Madeleine Albright

My Dad recently passed his copy of Madeleine Albright's biography "Madam Secretary" to me and thought I'd really enjoy it. I absolutely am and it is exactly the sort of thing I need to be reading right now.

During the last few weeks of work, I've been presented and confronted with various career opportunities that can & will provide me with fantastic experiences as well as the chance to prove myself in different roles at my company. I am jumping on anything that comes my way because I'm ready for the challenges and I really want to push myself to the next level.

But...

At the end of the day, I have to accept said opportunities knowing my limits. My limits are driven by M and I will admit that I am really struggling with them right now. Gone are the days when I can be at work before 7am and leave after 5 or 6pm. I'm not saying I miss those long days but I miss knowing that I can do them if or when needed. I always loved being at work so early because it gave me that good bit of time to start my day before the site or office was busy. It's hard to speak up and say "I can't make that meeting because I won't be in yet" or "I can't go to site for 3pm because I need to leave at 4pm to get my son from daycare" because as those words come out of my career-loving 30-something mouth, I can't help but think one thing...

CAREER KILLER.

Gah. How awful is it that I'm admitting to this?! I love M more than life itself and everyone knows this fact but I'm still really struggling with how to grow my professional self while succeeding as a mum. It's really hard to view my day as such a strict & structured calendar day (and this is coming from someone who craves routine) because I just don't have the flexibility to alter my day at a moment's notice.

D has been great at helping me get to work for 7am (or close to it) when needed and will do the daycare pick-up when I need to stay later than (my new) normal. It's a catch-22 because then I miss out on those moments with M. I swear I will never tire of seeing that smiling face when I come into his daycare room to pick him up! Best moment of my day. EVER.

I know everything will work out and I've always had the attitude that if it's meant to be, it'll happen. I have to learn to NOT be embarrassed to say you can't do something because you fear it will be a career-limiting move. In this day and age, I'm certainly not the first or last mother to work and most companies recognize this fact. I'm lucky to work for a very family-oriented company and am surrounded by (mostly) men who are solid family men. It makes a difference.

There are already so many passages I've read that make me love Madeleine Albright more. Only 53 pages in and this quote spoke to me:

I must admit though that I feel somewhat like a pioneer. I am not satisfied to sit back for the rest of my life and contemplate in which order to clean the rooms. I want to find a solution and still feel that somehow it must be possible to be a responsible mother, a good wife and have an intellectually satisfying job.

Whoa! Hold Up!

When I started this blog, I cleverly set my byline as "random musing & rants of a girl who is attempting to do and have it all while raising her little person" as it pretty much summed up my new role as mother, wife/partner and working girl. This week, the whole "do and have it all" train pretty much came off the tracks and I melted down in a freak out of epic proportions.

Wednesday started out as any other typical morning. Alarm goes off at 5:15am and it's go go go from that point onwards. Shower & dress myself, dress & feed baby, prepare breakfasts & lunches and pack stuff for the day. Typical & predictable. Heading out the door, we see the car about to be ticketed because our street parking permit has expired. I tell the parking officer I've got the new one inside and jet back in to grab it. He drives off in good faith and I am reduced to tears inside the house once I finally find the paperwork and realize that I hadn't renewed our permits. I simply forgot to do it and shuffled the paperwork off into a little pile never to be looked at again... until it was too late.

D & I walk back outside and as D prepares to get in the car and I to start my jog to daycare with M in the jogging stroller, I basically start rambling on and on about how I'm overwhelmed, stressed, unorganized and feeling completely inadequate. I dramatically say how I'm late for work already and push off with the stroller. To add insult to injury, the rain started pouring as I cried & ran my way to daycare. Not only did I show up to work in my (as of late) uniform of Spandex but I looked like a drowned rat who borrowed make-up tips from a raccoon to boot.

That day, I realized that I cannot do this 100% by myself. I need help and whether that help comes from D, our parents or even an outside source like a cleaning service, it doesn't matter. I need help and I need to get past my passive-aggressive nature and ask for it. I am good at nagging and bitching but not so good at being direct and asking for help. There are not enough hours in the day and I can't do it all by myself. Between keeping a clean house, preparing meals, entertaining a toddler and finding 'me time' for both D & I as well as time for each other, I'm absolutely beat and discouraged. I'm crawling into bed at 8:30pm most nights out of sheer exhaustion.

D and I had a good chat last night and I think we both said a lot of things that we need to have the other do as well as recognized how we need to change ourselves. I think we both left the house this morning feeling happier than we have in a long time. We worked together this morning and didn't snap at each other once. We have a plan in place for mornings now and that feels like a zillion pounds of weight off my back. I like knowing we'll have good 'give and take' that works for both of us and gives us each some time to ourselves in the evening to pursue the things like biking or running that we want to do this summer. We also know what we need to do to keep each other happy.

So, we're moving in the right direction. Baby steps! The train may not be going full steam ahead but at least it's moving.

Another Reason to Feel Less Guilty?

http://www.nih.gov/news/health/may2010/nichd-14.htm

So True.

http://jaelithej.blogspot.com/2010/03/to-my-friends-who-work-outside-home.html

We Survived!

We successfully navigated my first week back at work but we had a few hiccups along the way.

Firstly, it's good to be back at work. The first day was a little weird but by day 2, it felt like I'd never left. The week sailed by and when I put my feet on the floor on Friday morning, I had that 'TGIF' feeling as if it had never left.

But... M has the sickness. The sickness? Yes, the sickness. That disgusting viral bug from daycare that he just can't seem to shake. The poor guy has been feverish and suffered from all the nasty stuff like vomiting and diarrhea. We had to keep him home for the latter half of the week and ended up at Sick Kids for the 2nd time in 10 days on Friday afternoon.

*Insert mini rant here: D's mom was looking after M on Friday and he simply wasn't himself. He was lethargic and not eating or drinking. I ended up having to leave work early to take him to the hospital. Now, I normally wouldn't use hospital resources but was left with no choice when our doctor's office was open but NOT answering the phone on Friday. WTF?! I don't get it. I did try to find a walk-in clinic but didn't have much luck in our area. There are only so many times you can call your son's name when driving aimlessly because the addresses you have seem to be MIA and get NO response before you sh!t bricks and head to the hospital.

Anyway, M is feeling much better though still suffering from some tummy upset. Let's hope it's back to business tomorrow or we'll be scrambling again on Monday morning.

So, it was a decent week all in all. Let's hope it continues!

Getting Ready for Monday!

I'm trying to come up with a list of things that I should or could do, time permitting, before I start work on Monday. Yes, the procrastinator in me won this battle but I figure I can still accomplish something.

1. Clean the house from top to bottom.
2. Prepare some easy breakfast meals for M that I can pull out of the freezer and defrost or toast.
3. Make sure M's bag is packed for Monday morning.
4. Lay out my outfit for Monday (and even a few others to make the rest of the weekday mornings flow a little easier).
5. Find my security card for work... I know I put it in a safe place a year ago but where oh where could that be?!
6. Meal plan for the week. In fact, make a big list of possible meals that I can refer to when looking for dinner inspiration.
7. Grocery shop.

I feel like I'm missing something here. Is there anything glaringly obvious that I've forgotten? Or anything you can suggest that helped you?

Random Thoughts

I've been MIA lately. My poor little guy has been sick. So sick that a rush trip to Sick Kids on Monday night was warranted where he was diagnosed with a double ear infections and a touch of pneumonia in the chest. Two days later, his doctor was able to add possible strep throat to that list. Toss in a reaction to Amoxicillin and we had an interesting week.

This was my last week off before starting back at work Monday. I cannot believe my year is over and M is already one. It honestly floors me. I'd hoped for a week filled with errands, cleaning & general preparations while Max was fully transitioning at daycare. Alas, it didn't happen and though I was frustrated with my lack of progress at times, I wouldn't change it for the world. I had the sort of sweet moments with M this afternoon that made me question what I am doing and why I'm going back to work. That kid can reduce me to tears with his sweetness and I certainly stole lots of extra kisses and cuddles today.

M's 1st birthday has come & gone and we're on to new stages. He's cruising with the help of furniture, actively climbing stairs and walking when assisted with toys. He isn't say much of anything save for an 'enh' sound but he does know people & things when asked about them. He was doing well at daycare before the sickness hit so we're really hoping next week goes smoothly. I am already both dreading & looking forward to Monday.

I feel completely unprepared for my return to work. I managed to get out shopping this week and grab some new clothes for work but I didn't accomplish anything else on my list. I wanted to clean the house top to bottom (work in progress this evening) as well as make some freezer meals and make a bunch of healthy breakfast options like muffins & pancakes for M. I didn't get any of that done so I now feel like I'm going to be cramming all that into this weekend when I was hoping for a quiet & enjoyable couple of days with my family.

Okay, some confessions...

As I blogged before, I am excited to go back to work. I truly am and seeing my co-workers yesterday & today got me a little more psyched up about it. BUT... my heart is absolutely breaking at the thought of dropping M off at daycare on Monday and leaving him for an entire day. Gah. It brings tears to my eyes and a GIANT lump in my throat at the very thought. I KNOW he's in great hands there and he's going to learn so much. It's a very fun & loving environment and I'm thankful that I was finally able to get him into THE place for us. But, it doesn't make it any easier on me.

For some 379 days (thus far), I have changed almost every diaper, fed most meals and wiped close to all tears. He has been the centre of my world and I his. We've done this together! Every decision D & I made, we made with M. We were so lucky that he was such an easy baby and he basically told us what we needed to do to be the best parents we could be for him. It makes me sad that I'm going to drive somewhere, leave him with relative strangers and go to work for the day.

Anyway, I'm working for many reasons and I keep reminding myself that it isn't forever. If I absolutely hate it, I don't need to do it. I also know that our reality does (hopefully) include another baby at some point so I'll be home again. I just need to get through our first day.

It will be okay... it will be okay... it WILL be okay.

Good Morning!

I am not a morning person. At all. I hate nothing more than being told to get up. I'm not kidding when I say those two words hold all the power to either make it a good or a bad day for me. I'm not one of those people who can't function until they've had their coffee but please don't try to start a conversation with me first thing in the morning.

I'd almost rather have my toenails pulled off with pliers than be told to wake up so I can understand how it must be annoying to have me say it over and over to D. It's actually funny how those two words can garner such a hostile response in the mornings.

I set my alarm to go off 15 minutes before D's and then do this annoying 'wake up' routine as I press the snooze button. I feel like I need to constantly remind him of the time and eventually, after about 30 minutes of this, I ask him what he's doing or what his plans are in terms of getting up. I'm almost always greeted with a disgruntled "I'm getting up, okay?!" as he sluggishly gets out of bed.

Now that I'm on mat leave with M, I don't sleep in at all. He wakes pretty early, which bodes well for when I go back to work. I've tried each day this week to get up earlier than normal (and before M) in an attempt to shower before he wakes so we can go to the daycare earlier. Fail. Who knew it would be this hard?! I have NO clue how I'm going to get back into the habit of waking at 5:30am or even earlier now that I have to get M up & at 'em, fed and off to daycare and still make a late arrival at work around 7:30am.

Side note: As I type this (read: neglect my son), he is absolutely glued to Breakfast Television. What sort of monster have I created?!

Okay, despite good intentions, it's almost 8am and I still haven't left the house. We're up, dressed and ready to go so... off we go! Daycare transition day #3!

Working Girl!

It's that time. Everywhere I go, people look at M and immediately ask the following questions:

When are you going back to work? Have you made arrangements for daycare yet?

I respond with my standard "heading back on April 26th and still working on the daycare or nanny situation," which is almost always met with a sad shake of the head like it's the most terrible thing ever.

Okay, it is... sort of. I am VERY sad to leave M and it kills me to think of all the moments I will miss with him. I will likely pine desperately for him throughout the day and have him constantly in my thoughts. I dread the idea of someone else getting to spend all that fun time with my son and giving him the cuddles & love he'd be getting from me. I even broke down in tears when D & I drove by one potential daycare on the weekend!

BUT...

I want to go back to work. Why should saying that make me feel like a bad mother? It makes me feel like I'm being judged and that I should be ashamed of making that choice. I want to work! I want to work! Ah, liberating. I love what I do and am simply not ready to stop working yet. I have spent the last 10 years building up my career and want to push it forward.

It makes me feel like I have to justify my thoughts to perfect strangers. Could I quit my job and stay home? Yes but it would be tough financially. It would also be extremely tough on me mentally & emotionally. Admittedly, I find being at home at times mind numbing and it's hard for me to get motivated to do anything. I dread simple tasks because I don't feel challenged. I truly believe that going back to work will help me find a better balance between home & work and will teach me to really appreciate those little moments with M that I am no doubt taking for granted. Going back to work will make me a better mother & wife.

It's ironic that I used to always insist that I would not have children unless I could afford to stay home with them, much like my mum did with us. I was anti-daycare and wanted to be the person "raising" my children. It's now a huge pet peeve of mine when people imply that we will no longer be raising M because he will spend part of his day with someone else.

While I am envious of those who are fortunate enough to be stay-at-home-moms, I know that it isn't what's right for me right now. That said, I've yet to drop him off at daycare or leave him behind with a nanny and head off on my merry way to work. Who knows what will happen once I step through those doors?