I am asked frequently how do I have three kids and work and not look harried.  I am often shocked by the not looking harried part, because I usually am.  I think I have perfected the serene/engaged mask.  Anyway, to give you some back story.  I have three kids, 8 1/2, 6 1/2, & 2 1/2.  Yes, all of their birthdays are within the span of two weeks.  And yes, since we are not planning on having any more kids, Jon is not allowed to touch me any time during end of February to end of March.

Back to the mothering/working/wifeing mode I try to balance.  First of all, there is really no such thing as balance.  Usually the pendulum swings back and forth so frequently and with such dramatic force I usually end up seasick.  There are phases where I have to fit work into the cracks and my family life takes over and definitely times where I need to fit my family into the cracks and work takes over.

I have the following bits in place that make it feel a little less chaotic.

1. I have resigned myself to the fact that we aren’t going eat super-healthy-home-cooked-meals every night.  I think my frequency is about once a week and as the fates would have it, that is usually the night Jon is cooking.  Otherwise I have employed a variety of tactics over the years from cooking once a month and then freezing, to go to the “Let’s Dish” type places, to having a theme such as we are grilling out or eating cereal this week.  To let’s clear out the cabinets and have surprise meals all week.  One of my favorite meals I came up with recently was scrambled eggs with a little salsa and rice cheese (I am not vegan or anything, we just happened to have this in the house) topped on a pita with a side of chips, raw carrot sticks and apples.  It was done in all of three minutes.  Kids generally ate it. I have learned to put some pretty good marketing spin on stuff around here.

2. I have a nanny and am proud of that fact.   The other deal I made with her, is that while z is sleeping in the afternoon, I really need the floors swept and dishes done.  Talk about being in my happy place when I come home.  But I am also not beating myself up all the time because I have to work.  Usually I only have to work 20 hours a week, but there are weeks where that triples and having an amazing support team in place is completely profound.  I can lean in to Jon, our nanny, my friends, grace with myself.

3. I don’t ever ever expect perfection. Or that if I set out goals for myself, I have complete freedom to not accomplish those goals.

4. I am really good at saying no.  Again, I think I might come across as much more organized and having my crap together than I actually am, therefore get asked a lot to do stuff for organizations, school, etc.  If it doesn’t fit in my life or serve my life goals, then it doesn’t make the cut.  Sometimes though during slow work times when I feel like I have more space I say yes, and then a month later regret it.  So I am definitely still a work in progress.

5. I am content to be a B mom or as Jon puts it a “good-enough” parent.  Maybe when the kids don’t live in the house anymore I can finally be an A mom, but I really don’t think I am ever going to be Betty Crocker, Martha Stewart, or whoever.  I will always look for shortcuts, I will always end up yelling at my kids at some point during the day, I will not always nurture them as much as they need it, if I am feeling crazy I will always allow myself to use the crutch of tv/computer or send them to their room, I will allow myself earplugs and wine and a bit of rocking on the floor in the kitchen sometimes.  I will not usually allow my kids to be in everything they want to be in.  But I will always tell them I love them, and I will always try to give them as many hugs as I can throughout their days, I will always try to give them places and space to run around and be crazy, we will always try to travel with them, I will always try to sit down with them even for a couple of minutes to ask them how their day was and what they did and who is their new bff of the day. I will always try to have good music for them, I will always have clothes they can get filthy, I will always try to speak to their heart.  Try is my new favorite word which holds promise and grace all in three little letters.

In my urban Denver community the variety of jobs held by my neighbors is as varied as the cars we drive and graffiti we find on our fences.  And even more varied is how we go about accomplishing said jobs.  The trend I notice lately is that our jobs have to revolve around our life rather than our life revolving around our jobs.

We choose to adapt to what we want to do with our life and who we want to be rather than what we should be doing.  Be it family time, sustainability, less commuting time, travel time, home schooling, skiing.  Hmm…. always my fav.  Anyway, we are choosing to drive less expensive cars, live in smaller houses, remodel by going to places that recycle cabinets, etc.  We are less willing to settle for the “more more more” that we are being sold, and go with “less less less” in favor of relationship and intentionality.

It looks like a hybrid life of partial telecommuting, adapting degrees we received to something done via freelancing on our own time, on our own terms.  I hear politicians saying our country is going the way of socialism and communism.  It’s so funny to me when I see the American independent spirit alive and well, and thriving.  And blowing the walls off the boxes we saw our grandparents and parents put themselves in.  Saying, perhaps that box isn’t the right fit for me.  And why should I use a box anyway, when so many other options are available.

I gave up shopping for lent.  This seems funny, until you consider Jon gave up hot sauce.  And our girls gave up cardboard boxes.  The impetus behind giving up shopping came from a couple of different directions.  One is that shopping is a form of therapy for me.  Since I am working on Weight Watchers pretty hard core to drop the remainder of my baby weight from Mercy & Z, I no longer can use food as a source of solace.  And exercise has never been an escape for me, and giving up exercise would be like Lucy giving up bananas (she doesn’t eat them anyway).  Shopping became the sand paper that made my life feel a little smoother.

So shopping it is.  Simplicity, organization, budgeting, sustainability. Unknowingly I am addressing all of this in my life.  It’s funny when one asks for the core issue, how sometimes it is actually revealed.  Shopping for me is shiny, happy, invigorating, a competition, a game.  Target is my drug, deals are my pride.

So I stopped it.  I stopped dreaming “researching” for the next greatest deal.  What I didn’t expect was the big void of space in my head, the massive amount of time I had left over.  I was too busy and overwhelmed, and discovered some of it was from “trying to save money” by finding deals.  I am a very frugal shopper, but like I said before, deals are like liquid ecstasy to me.

So it is done for at least 40 days.  Have I said how much I love the season of lent.  It is by far my favorite time of the year.  Creating voids in my life that can be filled up with Christ and the sacrifice he made for me, and my family, and our world.  My sacrifice, if you can even call it that, feels divinely inspired.

So it has been a week & 1/2 of no shopping, no on-line window shopping, no dreaming about what I want.  I have found myself kind of looking around at various times with nothing to do.  Wait, check that, plenty to do, but nothing that I really want to do.  So it is reading the daily emails from The Journey, thanks Michael, and letting myself be kind of at loose ends.  Sitting in that void and getting familiar with it, letting the echoes be loud and uncomfortable.

Jon and I are avid travelers.  Roughly 2 weeks after the birth of each of our children we either took a long road trip, or to top them all, after Ezra was born we traveled to Grand Cayman Island with my family.  His passport picture is of him about 4 days old.  Very fun.  We also traveled to the Dominican Republic with the two girls when I was pregnant with Ezra and had a blast.  That trip entailed stitches on Lucia’s chin and traveling through a Jurassic-like DR interior with 8 of us loaded into a little Rav-4 type SUV.  Such good times!!!   Read the rest of this entry »

One of my positively luscious indulgences during the Christmas season, right in front of getting a massage and pedicure is having Alli of Bird Dog Press design my Christmas Cards.  I can’t even explain how excited I get come September when I remember it is not too early to order holiday cards. And paired with Recherche Photography portraits, this is my little gift in an envelope to my far away friends and family.

One of the goals of this blog is to share the amazing gifts of the people I have come across in my years of being an entrepreneur.  So my first introduction is Alli:

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I alerted everyone I was hand-making most of my Christmas gifts this year. Then I went off in search of fun, reasonable projects that wouldn’t break the bank or my time.  I found a plethora of ideas, and the following are some of my favorites.

1.  Pipe Cleaner Garland, inspired by tord boontje’s until dawn curtain.  Absolutely beautiful, and I would actually hang this in my home.  And done very reasonably!!  Thank you Design Sponge for this gorgeous idea.  NOTE:  I found a bag of 350 white pipe cleaners at hobby lobby.

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I am excited to announce the incarnation of a daily or weekly segment to this blog. Mercy’s outfit of the day. This might not mean much until you see the unbelievable creativity with which she dresses unintentionally.

And for all those little mismatched girls out there who love to stick out, but just a little bit. Here is the store for you Little Mismatched. And a fun little off shoot of the site is “Did you find my sock?” You can get a coupon for a set of 3 mismatched but coordinated socks. How fun!!!

The simplicity/sustainability/budgeting part of this is that now my girls have the freedom to wear mismatched socks and Viola! we don’t need to buy new socks when one loses it’s partner.

In the interest of sustainability and simplicity this post is on the dreaded task of raking leaves.  Sometimes it seems silly to me that we rake at all, but then I remember all of the hard work we put into our lawn and encouraging grass to grow from the morass that was our yard when we moved in to our lovely house.  So then I think perhaps this idea has merit.

Since I have been on this sustainability, & simplicity kick I love finding/hearing about ideas that make my life easier, serve multiple purposes, and save me money, so I can get those boots I have been after.

“Improve your soil by raking less”  is the article that Jay sent over of Jay and Regina.  Am so excited to try this idea out this weekend.  Do you have any other fall lawn-care maintenance tips to share?