Infrequent blog readers may have been confused by the long absence and time between posts–loyal blog readers (my mom) know that I’ve been a bit extra-busy these days because we have a new baby at our house. So our normal level of insanity has been heightened – I am balancing now the three “big girls” with an infant who turns 4 weeks old tomorrow.

I’ve been coasting along the surface of trying to get everything done WHILE getting kids happily to school not dressed like ragamuffins and/or weirdos (only partially successful today as one kid was wearing some dress-up hat and another had toothpaste in her hair that I licked my fingers and tried to rub out as she ran towards the bus). I’m also balancing everyone telling me to take it easy AND feeding the baby at night – her preferred time for eating, nonstop – and, meanwhile, my husband’s at work and also claiming exhaustion. Because he’s up helping with the baby. No WAIT. That’s not why, it’s because he’s actively and efficiently drafting and monitoring at all times 4, count them, fantasy teams.

Aside: I got an article the other day about how folks can be hooked on electronics. Husband, on computer all day with Droid by side, typically comes home from work (driving his car with satellite radio and every conceivable sound upgrade) and gets right on my laptop WHILE tv watching AND Droid-ing. I said, that article is about you. He said, I am not addicted to electronics. I grabbed the baby and said, LIGHTENING IS GOING TO STRIKE YOU. His denial was based on the fact that he had gone outside. Once. That day.

Anyway, let’s talk fantasy teams. I need someone to figure out what to make for dinner at my house. I am flat out of ideas, my kids are happy to eat dino-shaped nuggets every day, I don’t think it’s good for them but more importantly fear that is what I’ll be serving at their weddings (by the way, new baby? Girl. We’ll be paying for FOUR weddings. Dino chicken might be the way to go). Totally sick of coming up with compelling meals; consider it a giant victory when a fruit OR veggie is ingested by any of the eaters. So, need a chef of some sort – but they have to creatively cater to picky appetites and 5 people who eat entirely different menus with no common ground. Fantasy player one.

I need someone who can clean my house. I got a cleaning lady at my mother and husband’s behest when I was pregnant and could no longer bend down to pick up the myriad of crap thrown all over, with wanton abandon, and which no one, NO ONE, but me saw. I got someone, who’s marginally ok. I mean, I think my bathrooms are a little cleaner. But she doesn’t do a deep clean and by that I mean, wipe the floor of juice and stuff. So she leaves and I look around and there’s cobwebs, sticky fingers, stained chairs etc. The other day, I paid one of the 5 year old twins (only fifty cents) to just wipe stuff while I sat on the couch and bossed her on what to wipe. This was a good solution EXCEPT now they all say “Will you pay me?” upon being asked to do anything more than simply breathe. It’s like they’ve unionized and are completely blind to the fine surroundings (juice stained as they may be) and meals (chicken dino) the management is providing. So put that on the fantasy team.

I need someone to pick up and drop off, obviously. I want to “be there” for my kids, but I am sick of the driving around. Maybe if I had a chauffeur, I could multi-task and work while being there. Add that one.

Need someone to do half my work (but not take half my pay–negligible, at best). There’s a lot of things I like in my work: examples…I’m running a meeting in California and went on a site visit which included visiting a number of wineries. I’m fine with that. I actually don’t mind some of the “boring parts” like updating spreadsheets. Copy, paste, spreadsheet done, task checked off, feeling of accomplishment. I dislike all the ongoing pieces, the constant open-ended, and the researching clients. Would like, therefore, on my fantasy team someone who can do the cr*p. My friend told me today that when her babysitter was over (who happens to be her cousin) and the baby was asleep, she had the babysitter photocopy. She felt bad, but someone had to do it. Again, I’m venturing to guess the babysitter/cousin still had that satisfying feeling of accomplishment!

Actually, what I could use is someone to type. I could get a lot more done if I wasn’t forced to do it all with one hand, while the other holds the baby who loves to cuddle and finds her chair, swing, exercise mat and all other such items “hate-able” in the words of her older sister. I have been sending all e-mails without regard for capitalization since I can’t shift and type with one hand so if I had a typer, on call, I could run around merrily dictating all my work, to-do’s, blogs, etc. Add Typist who works for FREE to the fantasy team.

Need a grocery store shopper. I know, there’s Peapod and other delivery services. First of all I never have my act together early enough to think of needing groceries one day ahead. And it’s too hard to surf through the internet. No, far far more efficient is daily, sometimes TWICE daily, trips to the store to get orange juice (do your kids drink an orchard a day? HOW can that much orange juice go into a 35 pound person??) And when I get the juice home guess what, someone finished the milk (how? They barely drink it when I’m around). We seem to be constantly out of flavor blasted goldfish (confession: my fault. I am currently obsessed with flavor blasted goldfish). There’s nowhere to put the food but no food in the house to eat. Except Dino chicken. Bought in bulk.

Hoping for a gardner. Wouldn’t mind someone pitching in to maintain some of the relationships I don’t have time for, but would like to come back to. The list goes on and on. Every mother has a fantasy team they are longing for, no doubt.

As it is, I’m continuing to keep balls in the air only by writing down each and everything I have to do inclusive of “Wake Up” so I can proudly check off something each day that is accomplished. I’m multi-tasking away (conference calling and nursing – think twice before you dial me up!) And I keep thinking “If I can only complete this to do list today tomorrow will be easier”. I try not to look at the list for the next day! Why is it that I’m only happy in the crazy?

I pride myself on being fairly successful in many of my endeavors – doing some consulting, running Detours&OnRamps, even staying in shape, keeping my house together, etc. And of late I have been brought down by one very skinny, often cute, almost always squirrelly just-about-5-year-old.

For the purposes of this blog I will call her by her nickname, Roo, given to her at age 1 week because she wanted to be in my pocket all the time, even so young. The Roo is a super-thoughtful child, a “deep thinker”. She plays really, really well by herself. She makes up cute little games; she loves things smaller than herself…babies, animals, and the like, and shows a huge degree of caring for them. When given the “appropriate” amount of attention (meaning, 100% all the time) she is a perfect child.

OH! Also, she has to be fed constantly. She basically has negative body fat and a metabolism that is the envy of any dieter, so like a gremlin,  she needs to be fed every hour or so or else dire consequences result. So I walk around with Special K bars in my purse and random snacks leaking out of pockets.

Anyway, this child, when properly fed, would be just perfect if she was an only child. However, she’s not. She’s one of three, soon to be four, and is a TWIN no less. Thus, the chaos ensues. And it’s been getting worse, and worse!

How, I think, can one four year old bring down an entire working house? It is possible. The meltdowns are insane and began occurring with greater and greater frequency. One sister (the twin) would bend over backwards to do whatever she needed, to the point of ridiculousness. The other (the big sister) went out of her way to push buttons. My husband, with a zero tolerance policy, would put her in time out for 30 minutes, 45 minutes at a time. We all waited for not IF the next meltdown would occur, but just when would it – what would set her off? Someone looking at her funny? Someone mentioning her name when teasing someone else? Her twin waking up in the morning and not waking HER up – or, the very next day, her twin waking up in the morning and waking her up. She was unpredictable in cause but always predictably able to blow up at any given moment.

I found myself exhausted and bordering on full depression. It was literally like walking around on eggshells, constantly bending over backwards to try to make her smooth out or not scream. And everything started to spiral. I was so exhausted I could barely keep up with my work and even worse, could barely keep up with my summer reading (trash books) and summer shows (equally trashy).

So I started working on my own plan, that wasn’t extended timeouts (that didn’t work) or star charts. I was encouraged that in moments of lucidity – ie, not in the midst of a breakdown – the Roo would spout out things that I’d said…”Mommy, that isn’t worth crying about, it’s not the end of the world”. “Mommy, [big sister] should know that when we tease her it’s because we love her”. I knew she was listening, at least. I started trying to just calm her down before full-blown freak happened. And, I got her two coloring books that were hers alone, and her own markers, for quiet time. (IE, the “magical place” where she could be an only child). The second she started getting into it with her sisters or anyone, I pulled her aside without her being in trouble and got her coloring. That time on her own really started to help.

Ok, so two weeks of this, still fairly exhausted. Still walking on eggshells. But we’re at her birthday party bbq with lots of people and she came up to me, on her own, and said “I think next time I should bring my coloring book for quiet time”. She recognized she needed it – before a breakdown. So I just held her hand and she stayed with me for a bit and got away from all the people. And was much better.

I felt like it was such a giant step forward. Go through another week, and I realized there were entire days that she didn’t have any freakouts. That one day when she did, and I scolded her, she actually CARED that I scolded her and pulled it together instead of just screaming for an hour till I gave in.

So here I am, having been moderately successful at professional things – feeling cautiously optimistic about this little Roo finally not being the straw that brings this family down. My uncle, a child psychologist, gave me a book about stopping meltdowns, and I started reading it, and I am finding that many of the things I am doing are what the “pro” says to do – that makes me feel good about my instincts. It is crazy to me the impact one small child can have on everyone. And how I can say, and mean, that I am the mother and I am in charge…and yet, so quickly, one small but mighty little kid can take over everything.

Anyway it is eye-opening. Frightening, to think what our house will be with 3 (maybe 4) teenage girls on the loose, some day. And also gratifying to watch her not have her freakouts, and sing her songs, and let the sweeter side of her personality out.

And right now I’m off to stem a meltdown in the making.

Hello D&O friends again, it is Lisa with a funny story from the world of building a business and being humbled.  As I told you previously I decided to hop out of corporate last summer and be home with the boys.  Although I wanted to be home, I knew I wanted to work.  That has never been a question.  Although there are times when I would have appreciated months away from any responsibilities except home and family, I do like to work and had always wanted to work from home again but only doing what I felt would be important to me-not just something to kill time and make a little bit of money.  If that was the case I would rather organize and redecorate my home.

I was ready to begin doing what I loved and what I am passionate about.  So 2009 was my chance to begin this path.  A path I did not have time to start while working practically full time, 32 hours a week, balancing a family, friends, volunteer work, and having a husband in school full time, who also worked part-time.  So last summer, I began career coaching and working with Meghan on the Detours events.

As time freed up from D&O this winter I began determining my business name and logo and hired a designer to help me with my website, which is still under construction.  The name has been picked and the logo designed.  I love them both.  But then I kept hearing about “personal branding”.  I kept saying, hum, “I wonder if I need this for my coaching business?”  I decided to hear more about it and attended a workshop given by Randi Bussin, who will be a keynote speaker at the May Detours event.  As part of this workshop I was entitled to go through an assessment process.  This process includes requesting feedback about how I am perceived, strengths, weaknesses, attributes, and skills by people close to me, who know me well, and from various places in my past and present life.

The assessment kicked off about a week ago and it has been a humbling experience in various ways.  The goal of the assessment is to come away with what my perceived brand is from others as compared to how I view myself.  If it matches great.  If it doesn’t then I probably need to fix some things.  The assessment is anonymous so I do not know who responded or what their specific responses are but I can review the data as a whole through out the gathering process.  Although not all the data is in yet and I am not yet ready to have my 25 page branding report produced, I have been reviewing the results.

At times I think wow, that is so great that someone looks at me so positively.  At other times, I view the data and say “oh my gosh am I that bad of a person.”  The weaknesses always seem to get our most attention, don’t they?  I need to remind myself that when really compared to the positive comments and feedback, the weaknesses are not many and aren’t anything I don’t already know about myself and are already, or constantly, working on.  But I want to know them and contain them.

I see this enlightenment as an amazing opportunity and am thankful for my friends, family, and colleagues for participating in this exercise.  I am looking forward to obtaining my customized 25 page personal branding report to see what “my brand” is.  I look forward to defining my brand, rollling out my website, business cards and such this spring.

If you ever wondered what “personal branding” was go check out our keynote speaker’s site or come on May 4th and hear from her yourself.  Randi is one of many special and talented women who will share a piece of themselves and their knowledge with you.  I look forward to meeting you there.

-  Lisa
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”

So, I haven’t been blogging up a storm of late because of the perpetual black cloud that is hovering – metaphorically and last weekend, physically – over my house and psyche.

Our family’s fallen victim to the times in that my husband is job hunting and as anyone, I’m sure, who has had a husband who’s job hunting can confirm, this does not make for lots of rip-roaring good times. It’s ups and downs of waiting for calls, slugging to interviews, waiting for callbacks, in a hiring atmosphere that is “crowded”, to say the least.

And job hunting for men is so different than for women. There’s so much ego built into it; I think there’s a measure of wanting to be able to provide (although luckily we planned ahead and we’re trying not to spend money we don’t have, unlike oh, I don’t know, the federal government – but this is not meant to be political!)

I’m trying so hard to not put a lot on his plate like extra child care, etc – and as a result there’s so much on mine between working and watching kids and keeping them happy. I’m not alone – I know – so many of you are in the same boat.

Then came the incessant floods of last weekend’s crazy rain. Luckily, for our convenience, our basement didn’t wait till the rains to flood – it gave a preemptory shot across our bow by flooding the weekend before, due to a broken valve or something on our battery back up (that never engaged but nonetheless is being blamed, by the plumbers, as the root of the problem – solely, I believe, because it is the one way they can get out of the blame). I went downstairs and found big wet spots under the carpet and was mystified until I opened the storage room to find 5 inches of water. So in came the water remediation people, out came the carpet and the padding and the toys and the computer and shockingly (and mysteriously) huge sections of the sheet-rock wall, which were perfectly dry. So now our great finished basement was a concrete hole of coldness. Not for nothing this is the spot where the children were exiled to play and where the beast was exiled to job hunt.

So then the odyssey of fixing it up began and we put in carpet as fast as we could to make it usable and then, last weekend’s rains came. I know I am so selfish. I thought of the poor people in Chile, and in Haiti, dealing with so much worse than I am. I thought of that as I prayed that we not lose power, so the sump pump would keep working and not flood the basement and the 1-day old carpeting, again. I thought of how selfish I felt as I saw the houses around me with water literally up to their first-floor windows; a kid in my twins’ pre-k even had to leave his home in a boat. Nevertheless, I also thought of how they say that God only gives you as much as you can handle, at any given time. So I thought to myself that God must be thinking “She simply cannot handle a flooded basement for the second time in a week”.

We made it through the floods, and I keep making it through these “dark days” one by one. And here’s two things making it easier. One, it’s finally sunny–it’s gorgeous, my kids are walking around in sandals, one claims to be moving outside…

And two, last night as I sat down with my list of to-do’s, in bed, I found sandwiched in between a couple a note from my 6 year old that said “Emma loves Mommy” with 5 exclamations. Sometimes it helps to know someone does.

As we’re all aware El Nino (La Nina?) is upon us – not sure which it is, really; the last time this was even at all a factor in my life (and I mean, on the periphery) my younger brother was out at school in California and kept not getting back, being stuck at airports, and I think in one case, carried 2, 60 pound bags 2 miles home from the train because no one actually believed his flight landed. This time, though, as the snow keeps coming, they threaten to strip Al Gore of his prize based on global warming or the lack thereof, and even my kids groan and skip the snow-men, heading straight to hot chocolate…this time, El Nino is bringing ME down.

This is because all three of my kids have been holed up with me (also my looking-for-work husband but that’s another post altogether). They are bored; the twins have practically turned into hobbits or gnomes or something from spending so much time in the basement. School keeps being cancelled; I mean, it’s not as bad as DC, where my friend’s daughters have been out for like 3 weeks. My oldest and I are in the middle of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “The Long Winter” and I GUESS it’s not that bad as we’re not grinding wheat to eat, nor is my husband following a clothesline to feed the cattle (my oldest laughingly told him to do the chores, feed the cows the other day, and he just walked by on his way to ignore the driveway shoveling).

I really, really, really have never wanted more to be on a beach, even for 2 days. One nice thing about having a real job was the corporate travel – the 2-day trip to California, made worth it by the two NIGHTS in the Four Seasons…these days, sweet heaven is a 15 minute escape by myself to Dunkin.

But trying to keep the kids going, I suggested a tea party for a couple of my oldest’s kindergarten buddies; they dropped by yesterday, and it was “great success”. Hot chocolate, chocolate fondue, sugar cookies (sidenote, my 4 year old twins were flying high on sugar rushes an hour later, weird) and they made necklaces with $6 worth of beads, then went downstairs and put on all the princess dresses. Perfect afternoon.

And one of her friend’s moms, who’d stayed for a cup of tea, told me “You are such a good mom, I think. You look like Martha Stewart”.

When’s the last time you got that positive reinforcement? I don’t feel like a good mom a lot. I yell (I believe I’ve mentioned). I work alot, don’t always drop what I’m doing to play, I’m constantly hollering about the cleaning. BUT, I did choose to spend this time with them and I am happy every day about something.And yesterday, it was hearing that from someone else.

I read this great article, today, that reinforced it.  And I don’t know, these days, if this road is less traveled…but at least for me it’s making a difference.

If your personal answer is “my two month old” well, enough said. Go take a nap.

But our house is light on 2-month olds (though currently heavy on coughers and sneezers); my twins are now 41/2, and beyond one recent episode at my brothers’ when they woke up at 4am and insisted it was morning, everyone sleeps through the night. In fact, they sleep so well, that episode stood out for its weirdness–they were chirping away in the guest room and I literally didn’t know how to convince them it was NOT morning, aside from pointing out the no-light, since they hadn’t woken up before morning in so long.

I have so many friends whose kids are up and rarin’ to go at 6am; I’m blessed with good sleepers…the twins are usually in bed till 7:30 and my oldest had to be dragged out of bed the other day at 9:30am. Granted it was after a late night but still, I’m usually able to get a good night’s sleep, even when I go to bed, habitually, at 11 or during whatever part of The Daily Show that I tune out to.

Yet of late I have been waking up at 4am.  I wander around. I go sleep in the guest room. Or not sleep in the guest room. And I worry.I worry about weird things that in the light of day do not seem as troublesome, or at least seem manageable. But at 4am they go through my head in a non-stop rush and I can’t stop them. What if all my consulting work dries up? What if my job-hunting husband NEVER finds a job and lives in my basement like a caveman forever? I start adding up numbers and dollars and thinking through budgets. Then I firmly say to myself STOP THIS. You can’t do anything about it in the middle of the night.

So then I start in with to-do lists. I have to finish x, I didn’t even start y. Why did I yell at the kids today when I was working so hard on my temper? Why didn’t I complete a, b, or c? I have to do all of these things for this client or for the conference, I have to follow up with him, or her, why didn’t I ever hear back from this person or that person? I found that if I start making a list, sometimes some of the things go away. But new things take their place.

I am totally not a grudge-holding person, at least not for most people, but what “takes the place” of those to-dos is a review of past grievances (like Festivus on Seinfeld). I rehash old fights or issues or things that made me crazy and then at 4:30 or 5:15 or whatever time it has gotten to I fruitlessly get mad all over again. And then get mad that I’m mad and even madder that I’m not sleeping.

Here’s what I’ve been told to do–read a boring book. Great, I don’t have any, there’s no light bulb in the lamp in the guest room and I never remember that till it’s 5:30 am at which point I don’t feel like traipsing around downstairs to find one. Watch a boring show to tune out. That’s easier than it used to be in that the guest room tv now doesn’t get cable so it’s informercials or early, early, early editions of whatever the “Today” show is at that point, but it doesn’t help me sleep boring or not. I’ve been trying to think of positive things but nothing comes to mind at 5:45.

Because that’s the point. The “worries”, in real life or real time, aren’t as bad–or at least, I can do something about them. They’re blown out of proportion in the middle of the night. Even if I know that, though, I’m up fretting away. And listening to the fish tank in one kid’s room, the heating system rattle away, and my own fears.

What keeps you up at night? And what do you do about it?