What's for dinner?

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!

Recharging

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.

Missing out

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.

My worst day as a working mom

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.

I missed my daughter's birthday

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.

Getting smart about business travel

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!

Well, crap.

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.

Why I love wireless Internet

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