August 9: Too much laundry but we’ve been saved by another “New” Mother’s Helper!

Today was a bit rushed; we woke up later than normal – 7:20 AM and we need to leave by 8 AM with 4 kids! We posted for another ad in Craig’s List so hopefully we’ll find someone soon. OUr place is a wreck – we tried to keep up last summer when I went back to work but it was physically and emotionally depleting. I just couldn’t do it with four kids and work FT. Hopefully someone good answers our ad soon.

• Twin Crazy was playing with a brush, and Red was also with her. Twin Crazy trapped Red in the closet – she is getting very good with her muscles and she loves to open and close sliding closets (to my fear)
• Twin Husky then comes out and the four of us start playing with puzzles on the floor. That was really sweet.
• Everyone heads down for Chocolate Tuesday!
• I can’t find my brush so I head downstairs and there it is on the floor.
• I take out dry stuff out of dryer and put on top of the growing mountain of clean clothes to be folded in the back bedroom
• Twin Crazy and Twin Husky are eating yogurt for breakfast so I clean them up and get them out of their chairs
• Twin Crazy “helps” me put the wet clean clothes into the dryer. That was cute.
• I put in another load of wash.
• Red and Big Bro are REALLY busy with Chocolate Tuesday – they are eating their faces off.
• I make Big Bro’s lunch and pack up the bag for daycare.
• We change the Twins and then help Red and Big Bro change. They are old enough, and they can do it by themselves, I think they just want the attention from us so I can’t help but give in. Big Bro and I discuss the system we had where he picked out the clothes by himself and came downstairs already dressed, and how great that was. We’re going to try that tomorrow.
• Twins are playing with the stereo components and wind up turning it on. Big Bro laughs at this — he is so sweet; he looks at what they do, but hangs back. Will only intervene if their safety is in question. Otherwise, he enjoys seeing them develop and do funny things, just as I do. I’m so proud of him as a big brother.
• OK – 8 AM!! Time to go! Everyone get their shoes on!!! Twin Husky went to the garage and found his shoes so I could pack them in the bag. How cute.
• Twin Husky was difficult getting into the car seat today. He kept wanting to turn around and laugh at Big Bro. You can really see the development between the two brothers recently. It is so sweet.

So now I’m on the ferry, no makeup, no breakfast, and no coffee. I feel like shit.   For work today, I will need to:

• Work with one of the directors to map out one proposal. We need to complete it by today or tomorrow – So I’ll need to focus on that.
• Think about high level approach for the big proposal we will submit in two weeks.
• I will need to participate in a coordination/status meeting for the big meeting in October. THis will take 1 hour out of my day
• I will also likely lead a different meeting for the firm initiative with our partner – I’ll need to walk through the go-to-market materials I sent out yesterday.

So, lots to do today. I think I’m going to treat myself to a big breakfast and HUGE coffee on the way to work today.   On the ferry the people around me are talking about t-ball, swimming, soccer, baseball, and birthday parties, and camps. The people around here are so Type-A and everything appears to be done to the extreme. Giant trampolines. Swim lessons since they’re 3. Hearing this makes me feel so guilty that we’re not able to do this with our kids – there just isn’t enough time and the last thing we want to do on weekends is run around with extra activities and/or formalized commitments.   I’ll probably post something on this topic at a later time.

Highlights of my Working Day:

• I grabbed an excellent breakfast this morning on the way to work – breakfast tacos, a HUGE coffee, and I decided to splurge on orange juice.
• Got myself together in the ladies room before going to office. Now I feel more like myself.
• Rearranged some meetings today
• Started to work on the presentation for Thursday’s huge meeting with the folks from the project that just wrapped up. I had no fear going in to present to the Senior EVP of the bank, but these types of meetings where you need to present to the workers… the doers… is very stressful for me. Everything in black and white is a critique on how they do their jobs – sometimes they react favorably to this type of work because maybe their fighting for investment budget for automation and to make their jobs easier — however sometimes it just looks like plain criticism — and in this case we were evaluating potential areas for outsourcing so some of these people will be fearful of their jobs (or their teams) as a result of this work. So, I’m not really looking forward to Thursday’s meeting. It will be tougher. It will be harder emotionally.
• Ate fig newtons for lunch. Sent out a Random Thoughts post during lunch.
• Sent follow-up to our Whitepaper partner to see if she is happy with the results; I’d like to get more work from her. The work is not complicated and it would give us a great way to supplement our existing work and keep our junior staff busy.
• Started working on a “Best Practices” document to send to the institutions we interviewed for our last project.
• Started fleshing out the objectives for one proposal – we are supposed to deliver it to the prospective client this week but I don’t know how that is going to happen… I have face-to-face business development meetings tomorrow and I am traveling on Thursday…..
• Conducted the touchpoint status meeting for the initiative with our partners; there are some updates to the go-to-market materials which I incorporated and then re-sent everything out to the team so we can begin our sales efforts. I will need to start reaching out to companies before the next status meeting in 2 weeks.
• Fired our undependable Mother’s Helper, and arranged for someone who answered our ad to come visit with us tonight. I’m going to put her to work with all of our laundry and all of our hand-washables. Our house is a disaster.

I had a good day today but am still feeling down – I am not recovering as quickly as I would like from my bout of depression from the weekend. I can’t shake this. The city where we live is too stressful and extremely expensive. I have no choice but to work the way I do. I feel like I have no choices at all anymore. I’m feeling alone again and need to snap out of this. OK I’m off to the Ferry. Will likely start to write-up another blog entry on the way home.

 Dinner and Bedtime:

• Red came out of daycare today with her hair pulled back in a pony-tail (she has very, very little hair so I’m always amazed when people are able to do this for her – I certainly cannot).  I made such a big deal out of this.  We later kept giggling to each other that we both have pony-tails and we put them together and said how our pony-tails were mixed together.
• Twin Husky absolutely loves Big Bro.  It is tough to get him in the car seat because he’d rather stand up and look at Big Bro.   We talk about what kinds of toys they can play with each other when we get home and Big Bro decides on “cars”.   Then Red proclaims that she wants to play “Princess” with Twin Crazy when we get home.
• Twin Husky and Twin Crazy have a blast on the slide structure.   They keep taking turns and running around — one slides while the other climbs up the structure… on and on and on and on…..  Too cute.  They were laughing their butts off.
• Our potential new mother’s helper came over.  She is great with kids and works in summer camps and social work programs with kids for a living.  I think she’ll be great with our family.  Red took to her right away and we had fun showing her around the house.  We went outside (all the kids) to show her the apple tree.  I picked an apple for each kid and used that as leverage to get them to eat their food.
• A conversation with Big Bro went like this tonight….     Big Bro:  “If you had a monster, what would you do with it?”  “Well, is it a good monster or bad monster?”   “It’s anything you want it to be.” “OK.  I’d like it to be a good monster.   But would you kids be scared of it?”   “I wouldn’t, but Red might, and Twin Husky and Twin Crazy would be too.”  “OK.  Well in that case, on a day when I work from home and you kids are at school and daycare, I would invite the monster over for lunch.   That’s what I’d do with the monster.”
• And yet another conversation with Big Bro….  Big Bro:  “I’d like to have a dinosaur and have them in the house.   I’d like to ride them.”   He then starts to mention all of them by name and I don’t remember what they are but we did have a long conversation about the ones that fly and how we would love to fly on them if they were nice to us and kept us safe when we were in the air.
• All ate well.   Big Bro ate so many carrots I thought he was going to turn orange. Big Bro and Red wound up on my lap after dinner eating apples.  I loved it.
• Big Bro wanted to play a game with me where you connect “dots” to form squares and the person who forms the most squares wins.   I’m telling you, this kid was strategizing.   I actually had to pay attention to what I was doing.   Hubby thinks that I’ll be no match for this kid in 1-2 years.
• Twin Crazy started to do something funny with her sippy cup tonight — shaking the milk out into a spoon and then drinking the milk from the spoon
• MH puts the Twins down for bed – everything seemed to go well.
• Big Bro had a tantrum about a blanket.   Red is still saying she’s scared.  I think she’s at the top of the stairs again now….