Tales of The Part Time Working Mom

This seems like the ideal set up. In a lot of ways it is. Part time working moms get the best of both worlds. We get a fist full of life outside the home and a baby and kid to coo over all afternoon when work is finished. We can wipe clean our workday and see our kids with fresh eyes and perspective as they enter into the wider world beyond our home cocoon. 

More income is coming into the household, not a lot of income in my case but something to help with the daily round. My kids get to see me more then they would if I worked full time. I actually miss them in a day verses being so overloaded with parenting I am ready to ditch as soon as my co-parent arrives home.  I have time to pick them up from school or day care, hear about the day and go home to some play, dinner prep, down time and nursing. I get to role model for my girls a confident mama in the world taking on big projects with her family alongside her. Recently Sweetpea told me she wanted to work at the Botanic garden when she grew up. I have a reason to get dressed up in the morning, wash my nice clothes and throw a huge spit rag over it all in hopes I won't be blurped on before I get to work.

Our minds are filled with the details of our jobs as well as the details that make the engine of a family running steady. My partner shares the parenting load more. Home life and work life are split up and we both play an integral role in each place. A level of respect and harmony floats around us when I have a moment to notice it. 

I have others looking after my young ones who love, respect and care for them. I use the mantra it takes a village to raise a child and trust my babies are taken care of and its good for them to experience life and culture with more then just me and daddy. There is energy in the part time working mamas home. An energy of accomplishment, being present and a little bit of chaos. Two non-profit jobs cannot hire a cleaning person so we settle for a bit of dirt and clutter that gets scurried away when we have a party or friends over for dinner. 

Part time work has a lot of pros but like most life choices it is also not as dreamy as it seems.  The part time worker is not paid as well. We get no benefits except the benefit of more time with our family. We forgo a lot of self-time for work time. Creativity is an after thought that lives burning in my heart and only get touched upon occasionally. As a women and mother I often put the needs of my family or job first and suffer from not being authentic to the creative well within. Exercise only sometimes happens and usually involves taking an unwilling kid along. As a part time worker my experience is so unique. So many other part time workers have such a varied experience. Some work from home, or have to take the office with them everywhere. Some are on call, some have their own business. It’s a hard way to relate to others experience when the experience can look so vastly different. We are all united on having kids and making some money at the work we do but the similarities often stop there.

 There is no handy acronym for the part time working mom, not SAHM or working mom, you are kind of a hybrid. Finding good, affordable childcare that caters to working parents as well as SAHM is rough too. Full time day cares are too expensive and not what I want but part time day cares like mothers day out only sort of work and are full of SAHM so you feel a little isolated as a worker in their midst. 

Going from SAHM to working mom was a huge shift as well. I constantly compare my experience with my first to my second and try to measure up to what I did the first time around. I cannot be there for everything with Little Pickle and it is heart breaking. At the same time it is relieving to have more income and knowing she is being well taken care of by others so I can also do important work in the world.

As a part time working mom you feel the urge and pressure to do everything a SAHM does but half the time to do it. You want to take on the PTA and volunteer projects at the school, you want to make muffins and have long kid directed play times after school. You have the expectation that you can get all the housework done and dinner ready every evening. But there is just not enough time for it all. So it happens in chunks. Chunks of self-care used for writing dates and calling up dear friends to talk. Going to interesting events around town. Time to snuggle up with your husband and watch a show in the 2 hours between when the kids fall asleep and when it’s your time to turn in. Chunks of time and patience are key to well being. 

I salute you fellow PTWM! You are kicking butt on so many levels, now stop and give your self a much needed bath and book date.          

To V-bac or Not to V-bac

I am 3 1/2 weeks out from my due date. I have grown progressively bigger and bigger reaching epic proportions, my belly hangs low, I am feeling some of the tired and queasy feelings from the first tri-master creep in as I wait for the baby to come. I am perfectly happy to have this baby do a full gestation, there is still more to do like cleaning, hospital bag, food calendar, car seat installation but it would also be fine if baby came tomorrow. I would be prepared either way. I am a seasoned mom I know what to expect in the beginning and just how hard it all is. Its nice doing this the second time around, less fear of the un-known, more confidence a plan laid out before me that I know could change at any time.

I used to think I was an intuitive person. I seemed to have a somewhat psychic sense of when things were going to happen, an inner dial attuned to the subtleties of the future and what lay ahead. All of this went out the window when I had Sweetpea. Leading up to her due date and the 2 weeks she gestated past her due date I thought, "Today is the day I will birth my child. It will happen like this, this is the way." I got in the birthy zone, I had lots of contractions but the contractions would always die down and peter out. Nothing was like I thought it would be. The whole birth was a tale, which I have told earlier in this blog, complete with a hospital induction (cytotec), many hours of painful active labor and finally a 15 min. rush to surgery during transition.

My cesarean was probably the best cesarean one could have. It was sad to have to do it but it all went really smoothly. I was with a nurse I liked and had been with sense the beginning. It was so quick! 15 min. after being in labor for two days! They took her out cleaned her up and handed her to me within 5 min. She was with me the whole time; daddy was their and my midwife. There are some pictures; baby was healthy and nursed quickly like a champ after self-attaching in our room post birth. It was a little sad not to have daddy cut the cord but we were so in the present moment with getting her safely out we hardly noticed.

This time around we have two birth plans, one for cesarean and one for a natural labor. (Both include daddy cutting the cord.) I have to be open to both and I fluctuate daily on this. Some days I am fine with having a cesarean. My eye is on the prize of having a healthy baby in the end. I believe in my body and know I have no real idea of how it will go. Other days I feel like a rebellious teen ready to jump on anyone even considering giving me a cesarean. I am ready to fight tooth and nail to give birth in the most animalistic way I can think of. There is nothing tidy and organized about birth. It is smelly, raw, emotional and in your face. No matter where you do it, it is the most powerful and animal act we modern womyn get to do.

Judy Chicago

 The first time I filled myself up with stories of women giving birth orgasmically in their beds at home. This was my ideal vision of birthing. It still is and it is not what we can do right now. We cannot afford a home birth and so we picked the best v-bac doctor we could find. I am considered a good candidate and she thinks I will be able to have a successful v-bac. In order to v-bac with her I have to naturally go into labor by 40 weeks. This is the kicker that scares me the most, Sweetpea came a full 2 weeks after her due date. I will try to go for a full 40 weeks but I also have to be ok with hospital policy. Grrrrr. We did hire an awesome doula that I believe will be a good liaison between the hospital and me and daddy's vision for labor. I don't want to get my hopes up too much though. As a good friend affirmed for me "hold on tightly, let go lightly." I will carry this affirmation with me into the birthing rooms of the hospital, as I fight to let my baby come naturally and be ok with whatever needs to happen.

What a challenging place and yet a growthful one too.

A Tale Of Dry Nights

No one told me going into this parenting thing that my daughter would still be struggling with having dry nights at 3 1/2 years old. We mastered dry days by 2 1/2. Dry nights have been a different story. On her 3rd birthday her dad and her decided there was no need for diapers at night. So we did it. We took the plunge and tried having her go without diapers completely, trusting she would let us know if she needed to go.

6 months later and I think now we are just getting the hang of it, knock on wood. This could be the biggest jinx post I have ever written. Sweetpea is consistently having every night dry for the past 3 weeks. We have tried everything. We have consulted all the parents we have known, we read all the books about it and talked to a doctor. Everyone told us this was normal. I wondered why I had never heard of it before. Years of being a nanny and I never noticed how long it took to get the night diapers out of the picture.

The thing is Sweetpea is a deep sleeper and we nursed to sleep when she was young. She really wants a drink before bed, after nursing we switched to a bottle of milk before bed, then water. She associated going to bed with drinking beverage.  I personally need to get up in the night if I consume tea before bed, I get it, your bladder can only hold so much. So she needed to go. At first it was only sometimes she would wet the bed, then it was every other night for months. It would seem like we were on an up curve, 2 weeks here and there then she would plummet back down to every two nights. Meanwhile I was doing a ton of laundry.

I had friends who said it was completely normal to have kids up to 5 years old in pull-ups. We were actually the only people in our friend circle who were even trying at 3 years old to take away night diapers. They all agreed they were too young at this age to be able to hold it all night long. It could be this was true. Though we had another friend I didn't see often who's son stopped having any accidents at 2 1/2. They just stopped putting diapers on him and he was done, end of story.

Daddy was fierce about sticking to our guns, rarely is he fierce about any parenting issue so I decided to side with him, as the laundry continued piling up. And I, being home more, was doing more of it I decided we needed a big change.

First we made a rule, no more liquid before bed. This was a struggle.  We got it down to two sips of water after she brushed teeth, which seemed to work as a compromise.

Second, I started a sticker chart. Just in case wetting the bed might be psychological I thought some incentive might help. Every dry night she got a sticker, two in a row she got a little plastic gem, 3 dry nights got a candy and 7 dry nights got a trip to Chuck E Cheese. I never thought of myself as a parent that might have this kind of reward system, but I was feeling desperate and if I have learned anything from parenting, you got to try all manner of ways of doing things and see which one works. She seemed to like all the rewards but it never added up to having dry nights on a consistent basis.

Lastly, we woke her up to pee a few hours after she goes to sleep. Friends had told us they woke there kid up in the middle of the night to pee, this seemed to daunting for us, so we stuck to 2 hours after she went to sleep, typically right before we went to bed. This worked for a while, and then it started being a struggle. If we didn't get her up right at 2 hours she would pee the bed, also she would fight us to get up and go, after tons of screaming and crying, plus 15 minutes to get her back down and calm, I could see that this strategy was not working.

This is when I decided to research the affects of reintroducing pull-up diapers after 6 months of none. Daddy really fought me on this, he was sure it would break her confidence and he felt she was just on her way to learning. He had more patience and less laundry doing then I. I found parenting forums all about this subject. I especially loved this one California moms list serv that had all kinds of opinions but seemed to all go with trust your gut and don't worry about harmful long term affects.

With all this research and strategy under my belt I just decided to go for it. We went to Target and grabbed a pair of 4t-5t pull-ups with flowers. I explained to Sweetpea these were only temporary, that would help her to remember to wake up and pee in the potty. She went along with it. Her dad was not happy but after my research was willing to try. And the thing is they worked!

Miracle of miracles, once she felt that squishy, diapery, plastic texture between her legs she was not happy. She didn't want to wear them. I set the rule that once she could go a full 3 days with them on and stay dry she did not need to wear them anymore. The next week we went on a trip. The struggle to put them on at night intensified, so after having her pee right before bed, I would put her to sleep. I would then sneak in an hour later and put a pull up on her. She was so deep asleep she did not wake up. Some magic made it so she did not pee the bed or the pull-up the whole 5-day trip.

When we got back home she reverted back a little and then started getting mad that she woke up with a pull up on. She told us not to put them on her at all. We listened, one night I just had her pee before bed. Then a few hours later I went to bed, no secret pull-ups, no waking her up to pee. When we woke up that morning she had a dry night! Going back to pull ups actually worked for us!

As I look back at all we did I am thinking, geez, parents are super heroes. We will do anything to make life run smoothly, we have to be always thinking, always strategizing, always being hopeful for a change of events. What a creative and intense job!

Now, 3 weeks later she has consistently had dry nights. Maybe our friends were right, maybe her body was finally old enough to wait it out through the night. I still go into her room and ask if she wants to try 2 hours after she goes to sleep. She always turns me down. We shall see what the next manifestation of this is. Now I know I am ready to take on the challenge.

How to be yourself be a mom and be a wife

I thought up this title the other day on a car ride to go pick up my daughter from pre-school. The reality of it is I am a novice at this and feel in the middle of a learning curve. In the short amount of years I have taken on these identities I have figured some stuff out I would like to share. I am writing this as much for myself to be a reminder of the important things as for you dear reader. I used the word wife because it makes me cringe every time so I feel it’s important to address that as well. All you other mothers/folks in life long partnerships if you have any thoughts around this topic please share in the comments. 

1. Communicate

Partners are not mind readers. Sometimes I wish they were. I find the second there is icky energy between daddy and I, if I address it, it goes away. No grudges, no hard feelings, just good solid truth telling. Sometimes this is really hard especially if it’s something vulnerable, which it often is, but if I get over that heart racing feeling and tell him what I really think, I always feel better. We both do.

2. Listen to your heart

My mind can go all over the place, rationalizing hurts, dwelling in feelings and minute details, trailing into uncertainty but if I listen to my mind through my heart I often know what’s best and follow the pumping organs advise. It might not always be the easiest answer but it is the most authentic and then I know I am being myself.

By Allison Paige

3. Have really close people in your life that are not your partner or kids

There is so much pressure to have your partner and family fulfill your every need for closeness. In most relationships these are the easiest folks to fall back on. I find that most folks I know need more then that. When you know you will get really good connection from a dear friend the pressure is off your partner to disappoint when they don't want to do the same things as you. When you have some folks to hang with that are not your family life seems bigger and having the option to miss your loved ones and look forward to coming back to there loving embraces is a good sensation as opposed to always having to be there.

4. Hold onto dreams no matter how impossible they seem. 

This is really important in maintaining the being your self part of being in a family. My dreams don't have the instant gratification they used to have in my early 20s. My dreams require timelines and negotiation; they require compromise and fitting into windows of time that never quiet feel like enough. But they are still my dreams and live vividly in my head. My partner gives me the focus of time and how long I have to achieve all that I want, so I keep the long range plan in mind and find ways to fulfill some of my dreams while being in the present. Keeping my dreams alive in my head helps be remember I still have all that beautiful, creative energy in me and one day I will do it all.

 5. Let go of the little things and remember the bigger picture every day

All the little S#*@t that bugs me each day has got to go. Some of it is worth communicating and following my heart about but if I let the mounds of little irritating things pile up it ruins my outlook and keeps me away from being my authentic self. We all have habits that piss each other off. Lets live with the feelings, then kick them out and move on. Some days this is easier then others so I try to wipe the slate clean at night, I sleep better because of this.

6. Have practices and rituals that are just yours that you attend to every week. 

Often if the ritual involves exercise I get the added bonus of feeling all the endorphins from movement. Even if this means spending 5 min. reading a paragraph from a book I love it really makes all the difference. It is all about checking in with myself, setting it up that my needs are just as important as the folks I care for and cohabitant with.

By Lotte Laserstein

7. Find a way to laugh and or feel delight every day/week.

This might just happen spontaneously, it does in my life and it’s easy to not notice it when I feel down. If I make an intention of feeling delight and laughter I seek out the experiences that bring it. This often involves noticing cool things about Sweetpea, playing silly games, singing, being outdoors, watching funny movies, planning out an adventure.

8. Have a freakin' date with your partner where you don't talk about parenting, finances, the future or any topic other then the pure delight of the present or sharing happy stories from the past.

Daddy and I have had dates where we end up in a tailspin about the future or we spend so much time talking about Sweetpea we don't feel like we left her at all. I have had to be intentional in this area. Thinking about what I can talk about that will just inspire us, save the heavy conversations for specified times not date night. Sweetpea can be a source of delight to talk about but sometimes its good to just leave behind the parenting role for a few hours and just focus on each other not as parents.

9. Kiss and hug your children and partner often, look for ways to cuddle and be physically close when you are together. Being close melts away the bad feelings, being close is one of the most human things we can do, it builds intimacy, reminds me why I chose to live in a partnership and brings a sense of wholeness to the grand scheme of life. Being close always brings smiles to my face and the faces of my loved ones.

10. Recognize the inequality inherent in relationships, roles and being a part of a family but don't dwell there, seek ways to change these things and also come to places of peace with the good, the bad and the serendipitous parts of choosing this life.

Exploring the MET (Metropolitan Museum of Art) with Sweetpea

I strolled my sleeping child through the rows of ancient Greek statues, awed by there presence. Daddy went off to see a world war II photography exhibit, disappearing under the white tent folds of the MET's newest installation. I preferred the ceramics of antiquity. As I turned a corner to the most ancient pottery of the Mediterranean I saw her, the big, billowy, thighs and chest of an ancient mother Goddess, propped up on two metal hooks, encased in glass under soft light. She was hard to spot amongst the vases and oil urns, but she stood out for me, glowing with an aura of majesty. As I stood transfixed, the halted movement awoke my dreaming child. Sweetpea woke up with a start as she always does, immediately alert and ready to tell me something. As if being pushed in a stroller over the cobblestone pathways along central park west was a part of our daily routine. Waking up surrounded by artwork in a large, loud, echoing room was just a part of the fun of having two adventuring parents.

"What’s that mama?" Her crackly just awoke voice said pointing at the little Goddess I had found for us.  “It’s our mother Goddess Sweetpea," "Mother Goddess" I hear repeated back to me, a slight pause, "why?" I go into an explanation of how this little Goddess represents the power of women as life givers and how ancient people's worshiped this power that all women have. I lift her up and we stare at the little figure, I smell her slightly sweaty hair, and marvel in the beauty of sharing this with my daughter.

I was only a little older then Sweetpea is now the first time I came to the MET. It was a daddy daughter date in the city. There is a picture of me flat up against Cleopatra's needle in a multi-colored, terry cloth dress and blues sneakers. I remember going there, I remember walking through the Egyptian temple, and admiring the old Roman statues. I have been back many times sense. As a teenager my unschooled friends and me would rain down on NYC and meet in front of the MET. We would hang out on the front steps leading up to it and check out the fashion history exhibit in the basement. My favorite place in the museum was in the Arab section, a tiny dome made of wood, carved in intricate patterns. This dome sits in a hallway in between rooms. It is quiet, like a tree house within the vast open spaces of history and art.  


Later, with my husband and daughter in toe I walk them towards the Roman statue hall. We ended up in an atrium with a larger then life bronze statue of Perseus defiantly holding up the head of Medusa. I pointed at the statue and said "Sweetpea, look at this beautiful statue."  With a look of wonder and horror my child stares and begins a long strand of "why?" questioning. I realize after the fact what a strange statue this is to point out to her. In one room I am talking about ancient people's worshiping the great Mother, in the other room I am trying to explain Greek myth and the chopping off of a woman's head. My daughter is learning life is complex.

I have cornered myself into this conversation so I go back to the beginning, we first talk about stories, how they are different from real life. Then I talk about Medusa, what she did and why someone would want to chop off her head. It is a delicate explanation.  I am trying to explain things simply enough that she will not draw conclusions about good and bad, and will instead focus on truth and fiction. The rest of the day she reports to everyone we talk to about "Dusa, and how he chopped off her head." We still talk about it months later.

Our last stop is the Tiffany hall, we all stand awestruck in front of the huge Tiffany windows, lit from within, exuding an aura of holiness. We play make believe games with the bear statues in the hall and pretend to chop off each other’s heads. :)

There we were, only a 3rd of this grand museum explored and still content with all we got to see. We went just outside the gates to a NYC park complete with meandering benches and metal play structure letting the art of the day soak into our souls.

Toddler Tantrum

--> We are in the midst of a painfully hard growth period. Sweet pea is asserting her power and will and her just as stubborn mom is not cowing to all her desires. It is exhausting to have power struggle after power struggle. The inner voice says there must be some amazing life changing advise. If I was just doing this method or that she would listen better, I would have the upper hand, parenting a 2 1/2 year old would be easy and delightful. Instead I am fraught with anxiety about what’s around the next bend, what hump are we crossing now, how to get us both out of deep water without drowning.

Her daddy's approach is to avoid power struggle. He coaches me on distraction techniques, offering choices, giving her as much say in the thing without doing all of it. Example, letting her hold the candy that she wants to eat instead of just giving it to her so she has control of it but does not eat it. His method does seem to work some but doesn't always sit well with me. It goes along with giving her a lot more sugar and watching tv then I would like. It also looks like avoiding and distracting away the feelings that I know will bubble up no matter what we do.


I consulted friends and family via facebook about it one morning. I got a lot of good tips including foot massage after a tantrum to ground us both, following a stricter schedule so she knows what to expect, offering her choices and new objects to fiddle with as we go through a transition. Also just setting the party line and dealing with the volcanic eruptions of having a boundary placed on her. They were all good ideas and I will probably use a mix match of those ideas when confronting tantrums but it all seems to come down to what will uniquely work for my kiddo.


I have had to face my own feelings when she tantrums. Embarrassment: Luckily I have let go of a lot of feelings of embarrassment but still some linger when she throws an on the floor fit in the grocery store. Jealousy: My kid can wail, and damn, it feels good to wail. To show how freakin' hard it feels. Why does she get to take up that much space and I don't? I am not saying I want to throw a fit in the middle of the grocery store but at the end of a particularly hard work day I have been known to roll down the windows, blast the music and scream while driving to pick her up from pre school. I think she gets it honest. Fear/Sadness: Seeing my baby struggle like that is hard, it brings up fears that I am raising her wrong. Why did I decide to bring another life into this heavy harsh world? What values am I sending her when I lose it while she is losing it? How can I teach her empathy? That not just her desires matter? 


Facing all of this is difficult and complex and I am still figuring out how to work out these emotions in a healthy way and separate them from when she is having her big feelings. Still sometimes we both end up on the side of the road crying as I explain to her through sobs she can't scream the entire time while mommy is driving.


For now what I have figured out for my dear sweetpea is a lot of one on one and family time, this seems to lesson the desire to act out for attentions sake. Also when going to an overwhelming place like the grocery store letting her fill the cart with what she wants then at check out separate out the stuff and tell the cashier we don't need those things. It’s an extra step for the awesome grocery store employees but seems to make all the difference. Hopefully this will be a temporary need. I also let her pick out varieties of things for us like fruit and veggies. Getting a lot of emotional support and making sure I am getting down time and alone time. I am always ready to take on her big feelings after a good sleep or artist date by myself. We also do a lot of talking out the situation and offering something exciting at the end. Like explaining if she puts her shoes on now we can then skip over to the big tree and climb it together. 

The thing I am the most proud of is we always talk about it after the tempers have settled. Even when I lose my cool and shove her into the car seat, or pull the thing out of her hand without coaxing it away, Sweetpea has an emotional language. We talk out how she was feeling and how I was feeling. We can identify the emotions together and hug afterword. This kind of intimacy and communication makes me believe we can make it through any hardship together.

For The Love, A Birthers Tale

I have been thinking about the love I experience as a parent for my child. I spend a lot of time on this blog dissecting the identity of being a parent, sharing my trials and adventures. Sometimes I forget to share just how wonderful it is to be a parent to a little one.

I feel so blessed that I get to be with Sweetpea. The second she opened her voice to me with the most adoring squeal I thought, my God, this is my little person. This is her voice! My heart was filled with a warm overflowing cup of love that washes down my back every time I think of it.

Painting by Lenny Dinar Dothan

I knew I was going to have Sweetpea. She decided when, but I knew. The ocean told me. (Forewarning, wooo moment.) I was at The Earth Activist Training and we had one afternoon off. At the training we were learning permaculture. We were doing earth magic and learning how to interpret birds and track animals. We were also designing sustainable buildings and doing water rituals. It was a beautiful and unique training that left me on that day off in a little bit of an ethereal mood and a calm open place. 

I had just walked through a grove of redwoods with some friends. We decided to head for the coast for some ocean gazing. The California coast is inconceivably beautiful. Particularly the Northern California coast is very dreamlike. I love the all encompassing rambunctiousness and power of the ocean. I also marvel at how it is always lapping at our coast line, water is always moving, putting on its majestic show weather we are watching or not. The ocean was wild that day. There were huge swells of waves battering the beach and sucking up whatever got in the way.  I stood right at the edge of the white foam staring into the abyss. The waves were thumping me like a drum. I unfocused my eyes and my mind and stared right into a wall of towering water. A voice within me said, you will have a baby. She will be a girl. You are going to be a mom. When I opened my eyes again one of the huge waves clapped and gobbled up my exposed legs in its wake. I was dripping with salt water, I laughed and cried. I knew the ocean was right. It was so perfect.

2 1/2 years later I was in a hospital in Tacoma Washington fighting with all my might to bring this baby into the world. My fight was long and good and bittersweet. Sweetpea and I were ready for the fight. She still fights in a similar way when she is upset. She presses her body into mine struggling to wriggle free. She cries and wants me to hold her tight while she squirms. I love being able to see her struggle and come out the winner! The fight for life is an amazing struggle. It is something I felt I missed out on. In my birth story my mother had a planned cesarean. The doctor did not think she would be able to have me the natural way because both my brothers were also cesarean. There are a lot of enforcers in society to make it hard for me to fight, being raised female, the only girl and the youngest of two older brothers, just to name a few. This first fight I missed out on though is something I knew I wanted to be different for my kid. It was different. In the end I also had to have a cesarean. After a long hard battle Sweetpea needed the extra nudge to get out. She got stuck and her heart rate went way down. I see this as a metaphor for me in parenting her. When she gets stuck she will need helpers to guide her into the direction that is flowing. Fortunately, as an adult I have set up a community of folks to help me with this as well.

Now, 2 years later I have my amazing toddler to explore with. I have a kid that challenges and enlightens me daily. I have this person in my life forever. I like forever.

A little song I learned and sang for my sweetpea just after she was born rings in my ears. It is the song our family sings at each death and each birth in our lives.

"When you were born you cried
  and the world rejoiced
  live your life so
  that when you die
  The world cries and you rejoice"

The Politics of Domesticity

 
Being a stay at home parent is political. We do all the work that keeps a family unit functioning and don't see a dime for all the effort that takes. We hold the emotional and physical stability of a house and a child. The role of a stay at home mom specifically is wrought with sexism and feelings of inadequacy. I recently heard another stay at home mom talk about how she said to her husband, "I want to feel like I am contributing to society. I don't get paid to do housework and take care of our kids." He replied, "honey you get paid in makeovers and pedicures." This is one extreme example of sexism but there are plenty of micro aggressions that happen in the political nature of the stay at home mom.

My child is freshly 2. The "plan" was to have the baby and have me go back to work when she was 6 months old and our money ran out. When I graduated from college and had Sweetpea we were and still are in the middle of a huge economic downturn. The amount of jobs and the amount of people wanting them is way out of whack. When Sweetpea turned 6 months we moved to Austin. We thought Austin would be an easier place to get jobs, turns out being an artist in a very creative and young town makes the competition fierce for anything art related. Daddy was able to get employed quickly with the city in his field, health, education, and advocacy. I on the other hand have been struggling to find good work for a year and half, experiencing multiple interviews and letdowns. This is not just the economy, I am not willing to settle for whatever job and pay the high fees of childcare to be able to do it. It has put stress on our family and depleted any idea that we had about not going into debt. It has also been a great success in making do and being there to experience what really matters.  

Then there is classism. Stay at home moms are looking for community with other parents who are choosing to be full time with their young people. What is one of many things that gets in our way of being connected? The big C of classism. I came into the role of being a stay at home parent because of necessity. Some moms plan it all out and choose that they will be the stay at home parent. The folks that choose this I notice seem to have a good financial cushion. These mostly middle and upper class moms who have personal trainers after giving birth to get there body back. They have their own car to take the little one places, they always have money for museum admissions, date nights with their partners, hired babysitters and infant music classes. I am sure these stay at home moms also battle with the same inner demons of inadequacy, isolation and the stress of holding together the family unit.  It seems that our society at this point largely holds this kind of mom to be what is expected if you are a stay at home mom. I know this is not always the case, just my experience as a nanny and now working class mom.


I see all stay at home parents struggling with this. The stay at home dads I hang out with don't have the added bonus of sexism to deal with but definitely get hurt around their manhood for choosing to be domestic and be with their kids full time. The pressure of keeping the working people in the house happy and getting some time to yourself once in a blue moon is something all stay at home parents have to deal with.

I like that I am getting the chance to be with Sweetpea this much, I like that she sees me prioritize her and gets to learn from my wisdom. I like watching her grow and being there for the big happenings in her development. I wish that it were easier. I wish I had more of a support network, that I didn't feel obligated to do a huge share of the housework because I am home the most. That doing house work didn't feel so degrading because there are centuries of women behind me scrubbing the kitchen floor, attending to their young people and worrying about how to make ends meet.

I start a substitute-teaching job next week. I will be teaching art in after school programs with a really awesome organization called “Creative Action.” I do not know how we will be able to get the childcare we need yet but I am rolling with it and believing the right answers will show up.  This job is a crack in the door of arts education, a field I want to break into. I am excited to see what opportunities come up after I start. I hope to hit a balance with my stay at home mom status by bringing in some much needed extra cash and giving myself a break. I am still figuring out what is fair and how I want house work to go in my home. I will keep you posted. What have you figured out?

Artist Mama

This spring has been crazy busy. In March we moved in with our new housemates. In April and May I got to work making the trailer for my documentary film “Czechxan.” I was story boarding, finding crew, shooting, editing, getting regular childcare and writing a grant. Talk about super mom! It was all made possible by the burning fire I have for my work, the blessing of another mom who could do weekly 5 hour trades, my awesome husband who took over the second he got home from work and occasional sitting from my housemate and a teen I hired for the month of May. Also the amazing support I got from having a weekly goal check in with my mother in law called our “artist hour.”

I have not had time to write this blog and I have missed it. I have been facing the question a lot of artist moms face, "who does she think she is?" BTW, This is also the name of a great documentary made recently about artist mothers. According to our capitalist society, I am choosing to live in poverty, neglecting my child, selfish, can't have it all and need to grow up. If you are not being a successful artist aka making money, there seems to be no reason to continue on other than at a hobbyist level. I am here today to share with you the reality of being an artist mother.

1. I actually have more attention for my art and my child by being both an artist and mother at the same time. I know it sounds wild, but there is a very small window of time in my day I get to work so I use it! The second she goes down I am at my computer or notebook working till she wakes up. In the evening the second she goes down I go to work at my desk for a 3-4 hour chunk and know I have to stop at 10:30pm otherwise I won't be able to face the next morning with her. I get work done, am able to be with my daughter and get mostly enough sleep, shocking!

Because of these intensive spurts of creativity I am able to put it away when she wakes up and get my mind going in a different direction, food, diaper change, play dough or park usually do the trick. I think my artist mind needs the break of being able to be on toddler time, engaged in her growth and development and not thinking to hard about my work. I would even say my work is enriched by the play/out doors time I have with her.

When I was solely focused on my art I spent a lot of wasted time in guilt spirals for not doing enough, lack of accountability and getting lost in silly activity’s. I think parenting is a great focusing tool, helping me to decide what is doable and what is the most important. I still spend a lot of time on facebook and having tv/movie time with daddy, but it feels balanced and a welcome break from always having to be on.

2. Because I am deciding to make my art and parent my young one full time I can have my passionate adult time so I don't feel like my whole life is my daughter. This also gives Sweetpea a chance to have relationships with other loving adults and socialize with other kids. She gets a lot of close time with her dad and she still gets to have a lot of me, in some ways, it is a win win situation.

3. It is f*&^ing hard to really pull off and a constant negotiation. As a co-parent I am not the only one being affected by my life choices. My amazing husband would love it if we were not strapped for cash every month. We also have different ideas about day care and me getting a "real" job. For me, I see having this time with sweetpea when she is young as invaluable and also great that she gets to have a lot of one on one time and not have to join the pack of kids and rules that come with day care. She socializes every week with her friends and her housemates. She is rarely sick and she knows her caregivers have attention for big feelings so her sense of security is strong.

I was not a day care kid, my husband was and he says it was a good experience for him. We have often tried to negotiate ways for her to go to half time care and me to work at least half time for pay. After trying to get lots of different jobs our first year here I realized, the job market is hard and overloaded right now and it was time to start listening to myself and what I really wanted to be doing here in Austin

It is not easy but I have never felt so alive and though we are broke, our quality of life is really good. We have a great time in our city doing free or cheap activities. We live simply and get to have a lot of time together. We miss out on regular big, fancy dinners, far away vacations, gym memberships and new goods and clothes, but it seems like a good trade off, for now.

I am running an online funding campaign to make my film “Czechxan.” It will run till July 18^th. Please check out the trailer and share the link.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1210194179/czechxan-the-film