provide a big wetbag for all diapers and take it home nightly. She agreed to give it a try.

The preschool does have a somewhat unique requirement around diapers in general: They require pull-ups, as they do not do any diaper changes lying down. So I had to figure out a pull-up cloth solution. I evaluated a bunch of different cloth training pants, but Littles really still needs the absorbency of a diaper and I found that the training pants just didn't cut it.

Eventually, I got a tip that just about any side-snapping cloth diaper can be used as a pull-up. I eventually settled on Green Acres Designs (GAD) pockets. I simply stuff each diaper with two inserts (one hemp, one microfiber or bamboo) to increase the absorbency (Littles does pee a lot!), then snap them on the appropriate setting. They pull on just like a disposable pull-up, and then can be snapped off. I also provide a wetbag and a few gallon-size Ziploc bags for poopy diapers. (I hand-wash the used Ziplocs at night.)

Littles has now been in school for four weeks and so far, so good! She has had a few leaks, but nowhere near as bad as with our old sitter. And this past week, I noticed that they have been changing her more frequently (there are usually four diapers in the wetbag at the end of the day, compared to two or maybe three in the first few weeks) and so I'm sure it's no coincidence that this was a leak-free week. They are even dumping poop, which is more than I expected from them!

I'm particularly pleased that the GADs seem to be working out because disposable pull-ups are expensive! They're tough to find for under 30 cents/pull-up. That means we'd likely be spending around $8/week or more just on pull-ups during the day! In comparison, I've spent $127 on the GADs and the extra inserts I needed. We'll break even in just 12 more weeks.

So there you have it -- cloth diapering is totally doable, even for the working mom! I know cloth diapering is not for everyone, but if you've been nervous about starting because you think it's too complicated or too much work, I hope this post helps show otherwise :)

I missed my daughter's birthday

2009-06-22T22:03:00.001-05:00

Littles' birthday was last week and I was out of town on a business trip. She's only two and so I know she didn't know the difference, but I felt guilty not being there.

To make matters even worse, the meeting that I had to attend was really stupid and a waste of time. Yet it was timed perfectly to make it completely impossible for me to catch a flight that would put me home before bedtime.

Sometimes, being a working mom really sucks.

Montessori in action

2009-06-10T22:00:00.001-05:00

Normally, Littles' preschool asks parents to keep dropoffs short -- no lingering around. But since this is Littles' first week, the director encouraged me to stay a little longer in the mornings to help her settle in. I jumped at the opportunity to get a little taste of what her days will be like and observe the Montessori method first-hand.

We arrived right at 9 AM on Monday morning and went to the extended-care room for a few minutes while the teachers finished preparing the main classrooms.

Most of the kids who had been in extended care went to the school's older classroom (which is for kids who have had at least a year of Montessori and are potty trained). Littles and one other little girl went to the beginner room. Soon, a boy and another girl were dropped off. The teacher told me that one of the girls had just turned 2 in March, and the other girl and boy were both 2.5.

Each child was allowed to choose their Montessori "work" for the morning. Each "work" is basically a toy, but it has a very specific purpose/goal. Littles started out with a geometric sorting board. It is similar to this:

Except the one in Littles' classroom is in the shape of a clown, with the circle as the head, the triangle as the body, the square as the lower body/legs, and the rectangle as an arm raised to the side.

Littles loved taking all the blocks off the pegs and then putting them back on. The toy looks so plain and simple, but when you think about it, it's teaching:

Colors
Shapes
Numbers (since each shape has a different number of holes in it)
Categorizing (rectangle goes on top of rectangle, square goes on top of square...)
The one in Littles' classroom also teaches body parts, as well as emotions, because each circle has a face drawn on it that shows a different emotion

After Littles got all the blocks off, she got up and went to get a different "work." Her teacher encouraged her to finish the one she had started, so she sat down and went back to it. She got stuck because she put some of the blocks on the wrong pegs. The teacher demonstrated how to put one of the blocks on the correct pegs, then took the block off and told Littles to try it herself. She picked it up right away and finished putting all the shapes back on the board. Then she was asked to put the board back on the shelf and get a new work.

The next one she picked turned out to be much more complicated. The teacher started to demonstrate it to her, but she lost interest midway through and wandered back to the sorting board. The teacher smiled at me and said, "That's really common at this age. This is a long work." She cleaned up the complicated one while Littles played with the sorting board again.

Meanwhile, the other kids were all concentrating on their own works. At one point, Littles tried to take some pieces of another child's work, and the teacher gently told her, "No, no. That's Stephanie's work. Here's your work." I know that Montessori students are encouraged to work together, and I've seen that in action in the older classroom, but I think that two-year-olds are a little young to "get" that concept :)

It was interesting to see Montessori in action. I feel like I understand a little better why it is considered to be "child centered" and "play based." The Montessori materials are fun to play with! It may be called "work," but it feels like play. And there is no organized activity during the Montessori time; each child chooses what to do. Littles could have played with the geometric shape sorter the entire time, if she had wanted. But each work does have a specific purpose, and the teachers do guide the children one-on-one to better understand the work.

In comparison, when Littles has "dropped in" at various daycare centers, I've seen that there is usually a similar playtime in the mornings, where the children have free roam of the room with no organized activity. But not all toys in the room have a specific educational purpose, like the Montessori materials do. Children are allowed to pick up a toy and put it down -- the teacher does not necessarily encourage them to "figure out" the toy or put it away when they are done with it. And the time really is "free play" with basic supervision by the teacher. The Montessori time feels like play too, but with a purpose, and with one-on-one guidance from the teacher.

That's not to say that the traditional daycares are "bad" or unstructured. I know that the daycares where we've done drop-in care do have plenty of structured educational activities later in the day. Nor am I saying that Littles spends her entire day at her preschool drifting from one Montessori work to another according to her whims. Her classroom does have a lesson plan -- for example, they're learning about the letter "B" right now by (among other things) blowing bubbles, bouncing balls, and listening to bells.

But I can definitely see the difference in the approach. Time will tell whether the Montessori approach is the right one for Littles, but for now, at least, she seems to be doing really well with it.

First day of preschool!

2009-06-08T22:15:00.002-05:00

Before:

After:

That's what happens when you don't take a nap all day! She was asleep within 5 minutes of getting in the car :)

Aside from not napping, she did really well! She settled right in to the Montessori "work" in the morning and didn't even cry when I left! When we picked her up, she had something white (yogurt?) all over her shirt, something blue (marker? paint?) all over her hands, and sand in her shoes. I think those are signs of a good day :)

The preschool decision

2009-06-07T00:48:00.002-05:00

This post is part of an ongoing series on finding child care.

As I have explained previously, we started looking for a full-time preschool for Littles after her sitter informed us that she was pregnant and would not be able to care for Littles as she neared her due date. We came up with three solid preschool options: two Montessori schools (which I will call Montessori A and Montessori B), and a daycare in the Bright Horizons chain.

I initially visited each school on my own. I liked all three, although each had its strengths and weaknesses.

Montessori A
Pros:

Good word-of-mouth recommendations
Directors able to clearly articulate the school's educational philosophy and approach
Lunch not provided by the school. Parents provide lunch, either from home or through a partnership with local restaurants. (I consider this a pro, as I like being able to have significant control over what Littles eats.)
Starts at 18 months of age. This meant that Littles could potentially start as soon as they had an opening.
Two campuses, one near our home and one near our sitter's home. This meant that Littles could potentially start with 3 mornings/week at one campus in the winter/spring (with her sitter picking her up), and then move to full-time in the summer at the campus near our home.

Cons:

In my discussions with the directors, I felt that there might be a little too much emphasis on academics and being "advanced." As I explained in my last post, my main concern is ensuring that Littles learns to love learning, not that she learns specific skills, and I wasn't sure that Montessori A shared that philosophy.
In my initial discussion with one director, she made a huge deal out of healthy eating and said that she never, ever allowed junk food into the school, even for special occasions/parties. Then I found out from the other director that one of the local restaurants that the school partners with for catered lunches is Chick-fil-a. Along the same lines, I happened to visit the school on Valentine's Day, and saw tons of cookies, cupcakes, and other junk food. What concerned me most was not the presence of the food itself (I could opt out of Chick-fil-a for Littles, and everyone deserves a little junk food on Valentine's Day!) but the fact that the director had made such a big deal out of healthy food over the phone but apparently ignored it in practice.
Some things made me question how closely the school adhered to the Montessori philosophy. For example, one of the core tenets of Montessori is mixed-age classrooms (three-year age range), yet most of the Montessori A classrooms seemed to have no more than a two-year age range amongst the students.
This preschool had a very strange licensing violation, regarding transporting a child between two vehicles while parked on the shoulder of a highway.

Montessori B
Pros:

Good word-of-mouth recommendations
Director able to clearly articulate the school's educational philosophy and approach.
Director specifically emphasized teaching a love of learning over teaching specific skills (unprompted by me)
Lunch not provided by the school. (See above for why this is a pro for me.)
Smaller school with just three classrooms total. The director said that it has a "family" feel, where all the kids know each other, and I could definitely sense that when I visited.
Cheaper than the other two options ($715/month for full-time care, compared to around $850/month for the other two)
Only licensing violations are paperwork issues (e.g. missing physician information)

Cons:

Significantly further from our home than the other two options, although still closer than our current sitter. (We actually passed Montessori B every day on the way to our sitter's home.)
Only takes children starting at age 2. They were willing to take Littles a few weeks shy of her second birthday, but there was no way for her to ease into preschool by starting part-time in the winter/spring.
Higher student-teacher ratio than the other two preschools, although I believe the class size quoted to me (18 students to two teachers in the "beginner" room) included a significant number of part-timers. It's also worth noting that Montessori does not specifically emphasize low student-teacher ratios, because the idea is that students learn from other students as well as from teachers.
This may sound silly, but the playground is smaller and has less equipment (especially for kids Littles' age) compared to the other two schools. Also, the other two schools had covered outdoor playgrounds (very important for hot Texas summers!) while Montessori B's playground is uncovered.

Bright Horizons
Pros:

Some good recommendations from people with children in the infant room at this specific center, and many good recommendations for the Bright Horizons chain in general.
NAEYC accredited
Director able to clearly articulate the school's educational philosophy and approach.
Low student-teacher ratio, and the director specifically mentioned that they keep the ratios below where the corporate office would like them to be because they felt it just worked better that way (even though the corporate office's desired ratios are still well below state maximums)
Accepts children as young as six weeks, so if we have another child, s/he could go there as well.
Immediate part-time openings, so we could start Littles two days/week in the winter/spring and then ease into full-time in the summer.
Smaller center, no "corporate" feel even though it is part of a nationwide chain.

Cons:

Lunch provided by the school. The menu wasn't bad -- I could definitely live with it -- but I prefer to provide food.
A licensing violation around not reporting that the infant room had flooded and was unsafe for children. The director explained that they temporarily moved the infants to another room, but still, how can you forget to notify licensing about something like that?

The decision
After visiting all three schools by myself, I was leaning towards Bright Horizons. I liked their curriculum, I liked their teachers and their director, I liked the idea of being able to start Littles part-time at first, I liked the idea of not having to drive so frickin' far to drop her off!

I then went back to visit all three schools with Hubby.

We went to Bright Horizons first, and he walked away saying, "Now I remember why we liked that place so much when we looked at it before." (We had come very close to placing Littles at Bright Horizons back around her first birthday. Full story here.)

We went to Montessori B next. I was really curious to see Hubby's reaction. It was probably the most "unique" of our three options, which can be a good thing or a bad thing!

The director took us into one of the classrooms and spent probably 30 minutes talking to us about Montessori, showing us the various materials available to the students, etc. Hubby seemed interested, but I wasn't sure if he was just being polite. Finally, the director left the room to get something else to show us and Hubby mouthed to me, "I like this place!" After we wrapped up at the school, we went out to lunch to debrief, and Hubby couldn't stop raving about it. He liked it more than Bright Horizons -- and after that second visit, I did as well.

Finally, we visited Montessori A. We had a less-than-impressive tour with one of the staff members. (My initial tour had been with one of the directors.) She admitted that she came from a traditional daycare background and really struggled to explain Montessori concepts and how they were implemented at her school. To give A a fair shake, I did explain to Hubby that the directors at A could talk about Montessori just as articulately as the director at B had done, but it didn't really matter. We were both completely sold on Montessori B.

So... Littles starts at Montessori B on Monday. I'm very excited about it. I think she'll really enjoy being in a larger environment, and I think she'll learn a lot. I am nervous about the transition, and I definitely think the first few weeks will be tough, with lots of tears at drop-off. But hopefully, she'll settle in quickly and start loving it!

Preschool options

2009-06-02T14:56:00.004-05:00

This is my ninth post in a series on finding child care.

As I have explained previously, we started looking for a full-time preschool for Littles in early 2009, after her sitter informed us that she was pregnant and would not be able to care for Littles starting in the summer of 2009.

Coincidentally, our neighbors have a son who is just a few weeks younger than Littles, and they were looking for a preschool as well. They gave us recommendations for two excellent Montessori schools in the area, which I will call Montessori A and Montessori B.

I could easily devote an entire blog post -- or, heck, an entire blog -- to explaining the Montessori philosophy, so I'll try to be brief. It's an alternative educational method that is child-centered, rather than teacher-directed. Children are allowed to choose the educational activities that they participate in, with guidance from their teachers, of course. If you're interested in learning more, I found this "Montessori 101" guide to be an excellent introduction.

One important thing to realize about Montessori is that it is a philosophy, not a chain or a franchise, so individual Montessori schools can differ drastically. For that reason, I knew it was important to take a close look at both schools and see what I thought.

I had a 30-minute discussion with the director of Montessori A over the phone before I visited, and I loved everything I heard. She was able to clearly articulate the school's educational philosophy, and it sounded wonderful. She also put a strong emphasis on active parental involvement, both in the actual educational experience and in non-educational areas such as providing healthy food, ensuring that kids get plenty of sleep, etc. Finally, Montessori A had two campuses, one close to our home and another close to our sitter's home. That meant it might be possible for Littles to start out with three mornings a week in late winter/spring (with her sitter picking her up in the afternoon), then move to full-time in the summer, which was a nice option.

I looked briefly at Montessori B, but eliminated it early on because: a) it was significantly further away from our home than the other options (although still closer than our sitter's house) and b) it started at age 2, not 18 months, so starting Littles part-time in late winter/spring was not an option.

Then, I happened to attend a "preschool fair." (Basically, it was set up in a room at the local library, and a bunch of area preschools sent representatives. So you could go from table to table and talk to different preschools about their programs.) The director of Montessori B flagged me down and started talking to me about her school. Something about it immediately appealed to me. The director was just as articulate about B's educational philosophy as A's director had been, but there were some subtle differences. For example, A's director had bragged that most of her four-year-olds were reading. This made me wonder, "What about your four-year-olds who aren't reading? How do you feel about them?"

See, while I would love for Littles to be able to read at age four, I also don't see it as necessarily being a "goal" or a point of pride. The A-number-one most important thing to me right now is not that Littles learns specific skills (e.g. reading, math) but that she learns to love learning. I figure if she has a love of learning instilled in her at an early age, the specific skills will follow in time.

I had figured this out in my head long before talking to B's director, so it was neat to hear her talk about instilling the love of learning as well. She did mention that most of her four-year-olds are reading but was quick to follow up and say, "We work with each child individually on reading, and go at whatever pace they need." I just got a very good feeling from her, all around.

After that talk, I put Montessori B back on our list.

To round out the list, I also decided to look at a more traditional preschool/daycare. I chose the same Bright Horizons center that we had almost sent Littles to when we first moved to Dallas, since Hubby and I had both really liked it. I talked at length with the director about its educational philosophy and how it differed from Montessori. It was more child-centered than most of the other chain daycares I visited, which had a prescribed curriculum dictated by the central corporate office. At Bright Horizons, teachers were encouraged to come up with their own lesson plans based on the interests of their students. I definitely felt that the curriculum was well-thought-through and structured enough to ensure kids were learning while still allowing plenty of time for fun and play.

Another benefit of Bright Horizons was that they had immediate part-time openings, so Littles could potentially go two full days a week through late winter/spring (spending the other three days with her sitter) and then move to full-time in the summer.

I looked at a few other daycares and Montessori schools in the area, but these three stood out as my favorites. Hubby and I took a few days to go back and visit all three together, and then we made our final decision.

In my next post, I'll talk about which school we chose and why.

The preschool search

2009-05-31T22:32:00.003-05:00

This is my eighth post in a series on finding child care.

As I have explained previously, we used a stay-at-home mom (Kristi) for child care after moving to Dallas just before Littles' first birthday. At first, she watched Littles along with her own two school-age boys and another boy about a month younger than Littles. The boy's mother got laid off a month or two after we started, and Kristi never filled his spot. So once her own boys went back to school in the fall, when Littles was about 14 months old, it was just Littles and Kristi during the day.

Littles thrived in this situation and always enjoyed her time at Kristi's. Still, as she approached 18 months of age, Hubby and I started to feel that she would enjoy being around other children her age on a more regular basis.

So we started looking again at group child care settings. I had already visited virtually every daycare center within a 10-mile radius of our house during our previous search for child care, so during the early days of our new search, I focused on preschools. I hadn't visited these before because they didn't take children younger than 18 months of age.

We weren't necessarily looking for full-time care. I really wanted to find a program for perhaps 1-3 mornings a week, so that I could drop Littles off and then Kristi could pick her up and care for her in the afternoon and on the days when she didn't go to preschool at all. I found the preschools to be much more accommodating of part-time and especially part-day schedules than daycare centers. In fact, many of the preschools I looked at only offered part-time care for younger kids, and didn't offer care at all past 2 PM or thereabouts.

I had started collating a list of possible preschools and scheduling appointments when Kristi informed us that she was pregnant!

(As an aside, this is another downside of having a single caregiver: If that person decides that s/he no longer wants to take care of kids for any reason, you have to find a whole new provider. We were lucky that Kristi gave us plenty of notice. Some providers aren't as courteous.)

The timing really could not have been more perfect. Kristi told us about the pregnancy in January, and as it so happens, most preschools in our area do open enrollment in February and March for the following fall. This meant we really had our pick of programs. Had we found out about Kristi's pregnancy in April or later, we might have had to get on a waiting list, as many of the programs would have filled up during the open enrollment period.

Also, Kristi didn't mind continuing to watch Littles until the time that her boys got out of school, in early June. That gave us plenty of time to find a program that met our needs. The only adjustment we had to make was to look for programs that offered full-time care.

In my next post, I'll talk about what we ended up finding.

Full weaning!

2009-05-19T07:29:00.003-05:00

I mentioned a few weeks ago that we were headed towards full weaning. It looks like we did it!

I got home from Seattle on a Friday morning and somewhat expected Littles to yell out "Num-nums!" the moment she saw me. But she didn't. In fact, she went five straight mornings without asking to nurse.

The following Wednesday, I had to do a very rare onsite customer visit. The morning was hectic, trying to get myself ready and Littles ready and get out the door. So of course, Littles decided that morning that she wanted to nurse for the first time in a week and a half.

OK, fine. We sat down and she latched on. Then she immediately pulled off with a confused look on her face. Which is strange, because even though I'm sure my supply was way down from not having nursed or pumped in so long, I doubt it was all that great before that, so it shouldn't have come as a huge shock to her that it took some effort to get something out. But she didn't even try. That's how quickly she pulled off.

"Other side?" I asked. She sat up and said, "Other side." So I switched sides and the same thing happened. "No more num-nums?" I asked. "No more," she said quietly. "Breakfast? Yogurt?" I asked. "Yogurt!" she said with a smile, and climbed out of my lap to go play.

On Thursday, I had to go back to the customer, so the morning was similarly hectic and of course, Littles asked to nurse again. The same thing happened. She barely latched and then pulled off and said, "No more."

That was almost two weeks ago and she hasn't asked to nurse since. I think we may be done for good, in which case, her last nursing session was on May 7, at just shy of 23 months of age.

When I think about those last two sessions, it makes me a little sad. The way she said "No more" in a quiet, sad voice. But I remind myself that this is a toddler who has no problem expressing her opinion if you don't give her something she wants :) I think about the morning when she was using one of my tank tops as a purse and getting very upset when the stuff she put in fell straight through the bottom. She apparently expected me to magically turn the tank top into a bag. "Bag. Bag! BAAAAAG!" she screamed, over and over.

So if that same toddler accepted my lack of milk with a quiet "no more," I don't think she was too upset about it. I think she was ready to be done, too.

As for me? I feel really good about all of it. The way we weaned was so easy and so natural. It felt like the right "next step" in our nursing relationship, just like starting solids and weaning off the pump when we did. I haven't had engorgement or any mood swings (well, I don't think I have, you should probably confirm with Hubby :) like I've heard some women complain about after weaning. I'm happy for all the time we shared nursing, but I'm also very happy to be done.

Kristi pros and cons

2009-05-02T15:36:00.002-05:00

This is my seventh post in a series on finding child care.

As I have explained previously, when we moved to Dallas shortly before Littles' first birthday, we started sending Littles to Kristi, a stay-at-home mom to two school-age boys who watched Littles along with one other little boy (a month younger than Littles) out of her own home. So this was a sort of a cross between a nanny share and a very small in-home daycare.

I've highlighted some of the pros and cons of this situation below.

Interaction with other kids vs. 1:1 attention
About a month or so after we started with Kristi, the other little boy's mom got laid off. Kristi looked for another child to take his place, but never ended up finding one. So for months now, it's been just Littles and Kristi during the day. (Kristi picks up her two boys, along with another school-age boy, at around 3 PM, so Littles has some older kids to play with in the afternoon.)

I consider this to be something of a downside to this arrangement, and to be honest, I'm not sure we would have selected Kristi if we had known that that would happen. Littles loves being around other kids, and I think she would have more fun with a playmate her own age.

But there are also plenty of upsides to Littles being the only baby. Obviously, she gets plenty of one-on-one attention. I don't think that's as crucial for one-year-olds as it is for infants, but it is still important. It is also easier for Kristi to get out of the house with only one baby to worry about, so she was able to take Littles to different places, rather than always being stuck in the house. Finally, Kristi is able to tailor each day around Littles' schedule and interests. If Littles has a rough night, I know she can get some extra sleep during the day, without worrying about other kids waking her up. Or some mornings, as we're getting ready, she asks to read a book or go for a walk -- and then I can tell Kristi that and know that she'll do it, because she doesn't have to consider the interests of any other kids.

Rules
The daycare centers that we looked at tended to have a lot of "rules" in the toddler rooms. The two hardest for Littles at 12 months old: No bottles, and only one nap a day at a specified time.

Had we been looking when Littles was 18 months old, or even 15 months old, I don't think the rules would have been such a big deal. But at 12 months old, especially in the midst of a move halfway across the country, the first few months would have been very difficult.

Kristi, of course, didn't have any of these rules, and it was nice to give Littles the time she needed to grow up on her own, rather than forcing her into it.

I also like being able to provide Littles' food. None of the daycare centers we looked at would allow that.

Caregiver time off
One downside of any single-caregiver situation is that there will inevitably be a time when that caregiver is unavailable and you need to make alternate arrangements for care. That is certainly the case with Kristi, who asks for significantly more time off than our previous nanny.

Since my job is very flexible, and we also have an excellent backup care program available through our employer, it's rarely a problem to find alternate care for Littles when Kristi is unavailable. And there are plenty of benefits to a single-caregiver situation. It's good to know that Littles has consistency in care. And it's helpful for Hubby and me to have one person to communicate with regarding Littles' care, rather than having to talk to one person and hope that the message reaches her other caregivers.

So it's worth it for us to put up with the occasional inconvenience of having to find backup care. But if our jobs were less flexible, that might not the case.

Caregiver style
Kristi definitely has a different style from our previous nanny, Maria. She is more willing to listen to me and work with me on my preferences for Littles' care, which is good. I find that she and I tend to think alike in many ways anyway. She makes most of the same decisions I would make with regards to Littles' care, without much guidance from me.

She is less "cuddly" and loving than Maria was -- more like a teacher than a nanny, if that makes sense. I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing, especially now that Littles is no longer a little baby. It's just different.

Location
We take Littles to Kristi's house, which means about a 30-45 min roundtrip each morning to drop off and each afternoon to pick up. Obviously, this is much less convenient than having a nanny come to our home, and also a little less convenient than most of the daycare centers we had considered.

Cost
Although taking Littles to Kristi's is a little inconvenient, it is also a lot cheaper! Littles gets 1-on-1 care just like she'd get from an in-home nanny, but at less than half the cost. Can't beat that!

Kristi also charges a little less than most daycare centers in our area. She does charge a little more than the average in-home daycare, but given that she watches fewer kids, that's quite understandable. (She told us upfront that she wanted to watch no more than 3 kids, and obviously it's been just Littles for most of the time. In contrast, most in-home daycares have 5-6 kids.)

Conclusions
Kristi has been really good for Littles. Certainly, she made Littles' transition from California easier. While I wish that Littles had some playmates her own age, I do think there are benefits to the 1-on-1 care she enjoys during the day. It's a little less convenient for Hubby and me, since we have to drive further each day and we have to find backup care with Kristi is unavailable, but the low cost and the quality care definitely outweighs those minor issues.

Still, earlier this year, we started thinking about moving Littles to preschool. Hubby and I both felt that as she got closer to age 2, she could really benefit from a larger environment with more kids her own age.

We initially looked at part-time preschools, thinking that we would keep Littles with Kristi for part of the week and send her to preschool for the rest of the time. But we found out at right around the same time that Kristi is pregnant. She is due in July, and wants to stop watching Littles around the time that her boys get out of school in early June. That worked out perfectly with our plans to transition Littles into preschool around her second birthday -- the only difference was that we needed to look exclusively at full-time programs, rather than considering part-time programs as well.

In my next post in this series, I'll talk about our preschool search, and our final decision.

Officially DONE with pumping!

2009-04-30T23:27:00.001-05:00

I've been in Seattle this week. Since Littles got through my last Seattle trip with no expressed breastmilk, I didn't even bother bringing my pump along this time. I'm officially done with pumping! Yay!

We're also getting close to full weaning. Our PM nursing session has been slowly dropping off over the past few months. I'm coaching a high school girls lacrosse team, so I have a practice or a game about 2-3 weeknights each week, and I'm usually so rushed with picking Littles up and getting over to lacrosse that there's no time to nurse. Now that we're out of that evening nursing routine, both of us tend to forget even when we are at home. I think Littles has only nursed in the evening a handful of times in the last month.

I was more worried about the AM session, as that one has always been much more consistent (after all, where else do we need to be at 7 AM?) and Littles seemed much more attached to it. But, well, after 22 months, I'm ready to be done. So last week, I just stopped offering to nurse or even mentioning nursing in the mornings. I just get Littles up, change her diaper, and then ask if she wants to get some breakfast. Some mornings, she heads straight downstairs to the kitchen; other mornings, she tells me, in her inimitable toddler way, "No! Num-nums!" And then we nurse.

I'm interested to see how she acts when I get home from Seattle. Maybe she'll miss nursing and want to do it more. Maybe she'll realize that she really doesn't need to nurse anymore.

Either way is fine. I'm ready to be done, but I'm also OK with giving her a little time to catch up to me if she needs it.

For the record, I AM raising my child

2009-04-29T22:15:00.002-05:00

I’m so bad about blogging when I’m not traveling for work. Which is too bad, because I’m only traveling about once a quarter now, and issues around working motherhood come up much more often than that.

Case in point. This past Sunday was gray and rainy, so instead of staying cooped up at home, we decided to take Littles to the aquarium. On the way there, an ad came on the radio for one of those companies that sets you up with a home-based business. The ad was aimed at working moms. "Are you tired of your kids being raised by daycare, rather than you?" it asked.

It's not the first time I've heard someone imply that I'm not raising Littles because I work. I just don't get it.

For starters, I grew up with two working parents, and I can tell you that both of them definitely raised me. As for my daycare teachers? I can't remember their names.

Besides, if I did stay home, and Hubby worked, does that mean that he wouldn't be raising Littles? If I stay home while Littles is young but then send her to school for kindergarten (rather than home schooling), does that mean that I will no longer be raising her at that time?

Of course not.

Anyway, I was there the moment that Littles was born. I choose where she lives, the clothes she wears, the food she eats. I choose whether she spends her free time playing outside or watching TV or visiting the aquarium or goofing off at home. I choose where she goes and what she does on vacation. I choose the role that religion plays in her life. I choose why and how to discipline her. I choose to be a role model to her, and I choose what that means. And perhaps most importantly, I choose to entrust her to Kristi during the day, precisely because I'm confident that she'll follow through on the lead that I set at home.

How dare anyone imply that I'm not raising my child? Ridiculous.

A big weaning milestone

2009-02-14T00:00:00.002-06:00

I've had two days over the past few weeks where I left home before Littles woke up and returned after she was asleep, so we didn't get the chance to nurse all day. The first time, we were away from home, so bringing along expressed breastmilk would have been a huge hassle. Littles didn't seem to miss it. The next time, we were at home and could have easily given some frozen milk, but decided not to. Again, she didn't seem to miss it.

Last week, while I was in Seattle, Hubby and I decided to see if Littles could go the entire time (about 3.5 days, or 7 nursing sessions) without breastmilk. Not surprisingly, she did just fine.

It certainly simplified my life. I still pumped to keep my supply up, but didn't have to stress at all about how much I was getting, didn't have to carry the milk home, etc. Besides, I was pumping well under 1 oz at each session, so it really was hardly worth saving!

She's heading towards full weaning, slowly but surely. I'm ready when she is.

Almost made it

2009-02-02T11:17:00.001-06:00

No tears today when I said goodbye to Littles. Hubby was taking her over to her sitter's as I got ready to leave for the airport, and it felt like I was just saying goodbye for the day, even though in my head, I know it's for three-plus days.

I flew through check-in and security, feeling like my old road-warrior self, with my brand-new carry-on luggage and no toddler on my back or car seat to struggle with.

I went to Starbucks for a venti latte that I could actually carry without said toddler and said car seat. I went to pull out my corporate Amex card to pay… and pulled out my zoo membership card instead.

That was something that certainly never happened to my old road-warrior self, who spent her weekends on the couch at home recovering from too much time spent in airplanes and hotels and airports, not walking around the zoo smiling at the look of absolute wonder on her baby girl's face.

And that's when I felt the tears coming to my eyes.

Ah well. I almost made it.

Tough times

2009-01-29T00:30:00.002-06:00

So, the company where both Hubby and I work was one of the many that announced layoffs in the last week or so. Luckily, both of our jobs appear to be safe for now, but it still makes me a little nervous, especially since our company has already stated that it will be doing more layoffs over the coming months.

It does make me feel good about being a working mom, knowing that if, heaven forbid, Hubby got laid off, we wouldn't lose our family's only source of income. (Hubby and I work in different areas of the company, so hopefully we would not both get laid off at the same time!) I saw a post today on one of my mommy boards from a stay-at-home mom whose husband got laid off. She is pregnant again, and now has no health insurance. I cannot even imagine.

One upside of the bad economy is that our company is seriously slashing travel budgets. That means fewer trips to Seattle, and more time at home with Hubby and Littles! :) I had been going about once a month, but my trip next week will be my first since early November. It would be great to go another 2 to 3 months till my next trip!

Getting smart about business travel

2008-11-03T11:33:00.001-06:00

Time for another trip to Seattle. I really can't complain because aside from the extra two days I spent in Wyoming about six weeks ago, I haven't had any business trips away from Littles since mid-August -- not a bad run.

I got smart on this trip. I have been flying out for my Seattle trips late Sunday night or first thing Monday morning, and flying home Friday afternoon or on the Friday night red-eye, so that I can get a full five days in the office (or very close to it). But I started noticing that my boss and his other remote employees (there are three of us now) usually flew in midday Monday and left Thursday afternoon or early Friday morning.

So this trip, rather than flying out on Sunday night or on the 7:30 AM flight on Monday, I picked a 10:10 AM flight today. Three hours might not sound like that much longer to spend at home, but to catch a 7:30 AM flight, I have to leave home before Littles wakes up, while a 10:10 AM flight gives me enough time to help Hubby get her up and get her ready. I was even able to drop her off at Kristi's today. This did cause me to miss baggage check-in by four minutes, so my checked bag had to go on a later flight -- a minor inconvenience in return for a few more minutes with my little girl! And thanks to "gaining" time traveling east to west, I still managed to get some good time in the office in the afternoon.

I'm flying home on the red-eye on Thursday night. I've been trying to avoid red-eyes because I am so dead the next day. These pictures were taken the day I arrived home after my last red-eye flight back in August :)

But I figure with a Thursday night red-eye, I can be in the office all day Thursday, still get home in time to help Hubby out on Friday morning, drop Littles off at Kristi's as usual, and then take a nap. From a work perspective, it's no different from if I flew home early Friday morning (either way, I would be inaccessible on Friday morning), but again, it makes a huge difference for Littles and Hubby.

I also spent last night cooking freezable food, emptying the recycle bins and the trash can, and washing and folding laundry. I remember when Hubby used to travel on business. Little things like cooking or finding a clean outfit become ten times harder when you have a baby pulling at your leg. I'm happy to know that Hubby has at least one night's dinner ready to go, that all the clothes are clean and put away, that he won't have to do an emergency emptying of the recycle bins or the trash can just to be able to throw something away, etc.

We'll see how it goes!

Searching for child care, round 3

2008-10-21T22:49:00.002-05:00

This is my sixth post in a series on finding child care.

As I have explained previously, we found a nanny share for Littles when I initially went back to work. We were really happy with the arrangement.

So when we decided to move from California to Dallas, Texas, shortly before Littles' first birthday, one of our biggest concerns was finding a similarly wonderful child care situation for her. This was a little complicated because we had to do most of the searching from a distance!

Although we loved our California nanny share, I wasn't necessarily opposed to a different type of child care. So I looked at all sorts of different options.

Daycare centers
As I had done during our very first child care search, I started with a list of daycare centers that offered a discount through my employer. I also got recommendations from friends in the area, and scoured the City-data.com forum for the Dallas area -- lots of great information there. Then I looked up all the daycares on the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services website. This allowed me to see any licensing violations that the daycares had received.

We came out to Dallas for a househunting trip in late April, about six weeks before our move was scheduled. I stayed for an extra day with Littles, and we visited a ton of daycare centers near our new home.

At the end of the day, I had found three centers that I liked:

Creme de la Creme. You have to check out the online virtual tour of this place. It is like Disney does daycare. There is a water park, a tricycle autobahn, an indoor fish pond... you name it! Unfortunately, you also pay for it -- the cost was significantly more than any other daycare in the area.
Bright Horizons. A large national chain with a consistent reputation for excellence. I couldn't put my finger on anything specific, but this place just felt "right."
Discover and Share. A local daycare that came highly recommended from the City-data.com forum. This place felt very comfortable. I talked for quite a while with one of the teachers, and she told me -- unprompted -- that it was the best place she'd ever worked at. From what I saw of it, I wasn't surprised.

In-home daycares
I also wanted to look at in-home daycares, but by searching the Texas DFPS website, I quickly discovered that there were not many in the vicinity of our new home. Reluctantly, I took this option off the table.

Other options
As soon as we knew we were moving, I started monitoring craigslist constantly for new child care postings. Weeks went by with nothing even remotely appealing coming up.

Then, about a month before our move, I saw a listing come up that sounded perfect! It was a mom with three small kids, looking to watch another child out of her home. I talked with her on the phone for about 30 minutes one night, and we seemed to be on the same page with regards to... well, just about everything parenting-related.

We had another trip to Dallas planned over Memorial Day weekend, about two weeks before our move, so we planned to meet the mom. I loved her! Unfortunately, Hubby did not. He was concerned that her two older kids (ages 5 and 3) seemed to be pretty addicted to TV, which is something that we are not big on at all. And he didn't like that the mom left her youngest child (7 months old) alone in a nearby room for a few minutes while we were talking. He put his foot down and absolutely refused to go with her.

The final decision
With no other options available, I agreed to go with a daycare center. Together, Hubby and I visited the three that I had identified on my April trip, and decided that Bright Horizons was our top choice. We put our deposit down to hold Littles' place.

I had a lot of reservations about Bright Horizons, though. Most of these centered around the fact that they wanted to put Littles in the toddler room. Developmentally, this made sense, as she was walking at that point and really no longer belonged in the infant room. But I was worried about the transition:

At the time, Littles was still taking a few bottles of expressed breastmilk daily. We were working to transition her to whole milk out of the sippy cup, but it was not going well. Bright Horizons wanted her completely off the bottle.
In her nanny share, Littles was used to sleeping in a crib or pack-n-play (portable crib) in a quiet room by herself. At Bright Horizons, she would be napping on a mat in a room with many other kids.
Littles was still taking two naps most days, but the toddler room at Bright Horizons had only one nap a day.
Naptime was scheduled for around 11:30 AM. Since Littles was moving across two time zones, I was worried that she might not be tired at naptime, then be exhausted later.
I wasn't thrilled with Bright Horizon's menu. Granted, it was far better than some of the other daycare centers I looked at -- one served biscuits and gravy for breakfast, another served juice and brownies as a snack. (To a roomful of 1-year-olds? Are you insane?) Still, it just didn't live up to my standards.

In short, I was really concerned about Littles going through all this change, on top of moving halfway across the country, leaving the nanny who had taken care of her for over half her life, etc.

Hubby thought Bright Horizons was the right choice, and was really upset with me for being so wishy-washy. It wasn't a fun time, for either of us.

I kept looking on craigslist, hopeful that another option would come up. And finally, one did! I found a listing from another stay-at-home mom, named Kristi. She had great credentials -- she helped in her mom's in-home daycare as a child, went to college for early childhood education, worked in daycare centers, raised her two sons (ages 8 and 10), etc. She was watching her own two boys, who were home for the summer, along with another little boy who was a month younger than Littles. Her home was a little bit of a drive from ours, but it was manageable.

I met with her a few days after we moved to Dallas. (My mother-in-law came up from Austin to watch Littles as we settled in during those early weeks, which gave me some extra time to interview caregivers.) I felt far more comfortable with her than with Bright Horizons. And Hubby agreed to give her a shot.

We checked references, ran a background check -- and then, on Littles' first birthday, she started with Kristi.

Well, crap.

2008-10-03T23:02:00.001-05:00

Despite this blog's title, I'm actually feeling pretty balanced these days. When I'm at home, my focus is my family. When I'm in Seattle, my focus is my work. For the most part, I feel like I have plenty of time for both.

This past week and a half has been a challenge, because I've been with my family in Seattle. My husband had a business trip here, so I figured I'd do my monthly trip at the same time, and bring Littles.

For the most part, it worked out well. We took advantage of our company's backup care program yet again, and they were able to place Littles at a local daycare center. I far preferred this to the in-hotel nanny situation that we had when I brought her here back in May. It was also wonderful being able to wake up next to my husband every day. Had we not combined our trips, we would have spent two full weeks apart from each other, which would have sucked.

But Wednesday was a rough day. I had a team meeting starting at 9 AM, so I had to wake Littles up (which I hate doing) and rush through our morning routine to get out the door and off to daycare. Most days, when I dropped her off there, I was able to sit with her for a little while until she warmed up and joined in the activities. But that day, since I was already late, I had to get up to leave before she was fully settled. She cried as I left. Always a crappy start to the day.

I headed off to my office, thinking I'd get there just in time for my meeting. Instead, I got caught in terrible, terrible traffic. Someone thought it was a bright idea to shut down one lane on a major thoroughfare smack in the middle of rush hour. I prayed that the my co-workers would be stuck in the same traffic jam. No such luck. I walked in 15 minutes late to find everyone waiting on me.

The meeting was supposed to go until 4 PM. Instead, it was still going strong at 5 PM, the time that I normally started packing up to go pick up Littles. I knew my husband had a dinner with his co-workers, so he couldn't go get her. I would have to do it. "Great," I was thinking, "I get to see my boss about once a month, and what is he going to see from me? Showing up late and leaving early."

Thankfully, one of my other co-workers is in a carpool, so he had to leave at 5:30 PM, and when he did, I mentioned that I would need to leave soon as well. I still had to present my product's roadmap, so I rushed through it, threw my laptop in my bag, and ran off to pick up Littles. Crappy employee.

I arrived at 6 PM, half an hour later than usual. Littles was the last kid left. Crappy mother.

I love having her with me on these trips, but I'll admit, it's a lot easier when I come alone and can just focus on work.

Fun times, and not so fun times

2008-09-21T23:04:00.002-05:00

Fun times: We recently returned from an awesome vacation to Wyoming! We spent 8 days in Jackson, Grand Teton National Park, and Yellowstone National Park.

Vacations like this remind me of why I work. This particular trip was actually a business trip -- we flew out about a week before my business meeting started in order to enjoy the local sights. So that saved us some money! Also, seeing the look of wonder on Littles' face as she saw a buffalo for the first time or witnessed the power of a waterfall reminded me of a quote: "Life is not measured by the breaths you take but by the moments that take your breath away." I know I'm not there for every breath Littles takes, but I'm there for the moments that take her breath away, and that's what really counts.

Not so fun times: I forgot my pump! Not such a big deal, except that I had to stay for two days longer than Hubby and Littles in order to attend my meeting! Oops. I ended up missing four nursing sessions total, and I hand-expressed milk to keep my supply up and avoid engorgement. I'm not going to explain exactly what hand-expressing entails; look it up if you're interested :). Anyway, it worked out fine, but I was really glad to get home.

Why I love wireless Internet

2008-09-08T10:53:00.006-05:00

I'm usually pretty good about putting down my work at 5 PM so I can go pick Littles up from her sitter's. I get home and focus on Littles until she goes to bed, then catch up on work once she's asleep if I need to.

On Friday, I came back home from picking up Littles and found three instant messages frantically blinking at me. So after Littles finished nursing, Hubby took her out to play on the patio so I could finish things up.

I followed them out on the patio, laptop in tow.

Wireless network router: $45
Being able to get your work done without missing your husband gleefully soaking your giggling daughter: Priceless

Nanny share pros and cons

2008-08-18T22:18:00.004-05:00

This is my fifth post in a series on finding child care.

As I have explained previously, when I first returned to work, we placed Littles in a nanny share. Maria, our nanny, watched another girl named Dani, who is about 18 months older than Littles. Maria also brought her daughter, Gali, who is almost exactly 4 years older than Littles.

I wrote quite a bit about our nanny share in a post back in February. Overall, the experience was fantastic. Hubby and I are already thinking about trying to find something similar when we have another child.

Still, I went in thinking that it would be perfect. It was not. Now I understand that no child care situation is perfect. (Including having one parent stay at home!)

In retrospect, the root cause of the handful of complaints that I did have was that I made a lot of assumptions.

Caregiver style
Probably the biggest assumption I made was that Maria would fully defer to my desires on all aspects of Littles' care. She did not. Our biggest disagreement, as I described in my February post, was over how to get Littles to sleep for naps. Maria let her "cry it out" -- something that I was very much opposed to. I told Maria that I didn't want her to do it, and she did it anyway. In that case, I must admit that it worked quite well and does not seem to have had any negative long-term impact on Littles. But I always worried that Maria and I would disagree on something else major, and that I would have to defer to her again.

Lesson learned: Every child care provider has his or her own "style," as does every parent. Some providers are more willing than others to adjust their "style" to fit a parent's. Now I know to ask providers about their style, and to sniff out how willing a provider is to change their style to suit mine.

Breastfeeding
I had assumed that I would be able to mostly breastfeed during the days when the nanny share was at our house and I worked from home. This would have greatly eased my pumping load.

But I never discussed this with Maria before we started. Within a week, it became very apparent that this was not going to work out. Part of it was that Littles seemed to do better when she took bottles exclusively during the day -- I think she got confused when I saw her to nurse and then "left." But I also think that Maria could have been more supportive. For example, she sometimes didn't want to "bother" me at work, so she simply gave Littles a bottle without telling me. Unfortunately, that seriously messed with my schedule, because I was waiting on Maria to bring Littles to nurse, and didn't realize that I needed to pump instead.

If we do a nanny situation with future babies and I'm still working from home, I plan to discuss my desire to nurse as much as possible ahead of time, rather than springing it on the nanny on the first day.

Conserving my "liquid gold"
I also assumed that Maria would treat my expressed breastmilk like I did. This one is hard to explain if you've never pumped. Pumping moms often call expressed breastmilk "liquid gold," because it is! It takes so much effort to get it out that you don't want to waste a single drop. Maria certainly didn't waste breastmilk on purpose, but I think she could have conserved it a little better than she did. For example, she often gave a bottle late in the day (around 4 PM or even later, when I picked Littles up between 5 and 5:30 PM), rather than waiting for me to get there to nurse.

A few other minor quibbles that I had:

We had some struggles with Dani, who was very jealous of Littles. For example, if one of her parents said hello to Littles, she would scream, "No Littles!" She also scratched Littles on multiple occasions. This did not really bother me, as I knew Dani was being disciplined appropriately for her behavior and the scratches were not serious, but it really bugged Hubby.
The two older girls watched TV. Not a significant amount, just a half hour of cartoons before their nap and occasionally a little at the end of the day too, and Maria usually gave Littles a bottle or played with her while the older girls watched TV. But we try not to have the TV on around Littles at all, so even half an hour was more than I would have liked.
Maria generally worked 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM. She was usually happy to come early or stay late on the occasional days when we needed her to, but I always felt bad making her do that. After all, she has a family and a life of her own. On those days, I wished we were at a daycare center, where I could drop off at 7 AM and know that Littles' teacher wasn't there just because of us.
There was not much structure to the girls' days with Maria. They walked to the park when the weather was nice, and the rest of the day was spent in unstructured play. This was fine -- even preferable -- for Littles as an infant, but it might have become less desirable had we stayed with Maria as Littles got older.
One oft-cited con to a one-caregiver situation like our nanny share is that you have no backup if the caregiver is sick or unavailable for any reason. Luckily, as I've mentioned before, we have excellent backup child care through our jobs, so this was not an issue for us.

That said, there were many pros to our nanny share, and they far outweighed the cons!

Individualized attention
I cannot stress the importance of this one enough. Littles got so much love and attention! Part of this goes back to Maria's caregiver "style" -- this was definitely a positive aspect of it. She always reached out to hold Littles the moment I walked through the door, gave her lots of hugs and kisses, and generally made sure that she interacted with her as much as possible. Littles really bonded with her. Gali was like a miniature version of her mom, always talking to and playing with Littles. Dani, like most 2-year-olds, was mostly wrapped up in her own little world :), but Littles loved watching her dance, run, and play. I think that interaction and bonding was really important to Littles as an infant.

One caregiver to bond with
I also think it's really important for infants to have the chance to bond strongly with one caregiver. In a daycare environment, an infant room might have three, four, five or more teachers in and out over the course of a day. I liked that Maria was Littles' only caregiver, that she didn't need to give me daily written reports because she could just tell me everything about Littles' day, that Littles had lots of consistency and familiarity in care. Some moms don't like this because they think their baby will start to prefer the caregiver, but this never happened. Littles loved Maria, but she never forgot that Hubby and I are her dad and mom!

I remember coming to pick Littles up one day, a few weeks before we moved. Maria had given her a Doodle Pro to play with, and as Maria and I caught up on her day, Littles attempted to figure out the Doodle Pro -- she kept trying to draw with the wrong end of the magnetic wand. Finally, she figured it out and scribbled a clear black line on the pad. She looked at me with a big smile, clearly proud of herself, and then gave Maria the same smile and the same look. It was in that moment that I could see just how well she had bonded with Maria. It made me happy that she spent her days with someone she loved so much, and who loved her so much.

Social interaction
Littles absolutely loved Dani and Gali. She got a huge smile on her face every morning when they came running over to say hello. I think she enjoyed the nanny share much more than she would have enjoyed being alone with a nanny. The nanny share offered a great balance between social interaction and individualized attention.

Interaction with older kids
Dani and Gali interacted with Littles in a much different way from either adults or other babies. For example, from the day we brought Littles home from the hospital, we used a bouncy chair that had a little dog toy attached to it. If you pulled on the dog toy, it played a song. Littles hadn't figured out the dog toy when she started in hte nanny share, but within a week, Gali had taught her how to pull on the dog toy to make it play the song. Another baby would not have the awareness to show her that; an adult (like me!) would have no interest in pulling the silly toy over and over to show Littles how it worked. It took an older child to do that.

Comfortable surroundings
Littles got to spend two days a week in the familiar environment of her own home. The rest of the week, she was in a similar home-like setting, with the benefit of access to Dani's extensive toy collection :) Far different from the busy environment of daycare. She does great in these environments now, but I think it was good for her to get used to them gradually, rather than all at once as a young infant.

Convenience
Not having to pack up all of Littles' stuff on the two days when the nanny share was at our house was wonderful! Also, the flip side of "inconveniencing" Maria by asking her to come early some days was that I didn't have to inconvenience Littles on those days by waking her up to go to daycare. Oftentimes, on the days when Maria arrived at 7:30 AM, Littles was just waking up as she arrived.

Cost
We paid about the same for Maria as we would have paid at a daycare center -- and much less than we would have paid for a dedicated nanny. Yet we got a much lower caregiver to child ratio and greater convenience.

Cleaning
We paid Maria $35 extra each week, and she cleaned up as the girls napped. This was a nice little side benefit, and far cheaper than a cleaning service. She also did things that our old cleaning service didn't do, such as putting away clean dishes and folding Littles' clothes.

Conclusions
We really lucked out with our nanny share. As inexperienced parents, we didn't even know what questions to ask in our interview with Maria. But we went with our gut, and ended up finding a wonderful situation for Littles. It wasn't perfect, to be sure, but Littles was safe and very loved, and that's all a parent can ask for.

It never gets any easier

2008-08-18T00:59:00.003-05:00

Just arrived in Seattle for my August trip. This is my third trip alone, and leaving Littles and Hubby never gets any easier :( I'm always near tears as I walk out the door.

I'm already counting the hours until I get home.

Mia's first day at daycare!

2008-08-07T23:00:00.004-05:00

Kristi (Littles' normal sitter) took a day off today, so we needed backup care. For the first time, Work Options Group was able to locate a daycare center that would take Littles as a drop-in, rather than assigning a nanny to come take care of her at home. I think it helps that she's now a "toddler" rather than an "infant" -- the ratios in the toddler rooms are a little higher, so they're more likely to have open spots.

So I pulled out the Sharpie to label all her stuff last night, then packed her up this morning and off we went!

She got off to a bit of a rocky start. Moments after we arrived, they combined the two toddler rooms (10 kids and 2 teachers each) for a special "exercise" program with music. She seemed to be settling in fine, so I stepped away to hand over her diaper bag and give some instructions to the lead teacher in her room. When I came back, Littles was whimpering, and then she started crying when she saw me. I think that all the kids, activity, music, etc. just freaked her out a little.

I knew that my presence probably wasn't helping, so I left, and called about an hour later. The teacher told me that she had indeed stopped crying after I left and was off playing happily.

She ended up doing really well! She only napped for 20 minutes (normal for her is 2 hours), but that was actually more that I expected, given that she had to sleep on a mat in a room with a bunch of other kids rather than in a crib in a room by herself. She ate all her food and was a good girl. The teachers said that she did even better than two kids who started a few days ago. I was so proud of her!

Nanny share logistics

2008-08-07T10:47:00.002-05:00

This is my fourth post in a series on finding child care.

As I explained in my last post on this subject, when I first returned to work, we placed Littles in a nanny share. Maria, our nanny, watched another girl named Dani, who is about 18 months older than Littles. Maria also brought her daughter, Gali, who is almost exactly 4 years older than Littles.

Nanny share logistics can be a little tricky, since you're dealing with not only a nanny but also another family. Here's what we figured out for ours.

Which house?
Some nanny shares are always at one family's house. In our case, we decided to split days between Dani's house and our house. Usually, everyone came to our house on Mondays and Wednesdays, and we took Littles over to Dani's house the rest of the week.

Equipment
Both families provided pack-n-plays (portable cribs/play yards). Littles slept in Dani's pack-n-play at her house, which was set up in the bedroom of Dani's school-age brother. Dani slept in Littles' pack-n-play at our house, which we set up in either our master bedroom or our office, depending on whether or not I was working from home that day. At our house, Gali slept on a mat on the floor of the living room; I assume she did something similar at Dani's house.

We purchased a Fisher Price Healthy Care booster seat right before we started the nanny share, and that is what Dani ate on at our house. We then purchased a high chair for Littles when she started solids. Dani's family had a Healthy Care booster seat and a high chair as well, so Littles used their high chair at their house.

Dani's family had previously purchased a double stroller, so Maria kept it in her car and brought it back and forth between our house and Dani's. This allowed her to easily take all three girls out for a walk.

We had to do some childproofing of our home when we first started in the nanny share -- mostly putting gates on the steps to ensure that Dani didn't fall. We didn't mind at all, since we knew we would need the gates for Littles in a few months anyway! (And we did...) This might be bad, but we never really looked over Dani's house from a childproofing perspective, even after Littles got more mobile. We figured Dani's family had already childproofed well enough to keep her alive, and Maria would raise any concerns she had about Littles' safety.

Nanny pay
As is typical, Maria charged a little more to watch two children instead of one. Typically, each family paid $8/hour, so Maria made $16/hour total. If one family needed Maria but the other didn't, the family who needed her paid $14/hour. For example, Maria typically worked 8:30-5:30, but some days, we needed her to come early or stay late. On those days, we paid her $14/hour for the extra hours.

Both families also paid Maria about $35 extra per week to clean up around the house. She vacuumed, cleaned the bathrooms, washed windows, cleaned the kitchen, put away dishes/loaded the dishwasher, folded laundry, dusted, etc. She usually waited till Littles took a nap to vacuum, and she did the rest of the cleaning while all three girls were down for a nap (right after lunch). This was definitely a nice perk of having in-home care!

Sick/vacation days
We did not specifically negotiate a certain number of sick days or vacation days. Dani's family had been using Maria for over a year when we joined the share, and they assured us that she was very reliable and almost always there. Indeed, in 8 months with her, she never called in sick and only asked for three days off, each time with over a month's notice. We paid her when she took time off -- I figure everyone needs a break from their job every once in a while! Also, if either family took vacation, they still paid Maria as if they were there. This allowed Maria to count on a consistent income, and it also allowed each family to count on a consistent price for Maria -- it would have been awful if we had had to pay more than anticipated one week just because Dani was out sick or on vacation!

Conclusions
Really, the arrangement was pretty informal. We did not sign a contract or talk about liability (e.g. if Dani got hurt at our home) or decide on sick-child policies or write up emergency policies (i.e. if Littles or Dani needed to be rushed to the doctor) or anything like that. Naive? Maybe. But it worked out fine.

In my next post, I'll talk about the pros and cons of our nanny share.

I'm still alive!

2008-08-06T22:13:00.001-05:00

I know it's been a while, but yes, I'm still alive!

I made another trip up to Seattle last week. It was pure craziness, as a number of my friends and co-workers were there as well, so we had some late nights out on the town :) And I thought I didn't get much sleep at home with a 1-year-old who wakes up at 7 AM every day. Yeesh.

This was my longest trip yet, at six full days. I left early Sunday morning (there was a meeting on Sunday afternoon) and got home on the red-eye early Saturday morning. I had fun and got some good work done, but by the end of the week, I was so ready to come home. I missed Littles and Hubby terribly, and the week just dragged on and on.

As a result, I continued what is probably a bad habit: I buy Littles a gift on every trip I take. It helps ease the guilt I feel from leaving her. Sort of. At least this trip, I had the good sense to indulge at a thrift shop, where I picked up a baby University of Washington football jersey for all of $2.17. Last trip, I happened to walk past a super-expensive toy store just a few hours before my flight. Not. Good.

Nothing has changed with Littles' nursing situation since my last trip -- she still nurses morning and night -- so I had to pull out the pump again. I skipped my pumping session on Sunday night, and ended up pumping really late (ummm, 3 AM) on Monday night, so my supply seemed to take a bit of a hit, and Littles seems a little less interested in nursing now that I'm back home. I'm fine with that; I'm not rushing her into weaning fully, but whenever she's ready, I am too.

I'll have only two weeks at home before I have to head up there for another week :( It's OK, because I did have a long stretch at home (4 full weeks) between my last two trips, but ugh, I'm not really looking forward to it.

The one thing I'm happy about is that Hubby and Littles may come with me on the two trips after this next one! I have a meeting in Jackson, Wyoming, in mid-September, so we're all flying out a week early for vacation. Then, Hubby has to go to Seattle in late September, so if we're able to find backup care for Littles, I'll probably try to fly out that same week and we'll bring Littles with us. Cross your fingers that it all works out!

In conclusion, I'll leave you with another installment in my "Where I pumped today" series. This is the nursing room at Seattle-Tacoma airport. Yes, a nursing room! It's a quiet, private space with two rocking chairs and outlets for moms who need to pump. Far better than nursing in public or pumping in a bathroom. Every airport should have one of these! I pumped here on Friday night just before boarding my red-eye home:

Adjacent to the nursing room is a children's play area. Brilliant! A place for active toddlers to burn off some energy before boarding their flights. Hopefully Littles will get a chance to play here in a few weeks when she comes up with Hubby and me!

Searching for child care, round 2

2008-07-15T22:21:00.003-05:00

This is my third post in a series on finding child care.

As I explained in my last post on this subject, we put Littles on a waiting list at a daycare center while I was pregnant, but ended up moving away from that area shortly before the end of my maternity leave. This meant that we had to start the daycare search all over again.

Once again, I started looking at daycare centers that offered a discount through my employer. I visited two, and was not terribly impressed.

But this time around, I was willing to consider options other than a daycare center. Our new home would be an 1800 square foot townhouse, much bigger than our old condo, and it would have a third bedroom that I would use as my office. So having someone come to our home was now an option. In addition, I had a clearer picture of what I would be doing when I returned to work, and I knew I'd be working from home quite a bit. This made the idea of having a caregiver in our home even more appealing.

Still, we could not afford a nanny. But late one night, I got the idea to look on craigslist for a nanny share. Amazingly, I immediately located not one but two nanny share options in our new location! (I am still amazed by my luck that evening. Good nanny shares are tough to find on craigslist.) I emailed both to set up meetings.

The first family had a daughter named Dani, who was almost two years old at the time. They had tried some daycares initially, when Dani was about six months old, but didn't like any of them and eventually decided to bite the bullet and hire a nanny. They found Maria and loved her, but realized that they couldn't afford her. So they started sharing with another family. The mom in the other family had recently been laid off and had decided to stay at home with her son, so Dani's family was looking for another family to share Maria with.

The second family had a son named Evan, who was in the infant room at one of the local daycare centers. Since he was almost a year old, he was getting ready to move up to the toddler room, and his parents did not like what they'd seen of that room. So they talked to Jennifer, one of the teachers in the infant room, about nannying for them (which I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to do with your daycare teachers, but that wasn't our problem...), and were looking to find another family to share Jennifer with.

Hubby and I both met with each family and the prospective nanny together. I didn't have any pre-defined questions to ask -- I had asked some basic questions of each family over email, such as the age of the other child, what the nanny was like, and the cost. I mostly wanted to see whether I felt comfortable with the situation or not.

Littles devised her own test, as only a two-month-old can do: She took an enormous poop during both meetings. The differences were telling.

Dani's family heard the poop and immediately offered up their changing table to us. Hubby took Littles back to the changing table. Unprompted, Maria followed him, and pitched in to help with the diaper.

If Evan's family heard the poop (which is likely, because it was pretty loud), they didn't acknowledge it. Littles was sitting in Hubby's lap, and I could see him nervously shifting her around, looking to see if she was leaking. Since it was getting towards the end of the meeting anyway, we said that Littles had a dirty diaper and we better get going. Evan's mom and dad just said, "Oh, OK." No offers to help.

As we changed Littles' diaper, Hubby and I quickly agreed that we felt far more comfortable with Dani's family. We called them the next day to say, "Let's do it."

Searching for child care, round 1

2008-07-13T23:38:00.003-05:00

This is my second post in a series on finding child care.

As I mentioned in my first post on this subject, we have now done the child care search three times.

The first time was while I was pregnant and, later, on maternity leave. At the time, we were living in a 1100 square foot condo that had basically three rooms -- the master bedroom, Littles' bedroom, and the main living area, which included my office. Consequently, I did not consider any type of care in our home, because I figured it would be too distracting to have Littles spending her days just a few feet away from where I was trying to work. (In retrospect, I was absolutely right on this.)

I did not really consider in-home daycares, stay-at-home moms, etc. either. I don't really remember why. Part of it might have been that I couldn't imagine trusting someone who was completely alone (i.e. no other adults) with my child all day.

So that left daycare centers as the only remaining option. I started with the list of centers that provided discounts through my employer, and called to schedule some visits.

I didn't really have a list of questions that I asked. I quickly found that I just had to listen to my gut. Some places, I immediately felt at ease and comfortable. Others just never felt right. Sadly, this included the center that was by far the most convenient, just a quarter mile away from our house and offering a 20% discount through our employer. But if it's not right, it's not right, and that place did not feel right at all.

I ended up finding two places that I liked. One was a Kindercare facility, about a 10 minute drive from our house -- Kindercare is a huge national chain with many many facilities. The other was a non-chain daycare called Future Assets.

I liked the Kindercare facility, but I loved Future Assets. Even now, 1.5 years after my first visit, it stands out as probably the best daycare I've ever visited. Unfortunately, we got hung up on the terms for reserving a space for Littles. Kindercare wanted a non-refundable $25 application fee to put her on the waiting list -- totally reasonable. Future Assets wanted a $100 application fee plus first and last months' tuition. That came out to almost $3000, all non-refundable!

So we decided to put Littles on the waiting list at Kindercare (we did this about two months before she was born) and to cross our fingers that Future Assets would still have a spot if we felt it was the right place to be as my return-to-work date drew closer.

That ended up being a fantastic decision. When Littles was about two months old, our landlord sold our condo, meaning that we had to move. Hubby's office was about a 45 minute drive from that condo, so we decided to move closer to his office. Of course, that meant that neither the Kindercare we had looked at nor Future Assets made sense as child care options. Good thing we didn't put down $3000 non-refundable at Future Assets!

So, we started the child care search again...

Traveling with(out) a nursing toddler

2008-06-28T22:31:00.001-05:00

Although it's been over a month since I weaned from the pump, I do still nurse Littles twice a day -- once in the morning when she first wakes up, and once in the evening, a little before dinner. I enjoy nursing, Littles is still interested (although I often feel that she enjoys the cuddles and the 1:1 time with Mom more than the milk, not that there's anything wrong with that!), and so I have no plans to drop either of these sessions anytime soon.

Of course, this posed a dilemma during my travels this past week. Since nursing is a supply-and-demand system, I knew I couldn't skip nursing all week and expect to pick up where I left off when I got home.

This meant that if I wanted to continue nursing, I would have to (gasp!) start pumping again.

It actually was not too bad. There were two main reasons why I hated full-time pumping:

I hated the awkwardness of either telling co-workers about pumping or finding excuses to take pump breaks during the workday.
I hated the day-to-day "am I pumping enough?" stress.

Pumping for a nursing toddler elimates both of these problems. I only needed to pump before and after work, so there was no awkwardness during the workday. And I really didn't care how much I pumped; honestly, I'm not even sure we'll end up using the milk I pumped, as Littles should be able to do whole milk exclusively by the time of my next trip at the end of July.

I refused to bring my Medela Pump in Style out of retirement, so I took along my Medela Harmony manual pump instead. I was pleasantly surprised by how much milk I was able to get. I've been feeling fairly "deflated" and I've wondered whether I really have any milk left. To my surprise, I averaged about 4-5 oz per session, which is a pretty decent amount.

Transporting the milk home was a breeze, since I only had the two pump sessions. Back in my full-time pumping days, I would have pumped probably around 100 oz on a trip of this length. Getting all that milk home would be a huge pain! This time, I only pumped about 35 oz, so I didn't have any difficulty fitting it into two cooler bags and carrying it on.

I have no goals around nursing or pumping right now, so I don't know whether or not I'll go through all of this again during my next trip. But if I do decide to do it, it's nice to know it's not too much of a hassle.

The upside of traveling

2008-06-24T23:08:00.002-05:00

Reading Littles' "comment" on my last blog entry reminded me of one of the benefits of traveling on business: Littles and Hubby will get plenty of quality daddy-daughter time together! I've talked to them a few times today, and it sounds like they're having a blast. I think the time alone together will be really good for both of them.

And it's sunny and in the low 70's here in Seattle, and I could see Mount Rainier this morning on my drive in to the office. Life is -- well, not great, but not so bad either.

I might just be the worst mom ever.

2008-06-23T23:30:00.001-05:00

That's how working mom's guilt sometimes makes me feel.

Littles has had a rough time adjusting to Texas. First, her sleep schedule was all off, thanks to the time zone change. Then, on the Wednesday after we arrived, she came down with a double ear infection, which further threw off her sleep.

After a pretty rough day, she recovered well from that, and she started in her new nanny share last Wednesday. The first day went fine. On Thursday, the second day, I could see a tear running down her cheek when I came to pick her up, and Kristi (the nanny) said, "She's been fussy and clingy all day. I think she's missing you."

Sigh. At least Friday was better again.

But then, literally minutes before her first birthday party started on Saturday, I thought she felt a little warm. Sure enough, she was running a fever, which eventually spiked up to about 103 overnight.

We took her to urgent care midday Sunday, and the doctor said she looked fine and probably just had a virus or other infection. Her fever broke not long after that.

So I figured I'd proceed with my longstanding plans to catch a 7:30 AM flight to Seattle this morning. I was a little nervous, what with the bad day at Kristi's on Thursday and the fever over the weekend, but I figured I didn't really have a good reason not to go.

Until Littles refused to go to bed last night.

We're still not sure what that was about. She screamed whenever we put her in her crib, or tried to rock her, or tried to lay down with her. All of a sudden, around midnight, she calmed down and started running around and laughing and playing like it was the middle of the day. Strangest thing! I was finally able to nurse her to sleep at about 12:30 AM.

So I skipped the early-morning flight to see how Littles did today. She did just fine, settling down easily for her nap, so I felt better about proceeding with my Seattle plans.

I was able to stand by for an evening flight tonight at no charge, so that worked out well. But boy, I did not want to go. I think about her wanting her mommy, wondering where I am, wondering if I'll ever come home again, and I just want to cry :(

It's going to be a long week.

Child care options

2008-06-18T01:55:00.001-05:00

We just finished our third search for child care, so I thought I'd write a couple of posts about the process we've gone through.

First, the options. Most people break down child care into three categories:

Daycare centers. These tend to be large, with kids broken up into multiple classrooms by age. Biggest pro: Always available. If your teacher is ill, the center handles finding a backup. Biggest con: Lots of kids can mean less 1:1 attention... and more germs and illness.
In-home daycares. These are usually smaller. In Texas, for example, in-home daycares can have no more than 12 children at one time, regardless of the number of providers -- that's the size of one classroom at many daycare centers! Most in-home providers also accept kids of all ages, from infant to preschool. Biggest pro: Most in-home daycares have only one provider, so your child is able to really bond with that provider, rather than seeing multiple teachers over the course of his/her day. Biggest con: You'll usually find yourself scrambling for backup care if your provider is sick or goes on vacation.
Nannies. A nanny comes to your home to watch your child. Biggest pro: Tons of 1:1 attention. Biggest con: Cost. A good nanny can easily cost more than your mortgage payment.

When I first started looking for child care, when I was pregnant, I thought these were the only options available. And, personally, I don't like any of these options, at least at Littles' age. I think that 1:1 attention is so important for infants/toddlers, but at all of the daycare centers and in-home daycares that I've looked at, Littles would be one of four or five children assigned to one caregiver.

A nanny certainly provides 1:1 attention, but the cost is prohibitive for us. Plus, Littles really does enjoy interacting with other kids, and I don't think she would get enough of that interaction if she were home alone all day with a nanny.

For me, the "sweet spot" is 2 or 3 children with one caregiver -- enough so that each child gets plenty of attention from the caregiver, but also plenty of interaction with other kids.

So I am lucky to have stumbled upon a couple of additional options, both of which hit my "sweet spot" for the number of children, at a reasonable cost:

Nannies who bring their own child. This gives your child a built-in playmate. Also, the nanny usually charges a little less, since she's essentially getting free child care.
Nanny shares. One nanny, two families. This is what we did in California, and it worked out to be about the same price as a daycare center.
Stay-at-home moms. Some stay-at-home moms look to watch an extra child or two to make some extra money. This is what we will be doing in Texas. The mom who we'll be leaving Littles with is actually on the high end as far as what she charges, compared to other stay-at-home moms providing child care, but we feel she's worth it. And she's still cheaper than a daycare center.

In my next post, I'll talk more about my process of searching for child care.

The milk made it safely :)

2008-06-04T13:54:00.002-05:00

Hubby said the milk made it safely, still frozen solid. In fact, he said it was probably colder than when I took it out of the freezer! 10 lbs of dry ice was definitely enough :)

Shipping breastmilk

2008-06-03T22:13:00.001-05:00

I still have about 160 oz of frozen breastmilk in the freezer. With our pending move, I was prepared to dump whatever Littles didn't drink this week. After all, transporting frozen breastmilk is a huge pain, because it must stay frozen -- if it thaws, it must be used within 24 hours, which would obviously be a problem if it's 160 oz that has thawed. And with Littles moving on to cow's milk and taking less and less breastmilk during the day, it didn't really seem necessary to have breastmilk available in Texas.

So the other day, I told Hubby that I would probably dump my frozen milk before we left California. He said, "Heck no! I've supported your breastfeeding for a year! We are not dumping any milk!"

Sometimes I love my husband :)

I knew that I had two options for getting the milk to Texas: 1) transport it myself when we fly out on Sunday, or 2) ship it ahead of time.

Transporting it myself didn't seem like a good option. After all, that is a lot of milk, and we will have plenty of other things to deal with (Littles, our cat Monessa, etc.) on Sunday.

So I decided to ship it ahead. Since Hubby will be coming home tomorrow night to help with the move, I had to get it off to him today.

It turned out to be fairly easy.

Since all my milk is frozen in glass bottles, I wrapped each bottle in bubble wrap.

I found a small hard-sided cooler in the garage that looked to be the perfect size. (You can also use a styrofoam cooler packaged in a cardboard box, but this site suggests that a hard-sided cooler does a better job of keeping the milk safe.)

I used DryIceDirectory.com to locate a nearby dry ice supplier. This turned out to be an ice cream shop!

I purchased 10 pounds of dry ice, which cost $8.50. This may be overkill, as this site says that you only need 5-9 pounds of dry ice to keep a cooler full of milk frozen, but I figured better safe than sorry.

I split the dry ice into two pieces using a hammer. I wrapped the first piece in packing paper, put it at the bottom of the cooler, and put more packing paper at the bottom of the cooler for additional padding:

Then I put the bubble-wrapped bottles into the cooler:

I wrapped the other half of the dry ice in more packing paper and put that on top. I stuffed packing paper into any holes I could find in order to make sure everything stays nice and secure in transit:

Then I wrapped tape around the cooler a few times to secure the lid in place.

Since dry ice is classified as dangerous goods, I called FedEx to double-check that they would have no problems shipping it. The phone rep sent me a label to place on the cooler to identify it as containing dry ice. I also printed out this flyer to identify the cooler as containing human milk. I edited it to add that it contained glass as well:

Then I headed over to FedEx. I had to make sure I dropped it off at a location that accepts dangerous goods. (You can identify these locations by selecting the "dangerous goods" option under "Filter your search by FedEx services" on the Find FedEx Locations screen.)

I chose the priority overnight option, so the package will arrive by 10:00 AM tomorrow. Again, this is probably overkill -- standard overnight, with a 3:00 PM arrival time, would be fine, but I erred on the side of caution.

The woman asked me if the value was more than $100, and I answered, "No." Although I was thinking in my head, "Well, really, it's priceless..."

The cooler with 17 glass bottles and about 135 oz of milk (I kept some out for Littles to drink during the rest of this week) weighed in at 28 lbs. It cost $175 to ship.

After shipping the cooler, I went to pick up Littles, and found out that she'd been having tummy troubles all day. We're guessing it's from the cow's milk. (Hubby is lactose-intolerant, so this is not a complete surprise.) So now I'm really glad that I went through the trouble of shipping the breastmilk, since it takes a lot of pressure off -- we can take our time with weaning.

Now I just have to cross my fingers and hope all that milk is still frozen when it arrives in Texas tomorrow!

Hanging up the horns

2008-06-01T17:29:00.001-05:00

I'm heading in to San Francisco tomorrow. My old team is having a "team meeting," and Brian, my old boss, invited me to come along. See, because that team travels so much, you can easily go for weeks or months without seeing your teammates, or even Brian, for that matter. So roughly once a quarter, Brian blocks everyone's calendars so that they won't have customer visits, and holds a team meeting. The meeting is usually light on business and heavy on fun. (And alcohol.) Tomorrow, for example, there is a 1-hour meeting in the morning, and then we're taking the ferry to Sausalito for lunch (with drinks), followed by a cruise on San Francisco Bay (with drinks). I'm looking forward to seeing my old teammates again and saying goodbye.

And I'm really looking forward to not pumping.

That's right. My last pumping session was on Thursday, May 22nd -- 7 months to the day after my return to work. I have officially hung up the horns.

Tomorrow's team meeting will be a perfect bookend to my working-and-pumping career. I remember another team meeting, on October 15. It was one week before my official first day back, but as I said, these team meetings are pretty infrequent, and for this particular one, two of our senior managers came along, in addition to the rest of the team. So I made a point of attending.

That was the first day I left Littles alone with Maria, and it was very, very hard. I remember sitting on BART heading in to the office, listening to Rob Thomas' "Little Wonders," remembering how I used to sing that while dancing around the living room with Littles when she was a newborn, when my return to work seemed so far away. I couldn't believe that I had just left my little baby with someone I had only met twice.

And then there was pumping. The plans for that day were similar to the plans for tomorrow: Brief meeting in the morning, followed by a ferry to Sausalito for lunch and hanging out, then a ferry back to the office. I had hoped to arrive early to have some time to pump, but that didn't work out. I ended up excusing myself on the ferry and pumping in the bathroom. At the time, I thought that was awful. Now that I have more bathroom-pumping experience, I can honestly say that I wish all bathrooms were like the ones on the ferry. At least it was clean and had an electrical outlet.

That was at around 11 AM. I wasn't able to break away to pump for the rest of the day. I decided to forego pumping on the return ferry trip, opting to pump when we returned to the office instead. At that point, it was 5:30 PM and my breasts were about to explode. Unfortunately, the receptionist goes home at 5:30 PM, so I wasn't able to get the key to the pump room. I ended up ducking under a table in a conference room and hoping that no one would walk in on me.

This is why I'm really looking forward to not pumping tomorrow :)

It's been a long and crazy 7 months, but I've made it through, somehow carving out time and space to pump where there was none, day in and day out. Littles will go straight from breastmilk to cow's milk. No formula for my little girl.

On one of the mommy message boards that I frequent, there was a discussion a few months ago about whether moms should feel proud for making it to a year on breastmilk alone, no formula. Some respondents pointed out, "Women have been breastfeeding for millenia, so why should you feel proud if you breastfeed too?"

OK, point taken, but I doubt that my great-great-great-great-grandmother had to slip into a bathroom on a ferry and hook herself up to a plastic contraption to provide breastmilk for her baby. And I know she didn't have the lure of an almost-(but-not-quite)-as-good breastmilk alternative staring her in the face every time she went to the grocery store.

So yeah, I'm proud that I woke up every morning and turned myself inside out to give my baby the best. It was not easy, and I certainly don't look down on moms who do choose to supplement with formula or even switch completely, now that I know what goes into keeping a baby on breastmilk for a year. That doesn't mean I can't feel proud of myself for successfully taking the hard road.

Although I'm done pumping, I'm not done nursing. Littles still nurses once in the morning and once in the evening, and due to our impending move, I have no plans to wean her further in the coming weeks. I may even end up pumping again, during my business trips to Seattle, to maintain my milk supply for those morning and evening feedings.

Still, as I put my pump parts away this morning (at least temporarily) and prepared to give Littles cow's milk for the first time, I couldn't help but realize that this is the end of a big chapter in her life, and in mine.

On to the next one :)

Denial

2008-05-29T22:55:00.001-05:00

I'm in denial about the fact that we're moving. I guess normally, there's a lot of preparation that goes into a move -- you know, like packing. But Hubby's company is paying for this whole move, so we have packers/movers coming to do all that. Our house looks totally normal right now. I have to remind myself that in just 8 days, it'll be empty.

I think Littles knows something is up, because when I picked her up today, she reached out for Maria -- something she's never done before. Maria got a sad look on her face and said, "Just one more week." That's when it really started to hit me that we're leaving.

I am sure some people would shake their heads and say, "How awful that Littles would rather be with Maria than her own mom." But I disagree. I know Littles loves me. I know she's very attached to Maria as well, and I think that's a wonderful thing. As far as I'm concerned, the more people in her life who love her, and who she loves back, the better off she is.

But boy, it does make leaving tough.

Adventures in child care

2008-05-20T16:51:00.002-05:00

I can tell within seconds of meeting a potential caregiver whether or not s/he will work out. When we first met Maria, she immediately got a big smile on her face and reached out to hold Littles. I knew right away that she would be great. Same thing with Kay, the first backup care provider that we had a few weeks ago, when Maria was unable to come one day. Littles was having a fussy morning (teething!), yet Kay was not fazed at all. She took Littles into her room and within minutes, I heard no more crying, just the sound of Kay quietly reading a book as she rocked with Littles.

Unfortunately, I had the opposite reaction to Littles' backup care provider yesterday.

First, she was about 15 minutes late. Now, I'm chronically late as well, but when I first meet someone, I do try my best to be on time, at least that one time!

Then, she just seemed... well, uninterested and apathetic. Very much like she was doing this as a job, not because she genuinely loved children.

But she seemed nice enough and normal, so I didn't fear for Littles' safety or anything. I left, thought about Littles all day, and hoped that my first impression was wrong.

Unfortunately, when I returned in the evening, I still felt like things weren't right. She told me that Littles had been really upset for an hour in the afternoon after waking up from her second nap, which is very much unlike Littles. OK, maybe it was teething... but then, after she left, I noticed that she had completely messed up with the milk I left, by using refrigerated milk first, rather than frozen milk. Since frozen milk has to be used within 24 hours of thawing, that meant I had to dump all 8 oz of frozen milk. She also left the bag of frozen peas for Littles' lunch out on the counter, so they completely thawed and had to be tossed as well. Silly little things? Yeah. But if she was careless about the frozen peas, what else was she careless about?

I just couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right. So I called back Work Options Group (the organization that contracts with my company to provide care) and asked them to assign me someone new for tomorrow and Wednesday. I really felt awful about it. Especially when the woman from yesterday called me this morning to let me know she was running late (again!). When I asked for the reassignment, I also specifically asked to make sure someone would call to tell her not to come today, but my requests have to filter through a couple of layers (me -> Work Options Group -> the local nanny service that they work with -> the caregiver herself) and I guess this request didn't make it all the way down. I lied, and told her we no longer needed care. I didn't want to get into it with her.

Anyway, I instantly felt at ease with the new caregiver and feel much better about the whole situation. I just feel really badly for the other woman. But it's my child, my baby. I need to know she's in good hands.

Weaning off the pump

2008-05-17T23:33:00.002-05:00

Holy cow. I thought this day would never come.

As of right now, I have 226.75 ounces of milk in my freezer. There are 32 days left until Littles' first birthday, when it's OK to start giving cow's milk in place of breastmilk.

As of late, Littles has been drinking only about 10 oz of milk on average while she's with Maria. That means that if I don't pump another drop of milk, I should be able to make it to June 12th just on my frozen milk alone. If my milk supply holds up on weekends/holidays/vacation days even when I quit pumping on workdays (and it's likely that it will, at least for a while), then I'll be able to easily make it all the way to June 18th!

So I'm starting to cut back on my pumping. I'm down to just one pumping session most days. This week, I may start to cut back on how long I pump during that session, to gradually get the message to my body that it doesn't need to produce quite so much milk.

Surprisingly, I'm a litle sad about all this. Oh, sure, it will be nice not having to stress on a daily basis about whether and how I'll find time to pump, whether I'll be able to keep up with Littles' consumption, etc. But at the same time, this means my little baby is growing up.

Littles and I spent this afternoon organizing the clothes in her room, which is a pretty big endeavor because this child has a lot of clothes. I have two big boxes into which I've been throwing outgrown clothes, so I went through and organized them a little better. I came across the outfit she came home from the hospital in. The outfit she wore to her first doctor's visit. The pajamas that she practically swam in the first time I put them on. As Littles cruised and toddled around and pushed over my carefully-sorted piles, I remembered the days when I put her down and walked away and came back to find her in the same place.

Where did my little baby go?

Stay out of the minibar!

2008-05-13T23:53:00.002-05:00

I have to go up to Seattle next week for work. Since Hubby has already relocated to Dallas, that means that Littles needs to come along with me.

Luckily, as I mentioned previously, I recently discovered that my company provides up to 100 hours of backup child care per calendar year. All I have to do is give Work Options Group a call or submit a request online, and they'll find either a daycare center that allows drop-ins or an in-home caregiver. They're nationwide, so I can get care in Seattle just as easily as at home. I love this service! If you're in charge of benefits at a company and you want to keep your working moms (and dads!) happy, you might want to look into this one.

Anyway. For next week, I'll have an in-home caregiver for Littles, since they couldn't locate a daycare center in the area that will take an infant on a drop-in basis. Of course, that means the caregiver will have to come to my hotel, so they sent me a form with some Yes/No questions to answer. These include: "My dependent may order games and/or movies on the television," "My dependent may use the Internet," and "My dependent may order food and/or snacks or beverages from room service or in-room mini bar."

I'm just imagining Littles kicking back on the couch, watching a movie, surfing the Internet, and downing a mini-bottle of vodka :)

Househunting

2008-05-11T23:59:00.001-05:00

I should probably post a quick update on where we're at with the move.

Two weeks ago, we went to Dallas to go househunting for the weekend. We were looking at houses in a wide area, probably about 20 miles east-west and 10 miles north-south. This made things really stressful, because it meant that I had to look for daycares in a wide area as well.

We spent Saturday looking at some rather enormous houses in some rather far-flung suburbs. We eventually realized that it made no sense living 30-45 minutes away from Hubby's office in order to own a home more than twice as large as our current home, which is almost twice as large as the home we were living in when Littles was born. We simply did not need -- or want -- all that space.

We took a wrong turn on the way back to our hotel, and ended up driving right past Hubby's office. We decided to stop in to a new development about 5 minutes away, to see what they had to offer.

We both fell in love right away. The development is beautiful, and it's in a perfect location. The houses are more expensive despite being smaller, but the smaller size was exactly what we were looking for anyway, and it was worth it to us to pay more to be in such a nice place.

After some long, drawn-out negotiations (which continued even after we returned home to California), we finally reached a deal and should be closing at the end of this month!

So, with housing in place, we just have to find child care... that's a topic for another post.

First week at my new job

2008-05-10T23:40:00.001-05:00

This past week was my first week at my new job :)

I spent Monday to Wednesday up in Seattle, where most of my new team sits. Hubby asked for a week off in between his old job and new job, so he was able to come with me and watch Littles while I worked. This worked out really nicely, as we didn't have to pay extra for child care (we still have to pay for our nanny share back home, even when we don't use it), he and Littles had some quality dad-daughter 1:1 time, and I didn't have to miss both of them. Hubby leaves for Dallas tomorrow and we'll only see him for one weekend over the next four weeks, so we're both savoring every minute with him right now.

Also, Littles caught a nasty cold over the weekend, so I was glad to be there for her. She kept waking up coughing on Sunday night, and I finally brought her into bed and cuddled her for the rest of the night. I'm sure Hubby would have done fine if he had been home alone with her, but it was nice that we could both be there.

Bringing Littles with me also made things easier from a pumping perspective. On Sunday, I brought the milk I had pumped over the weekend (10 oz refrigerated), as well as a bottle of frozen milk (8 oz). For traveling, I put the refrigerated milk in my normal cooler with an ice pack, and the frozen milk in a cooler bag that I filled with ice. I was worried about the frozen milk defrosting on the way to Seattle, since defrosted milk must be used within 24 hours. It was about six hours from the time I took the milk out of the freezer at home to the time that I got to the hotel in Seattle, and the milk was still frozen completely solid! So that worked well.

The rest of the week, I just pumped as normal. I had no problems keeping up with Littles, as she drank about 4-8 oz less per day with Hubby than she does with Maria. I've long suspected that Maria overfeeds her, and this was proof of that. Not that I really care -- I'd rather her overfeed than underfeed.

I got a room at a Residence Inn, which made things a lot easier with Littles. It had a full kitchen for preparing her solids meals, a refrigerator for keeping milk cold, a freezer for my ice packs, and a dishwasher for cleaning my bottles and pump parts. I paid a little extra out-of-pocket for a two-bedroom suite, which was nice so that Hubby and I didn't have to tiptoe around after she went to bed.

The new job is great. Hectic, but great :) I've taken over a project that's already five months behind schedule, and no one knows the status right now. Needless to say, I have my work cut out for me. But it's fun being in charge of something and attempting to move it in the right direction!

All in all, it was a good week. I can already tell that the next two months will be very busy and crazy between trying to get my project finished and the move and everything. But I'm ready for it. Bring it on!

Where I pumped today

2008-05-09T01:11:00.000-05:00

Today was my fifth WOMEN Unlimited session. The sessions meet at a local hotel, and the hotel has been wonderful about giving me a room for the day (for free) so that I can pump.

This is by far my favorite pump spot! I usually work on my laptop at the desk (on the left side in the picture above), but I can also relax in the easy chair and watch TV if I want. Obviously, there's a sink as well, so I can wash out my pump parts when I'm done. And all the rooms have a mini-fridge for keeping my milk cold.

There was one minor problem today: Someone walked into the room while I was pumping! Luckily, I screamed, "Someone is in here!" as soon as I heard the door open, and the bathroom door was positioned in front of the main door so he couldn't see me. He called out, "Sorry!" and left immediately. Close call!

Six months back at work

2008-04-23T01:40:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking about today, April 22nd, for a very long time.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was told early on that I should give working motherhood six months. If six months went by and I was still unhappy, then I could think about making drastic changes (such as quitting my job).

So for week after miserable week, I just focused on making it to April 22nd -- six months back at work.

Now that I'm here, I can state definitively that no drastic changes will be made. I feel really good about the balance I've found between working and motherhood. Some days are better than others, but on the whole, I'm pretty happy.

I'm getting nervous about starting my new job. I'm sure that it will temporarily upset this delicate balance that I've finally found. But I'm ready for it!

I am a fabulous mom!

2008-04-21T23:20:00.001-05:00

I've been scouring craigslist for potential daycares for Littles in Dallas. I've found some good options. I've also found some ads that make me feel like Supermom.

Example:

I need someone twice a week from about 5p-10p (usually 9:30p)to pick my 2yr old child up from daycare and watch him in my home. Not much to do but get him ready for bed and feed him. TV is his actual sitter. Paid weekly. Please email with your rates and a little history. Great for college students.

TV is his actual sitter? For a two-year-old? Wow. Just wow.

Here's another gem, in an ad for an in-home daycare. The daycare itself sounds lovely, but my jaw dropped when I read this excerpt under "Rules":

Please do not bring any fast food for your child to eat unless you bring some for the other children. If you want your child to eat prior to being here please feed them before they get here. ( I did have a problem with one parent I babysit for because their child would not eat anything other than fast food and they would bring McDonald and the rest of the children didn't understand why they couldn't have it. I try and be fair to all of the children.)

Are you kidding me? There are parents who actually think it's acceptable to drop their children off at daycare with a sack of McDonald's every day? Boy, why have I been trying to make sure I always have some frozen veggies or something else wholesome and easy in the freezer for Maria to heat up for Littles? I should just stop off at Mickey D's in the morning and be done with it!

It's official, part 2!

2008-04-12T10:54:00.002-05:00

So I hinted in a previous post that there was something exciting going on, besides my new job.

Well, it's now official. Hubby told his boss yesterday that he would be leaving his job!

Hubby started this job just over a year ago, when I was about six months pregnant. At the time, he was working at my company (although in a totally different division from where I work). He decided to leave with two of his co-workers to create a new start-up company.

We knew that the risk was high -- certainly, not all start-ups succeed -- but that the potential reward was high as well. We also knew it would be a lot of work.

The company has actually done very well. But all the work has really gotten to Hubby, and to me, for that matter. Particularly for the first six months of Littles' life, he traveled on business at least once a month, and even when he was home, he pretty much worked and slept. I know he was sad that he couldn't spend much time with Littles, and it was hard on me to have to shoulder the vast majority of child care responsibilities.

He started tiring of it all around Christmas, and so for the past three months or so, he's been better about putting the work down and doing more with Littles and around the house in general. It's been wonderful.

He had a business trip about two months ago to Dallas, which is where we used to live, and he ended up talking to one of his old friends. His friend works at my company and had just started managing a brand-new team. The work sounded fascinating to Hubby. And we had been talking about moving back to Dallas -- much of Hubby's family is in Texas, we both have a lot of good friends there, and it's a lot closer to my family on the East Coast.

So Hubby applied for the job and got the offer a few days ago. He'll be staying at his current job until May 5th, then taking a few days off and starting his new job in Texas on May 12th.

Now, I'm sure you're thinking, "Whaaaaaaaaa? Didn't you just get a new job?" Well, yes, but fortunately, it's a work-from-anywhere position as long as I'm willing to make trips up to Seattle. My new manager is a little concerned about the extra expense of flying me in from Dallas rather than San Francisco, and she's worried about the time zone difference between Dallas and Seattle, but I think I can effectively mitigate those risks.

The other thing you might be thinking is, "Whaaaaaaaaa? You're moving in a month?" Well, no. We're planning to move in early June. So yes, we're going to have about a month where Hubby is working in Texas but Littles and I are still living in California. It will be tough, but we have some weekend visits planned. Actually, the really tough part is that I'll probably have to travel up to Seattle during that month, but we found out that my company provides up to 100 hours of heavily-subsidized backup child care per year. So when I do need to go to Seattle, I can bring Littles with me, use the backup care in Seattle, and still pay for Maria back home (which is part of our nanny share agreement).

Hubby and I are still hashing all this out, and I'm sure many of my future posts will revolve around this pending move :)

Where I pumped today. Fourth in a series.

2008-04-11T01:20:00.000-05:00

Yes, I pump while driving!

I only do this when I have a lengthy commute (at least 60 minutes) to a customer site or, like today, to my WOMEN Unlimited training program. It works out well, because if I can pump on the drive in, during lunch, and on the drive home, then that gives me enough pumping sessions for the day without having to take much time at all away from my work.

What I do is I put the pump on the passenger seat (you can see it on the left of the picture above) and get it all hooked up. I use an AC inverter for power -- it plugs into the cigarette lighter and provides a normal AC outlet to plug my pump into.

I then put my Hooter Hider on -- that's the white apron-like thing in the picture. It's designed for nursing in public, but it works well for pumping as well, because it has boning that helps the neck stand out so I can see what I'm doing.

Once I'm properly covered up, I get myself hooked up to the pump. As you might imagine, I have to use a hands-free kit. I usually use this hands-free pumping bra, which works very well. Today, though, I just used some hair bands. (I'll probably use the bra from now on -- the hair bands definitely didn't work as well.)

Then I'm off! All I have to do is pray that no cops decide to pull me over, because that would be hard to explain :)

As far as safety goes, I don't feel that the pump is really a distraction once I get it all set up (which I usually do while parked). But I prefer not to think about what would happen to the pump and my body if I got in an accident.

I'm glad that I have just a few more months of this craziness left.

Maybe now it's more clear why I get so excited about pump rooms with chairs, fridges, and no airbags :)

It's official!

2008-04-09T01:14:00.001-05:00

I have a new job!

My trip to Seattle last week was actually for a job interview. (I kept it quiet until today, when I got the official offer, because I know my co-workers occasionally read this blog.) It's for a program manager position -- I'd actually have responsibility for shipping a piece of software that my company develops.

I'm really excited about it. It's a great fit for me, and a perfect "next step" in my career.

I am not as excited about the fact that it will require semi-regular travel up to Seattle, about 1-2 weeks per month. But relocating to Seattle just isn't right for our family right now. Plus, I think it will be good for Hubby and Littles to have some bonding time while I'm away!

Pumping will be a challenge, as always, but since my start date is not until May 5th, I'll be just a little over a month away from quitting pumping for good anyway.

There's some other exciting stuff going on, but again, I want to keep it quiet until everything is official :) Stay tuned...

Pumping away, away from home

2008-04-05T23:35:00.002-05:00

I was a little nervous about the logistics of pumping while in Seattle, but it all went pretty smoothly.

I left 31 oz of milk for Littles on Sunday night, a mix of refrigerated and frozen milk.

I nursed Littles at around 6pm, just before leaving for the airport. She got one more bottle that evening before bedtime, and I pumped when I got to my hotel.

Staying in a Residence Inn made things a lot easier, since I had a full-size fridge and freezer to keep my milk and ice packs cold overnight.

On Monday, I woke up at around 8 AM and did a long pump, about 60 mins. I hoped to do another pump before my meeting at 11 AM, but I was running late and had to skip it.

I did get a short 10-minute pump break shortly after lunch, at around 1:15, so I got to check out the pump room in our Seattle office:

It's a nice setup, with two "cubicles" and a curtain, so that two moms can pump simultaneously with some privacy. There is also a small fridge, which came in handy for keeping my milk cool while I was in my meetings. No freezer, though -- I put my ice packs in the freezer in the main kitchen.

After my 1:15 pump break, which only lasted about 10 mins, I got another short pump break at 2:15 and then a longer (30 min) pump break at 3:30. My meeting ended at about 4:15, and since I was in no real rush to get to the airport, I pumped for about 20 mins until I was pretty empty. Then I pulled my ice packs out of the freezer, packed up my milk, and hit the road.

This is probably the only time you'll ever hear me say this, but thank goodness for the TSA's stupid liquids ban! I got to the front of the security line at the airport, and TSA asked me to pull out all my milk. That's when I discovered that I'd left one of my coolers of milk in the rental car! If it weren't for the liquids ban, I might not have noticed until I got home. Fortunately, I was able to run back to Avis and have them search my car for the bag, which quickly turned up. Whew!

My flight was delayed for over an hour, so I had plenty of time, even with the rental car incident. I ate dinner and then pumped for the last time at about 9:00. I pumped in the handicapped stall in the bathroom. I didn't chronicle that location for my "where I pumped today" series. Sorry.

(I've since gotten a tip that the family restrooms at most airports have a power outlet and more privacy, since they're a separate room, rather than just a stall where everyone can hear the whoomp-whoomp of your pump. I'll probably return to Seattle in a few weeks, so I'll check it out!)

With the delay, I ended up getting home shortly before 2 AM. Littles ate all 31 oz that I left, and I brought home right around 30 oz, so that worked out well. The milk in my Medela bag with a Medela ice pack was still cold when I put it in my fridge, 10 hours after I'd left the office! My Playtex Fridge-to-Go bag didn't work out quite as well -- it was no longer cold at all when I got home, but that milk was from my last two pump sessions of the day, so I figured the milk was still fine, having spent less than 10 hours at room temperature.

First business trip

2008-03-31T01:51:00.001-05:00

Tonight is my first night away from Littles. She's sleeping at home right now, and I'm in Seattle on a business trip.

Luckily, it's a short trip. I'll be home tomorrow night, although not until after Littles is asleep.

Still, the logistics of getting away even just for 24 hours can be overwhelming. I had to find time to pack -- no more waiting till the last minute, lest Littles slip into "Mommy Hold Me" mode at that exact moment. I agonized over how much milk to take out of the freezer. Since I've never been away from Littles for a full day, I have to guess at how much milk she drinks over the course of a day. I booked a hotel room at a Residence Inn, since I know it will have a full kitchen that will let me chill my freezer packs overnight, ensuring I can keep my pumped milk cold tomorrow.

Leaving home was rough. Littles crawled after me with a confused expression as I walked out the front door, and I briefly flirted with the idea of tucking her in my suitcase and taking her with me. (Then I remembered that my pump takes up half my suitcase.)

I've done this San Jose to Seattle hop many, many times, including for my very last business trip pre-Littles. I used to have it down pat. Not anymore. For starters, they've completely reconfigured Terminal C at SJC airport in the year or so since I was last there. I almost panicked when I couldn't find my favorite dinner spot -- turns out it's now behind security, instead of before it.

I was very pleased to see that they've finally gotten a Preferred board at the Avis in Seattle, so I can go directly to my car without having to check in with an Avis agent (a process that has cost me many an hour waiting in line, usually at 1 AM when my flight has been delayed and I just want to get to my hotel). And I had a giggle when I saw that this Avis location, which used to always upgrade me to Hummer H3's, decided to give me a Prius this time :)

Some things never change, like the incompetence of TSA. I completely forgot to put my toiletries in a Zip-loc bag and was sure I'd get busted, particularly since my breast pump (which apparently looks like a bomb on the x-ray machine, based on previous TSA experiences) and all my bottles for milk collection (which they could have no way of knowing were empty) were in the same bag. But they waved it through without a secondary inspection.

I grabbed my dinner (forgetting to pay with my corporate Amex card, which is practically dusty from inactivity) and was heading over towards my gate when I saw a family with a baby right around Littles' age, and I teared up instantly. It just doesn't feel right, being without her. The family ended up sitting a couple of rows in front of me on the flight, and the baby's coos and babbles bothered me. Not in an annoyed sort of way, like loud babies on planes used to bother me as a business traveler, but in a my-heart-is-breaking sort of way.

The business of my trip presents all sorts of challenges, and I should really be focusing on those. Instead, I'm focusing on the happy Littles wallpaper on my computer.

I can't wait to get home tomorrow night. I'm going straight to Littles' room, just to see her sleeping and hear her breathing and smell the lavender from her shampoo.

Work. Life. Unbalanced.

Yes, I leave my kids with strangers

Another cool website for working parents

What's for dinner?

Easy.

Hanging up the horns, round 2

Adventures in pumping, European edition

Where I pumped today (well, yesterday)

Breastmilk donation

Interesting article

Regrets of a stay-at-home mom

Consider this a warning to new mothers: Fourteen years ago, I "opted out" to focus on my family. Now I'm broke

Desperation

In-home daycare search

Where I pumped today

Uncharted territory

Searching for child care, round 4: Noob

Where I pumped today

Pumping changes

What I Wore Wednesday

Recharging

Where I pumped today

What I Wore Wednesday

No, it's not at all like being laid off.

Daycare during maternity (and paternity!) leave

*Truly* full-time pumping

This could only happen to me... while pumping

Where I pumped this week, last week, and the week before!

Where I Pumped Today returns with a vengeance!

Seattle

Big girl

Maternity leave

Missing out

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Thursday edition

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Wednesday edition

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Tuesday edition

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Monday edition

Influences

Littles in a different light

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Thursday edition

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Wednesday edition

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Tuesday edition

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Monday edition

I almost didn't make it home

Why I'm glad I'm going home today!

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Wednesday edition

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Tuesday edition

Why I'm glad I'm traveling today, Monday edition

Childhood vaccines and the working mom

So much for settling in

Preschool transition redux

Lunches that don't require reheating

The preschool transition

Guess what's in my belly?

Bad ideas

My worst day as a working mom

Cloth diapers and the working mom

I missed my daughter's birthday

Montessori in action

First day of preschool!

The preschool decision

Preschool options

The preschool search

Full weaning!

Kristi pros and cons

Officially DONE with pumping!

For the record, I AM raising my child

A big weaning milestone

Almost made it

Tough times

Getting smart about business travel

Searching for child care, round 3

Well, crap.

Fun times, and not so fun times

Why I love wireless Internet

Nanny share pros and cons

It never gets any easier

Mia's first day at daycare!

Nanny share logistics

I'm still alive!

Truly full-time pumping