Limping along

by Katrina on January 9, 2012

I can’t believe how crazy this time of year is, every year.

Intense work deadlines right before the holidays, during which I caught some new strain of Monster Cold that hung in there for over a month. It was so bad that at one point I lost my voice completely—I could not get any sound to emit from my vocal cords for about three days. I ended up running a 3-hour meeting with a client by WHISPERING. (Career tip: Losing your voice can work to your benefit. I think it actually gave me a more commanding presence. Very “Godfather.” Every time I whispered, everyone would fall silent and lean in.)

The day my project ended was my kids’ last day of school/preschool. I was home with them for 2+ weeks which was fun but intense in an entirely different way—play dates, art projects, park trips. You know the drill. My husband, who has been freelancing for 10+ years, recently took a full time JOB-job, so he had to work for much of that time… (Marriage tip: Take turns having “real” jobs or you will be in crisis during every school holiday and fight about who has to take the time off.)

Somehow we got it together for Christmas—presents, nice dinner, happy kids—and then suddenly it was Ruby’s birthday, which comes the week after Christmas, and always seems to catch us by surprise. By then Brian was back at work, so I tried a new Risky Mom Move: I asked Ruby to babysit her baby brother in the store while I bought her birthday presents. (Parenting tip: You CAN pull this off if your oldest child is 9, and the youngest has had his nap. Unfortunately, Jake missed the nap, so by the end of our shopping trip, I ran out of Candy Bribes, and he flung himself face down on the floor of Old Navy, sobbing.)

Now the kids are back in school, and I’m looking at all the things I have to catch up on—paying estimated taxes, bunch of things going on with my son’s preschool, lining up my next freelance project, planning Ruby’s big birthday party, a gazillion broken things around the house to be fixed. And as I look out at the calendar, I can see all these random days-off piling up—professional development days, MLK Day, etc. Also, Jake started coughing last night, which means the next round of winter colds is descending.

So I thought I’d revive the following story, which I originally posted around this time last year. Details are different, but otherwise, I could have written it this year.

How’s your year going so far?

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Originally posted March 14, 2011:

Ruby on crutchesIf you’re a working parent and you feel like you’ve been running in place this year, it’s probably not your imagination.

Last week my daughter broke her ankle. It’s kind of a long story, but the central event involved a giant flying leap over a pile of backpacks on the school playground. Girls will be girls…

I’m trying to look on the bright side. For instance:

  1. Ruby is not in a lot of pain. Also, she’s thrilled that she gets to wear a cast for a month. All the second graders in her class think she’s exceedingly cool.
  2. At age 8, she’s the perfect size for breaking something. Just big enough to use the smallest pair of crutches her pediatrician could dig up. Just small enough to fit in her baby brother’s stroller, which is now Ruby’s makeshift wheelchair whenever her armpits hurt from the crutches.
  3. I’m not working full time.

Number 3 is a big deal.

I took this opportunity to add up the number of days either my husband or I have been home during a work day with kids.

In the first ten weeks of this year, we’ve missed 11 days of work due to school holidays or a sick kid. We’re not even through the first quarter yet. If the rest of the year is like this quarter, we’ll miss more than 40 days of work by the end of the year. How can that be?

When Brian and I both worked full time, every cough, every fever, every bout of stomach flu was a major crisis. Who’s going to stay home from work? What if the other kids get it? What if we get it? I had 6 paid sick days a year—generous considering half of American workers don’t have any. But it wasn’t close to covering all the days one of our kids was sick. Of course, I could always use my vacation time, but I needed that to cover the random holidays the kids had off from school.

My kids’ pediatrician explained to me once that children get 8-10 colds and fevers a year. What does that mean in sick days?

Let’s say on average your kid has to be home from school one day per illness (although some illnesses don’t require any missed days of school, while others can knock your kid out for a week, easy). That’s 9 days per year, per kid.

Let’s say you have two kids, and their 9 sick days a year overlap by a half. That means you need to take a good 13 or 14 days off a year to be home with a sick kid. That’s not including all the random “professional development days” and holidays that only school children and postal workers get (Cesar Chavez Day, anyone?). Nor does that number include the days when you, the parent, are sick. And no matter how many green smoothies you drink for breakfast, if you’re up all night with a sick kid, you’re bound to get whatever is keeping him awake.

At my last job, I almost never took a sick day when I was sick. This garnered sympathy from some of my coworkers, and the stink eye from others.

“Why are you exposing me to your germs?” they wanted to say.

And I wanted to reply, “I can’t afford to take a f***ing sick day for myself. I have three kids!”

My husband was one of those Americans who didn’t have any sick days. He was a freelancer, so any day he took off meant a day he didn’t get paid.

The pay wasn’t really our problem, though. Our main problem was that we had too much work to do, and couldn’t afford to get behind. So usually, when one of the kids was sick, we worked from home.

It was generous of my employer to let me do this, but let’s face it. It sucks to be fielding conference calls on mute while your kid is moaning from fever on the couch. It just does. You feel like you’re neglecting your kid when she needs you most, and you feel like you’re letting your coworkers down, too.

I used to do just about anything to avoid losing a sick day. I canceled play dates if the other kids had even the slightest cold. I cajoled my kids into drinking various herbal remedies at the first sniffle. And I’m not proud to admit it, but on more than one occasion I gave my kids Tylenol for their flushed cheeks and sent them to school anyway. I also had an alarming capacity for denial. That little fleck of something I saw in my kid’s hair wasn’t really a lice nit—probably just dandruff. Here’s your lunchbox, Sweetie!

I’m curious to hear how other people handle sick days. What do you do?

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Just for kicks, I went through the calendar to see how many days the kids have been out of school sick or for random holidays. It averages about 1 day/week for the first 10 weeks of this year:

Days our kids were home from school

{ 42 comments… read them below or add one }

Janet

We do the same as you – we try to split them up so neither my husband or I is taking off too much but it usually means that I never take a sick day for myself. Working from home is a nightmare but I have to do it occasionally and yes, you hit the nail on the head, you feel like you’re failing your kid and your co-workers at the same time. I get a stress stomachache when I work from home. Fortunately we live close to family and my father has a job that allows him to make his own hours so in a pinch, we have had to rely on him to help out. This is where you realize it takes a village. If I ever get really desperate, I know I could ask him or a sibling who works nights to help out. None of it is easy.

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KMayer

I can’t even do the math with my 3 kids at home (and one now at college). Seems they take turns, and when they’re finally healthy, schools close for snow/ice/flood/professional development/conferences!!! I can’t afford to work full time, so I hustle 9-3 and do most from home so I can be there for the dreaded caller-id from school.

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Ana

I also work part-time and have sick time so if things work out, my girls are sick on days I am not working…but this last time I had just gotten to work from a dr’s appt when I get a call from my oldest that she had a fever and had to go home. I usually go but this time I couldn’t so I called hubby, who gets no sick days, and he took the day off. We lost some money but I can’t always take time off if I want to keep my job, right?

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am

We did what you did, but honestly our approach was/is – it is what it is – lets just deal with it. I didnt take on the unnecessary guilt (couldn’t afford to). I was one of those moms that always sent my children to school – they weren’t sick (in my mind!) and don’t you want that perfect attendance award? (that was my warped rationale that worked for me). My children knew they had to be deathly ill in order to stay home. If it turns out they were ill and they went to the nurses office – either they stayed there or by the time I came for them it was a half day – not a full day; it wouldnt count as a sick day.
Anyhow, we survived and sometimes look back and laugh about this!

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holly

Of course schools don’t have nurses offices anymore…no one is willing to pay for that. Remember the days when the nurse checked for lice or took care of the kids when they threw up? I think the kids have to sit with the school secretary now.

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Shawna

Holly, that’s exactly how they do it at my daughters school! I have to say I was shocked when I went to pick up my sick daughter and she was sitting there next to the Principal’s secretary. I would think a private school could afford a nurse!

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Paula

Wow. This couldn’t have come at a better time – I’m contemplating going back to work full-time. Have had a successful job share for 10 years but tough market seems to mean no one wants or ‘needs’ to consider these types of arrangements so looking at full-time and wondering how having both me and my husband full-time is going to realistically work. Sure the extra money will mean we can pay for more childcare – but I’d rather have less money, less stuff and the family time. We are at 4 furlough/school holiday days + an unusual, for us 8 kid sick days – and spring break + 1 furlough day coming up – grand total of 18 days of kids home from school in Q1 – oh my.

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Katrina

18 days! That’s impressive. You should get some kind of award. So if we project out for the year, that would be 72 days total…Egads!

How many kids do you have? And what state are you in? We haven’t had to deal with furlough days (yet).

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Margaret

My kids are 10 and 17. If the 17 yo is sick, I don’t usually stay home with him unless he’s bedridden which is not often. I just check on him throughout the day. If the 10 yo is sick, I will stay home with her and just do as much work as I can or I will take her to my parents (which is conveniently on my way to work!) and she will be spoiled… um I mean taken care of by them for the day. I’m blessed to be able to take her to them. My husband will occasionally take a day off if I ask him do but he does have paid sick/vacation time. The bottom line is that my family is most important. There is nothing at work that is so important that I cannot be there for my kids when I need to be. My company has never given me a problem. I use a personal day (family illness) if I find for whatever reason I can’t work from home.

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holly

Last school year my daughter won an attendance award because we had the good fortune to have the worst illnesses on week-ends and I sent her to school when she was only a “little sick.” This year we have been hit hard. We missed 4 days just for illness in the fall, and we have had at least one kid home due to illness or school holidays 8 days since the January 3rd.

My husband and I have split up the days, but it has definitely affected my ability to stay current with work and I have felt a great deal of pressure and anxiety at and about work. I try and work during the days when my kids are home sick, which I am sure seems reasonable to anyone who didn’t just spend the whole night up holding someone’s hair while they threw up. The truth is, when my kids are really sick they do need assistance, and the periods when they are okay, I am so dead exhausted that my work is compromised.

The thing that I have noticed this year is just how difficult it is for my kids to be even a little sick at school. They feel rotten, they’re coughing, they can’t pay good attention…it doesn’t seem fair to them or the teachers who have it rough enough teaching healthy children. It is such a long day for a kid who is even just a little sick. School may end at 2:15, but they have to go to some kind of aftercare until at least 5 for me to put in a respectable day.

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Nancy Davis Kho

Loved this one, Katrina, you’ve nailed it. I work p-t from home and whenever I start panicking about what that means for my long term career prospects, I remember that no one in their right mind would hire me, since most weeks at least one kid is home for at least one day for school conferences, a fever, President’s Day, etc…and it’s true that while for me it’s an annoyance, for single parent families and those with two parents working full time outside the home it’s an almost unsolvable problem. I appreciate how you keep shining a light on the realities of working moms –

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Tammy

Funny that you brought this up. I returned to work today after two days home with my 7 year old. I had to use my sick days (for which I am very thankful) because hubby doesn’t have any, only vacation days. Plus he makes more money per day so it makes more sense for me to stay home instead of him.

One night while I was off, after frantically cleaning the disaster zone we call our house with all this “extra” time I had, I dreamed that I had been reassigned in my job (as good as fired) and I remember the weird feeling when I woke up like I had failed my job because I was taking care of my sick child. How warped is that! It’s even invading my dreams.

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Shawna

My husband and I take turns even though I work from home. I am not one of those lucky work from home people that can make their own schedule – I have to be around for a solid 8 hours. Thankfully I work from 6am – 2:30 pm so I’m not working when the kids come home from school. Our 3 year old gets sick if anyone near him sneezes (we’re hoping he grows out of it) and then he gets my 9 year old daughter sick and then me. My husband never gets sick but he also never has any sick time left by the end of the year thanks to the kids. At his company, you are able to continue accruing sick time for years so the joke is you can always tell who has kids and who doesn’t based on the sick hours left at the end of the year. One of his co-workers has 3 months worth of sick time!

I don’t know how parents do it if they don’t get sick time from work. As it is, my friends marvel at the fact that my husband and I take turns staying home with the kids when they’re sick. IMHO, that should be a shared thing just like laundry and cooking is!

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Deborah

In San Francisco we have 4 furlough days per year- nearly another full week to figure out. But all the furlough days, sick days and holidays pale in comparison to the glory of summer vacation. Who came up with the idea of year-round work and seasonal school???? What will we do with the children??? Talk about money, stress, and crazy logistics. I suppose it all works out fine for families with older children (maybe?), or with unemployed yet responsible and loving friends or family nearby, or children who are happy to plunked down in an unfamiliar place doing whatever they do, and endless financial resources to cover any gaps in care. But for me, it’s a massive ordeal every year. My second-grader would rather be in school year-round than go to camp, but I have to work. We’re relatively healthy, so my sick days have thus far been enough for me and my kid, but what about the 10+ extra weeks off I need to cover those damn vacations??!?!?!

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am

You know what we did for summer vacations – we sent our children away to be with their grandparents in another country. There were travel logistics to work out – but they weren’t insurmountable. The first year we did it, everyone looked at me like I had 2 heads; I was so tired I didnt miss them until just when it was time for them to come home. My father-in-law understood though! Each year, they looked forward to it, as did I. They got the benefit of being world savvy and learning about other cultures and we used this time to increase our productivity at work while also enjoying ourselves.
Prior to this experience, I had good childcare that was affordable and continued throughout the summer. I was able to use the same childcare providers for all my children over a ten year time span.

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Katrina

@am I’ve been wondering when my kids will be ready for a couple weeks at Granma’s. How old were your kids when you did this the first time?

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am

@katrina – they were 8,6, and 4 I think. The Grandma suggested it and after much thought we said, why not. I love my mother in law and we got along well, so I had no reservations. Typically someone was going down also – so they flew with them. I really never gave any thought to them missing us. We presented it to them as “You’re spending this summer in JA with Grandmother” and that was that. We stopped once there were older (HS age) and had jobs or other things they needed to do in the summer.
PS – I dont know if this comment is in the right spot.

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Katrina

@am Thank you! Very helpful. And your comment is in the right spot, but I’m going to see if I can tweak the blog template so people can leave replies without getting confused…you’re not the first person to have that problem.

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Michele

Yes yes yes yes yes!!!! And the expense of summer camp, OMG. My kidneys are just not worth that much money on the black market and I only have 2 of them! Livers will regrow, maybe I should look into hawking that…

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MaryinCA

My son is in full time preschool, I am a single Mom, being sick terrifies me. I don’t have sick days. If I need to use a “sick day” it comes out of PTO. I always try to leave a week in my PTO bank and so far that has worked but what if there was a serious illness – me or him. What would I do?
Luckily my job is somewhat understanding. If my son is not too sick – I work from home and do my best. I work at nights and weekends when necessary (I am oncall 24 x 7) so I don’t feel too bad if I am not terribly productive working from home. I also took a bunch of my tax refund and stuffed it into my “Nanny” account. I have an on Call Nanny service that I can call if I have to .
One of the main criteria I used when picking a daycare was their schedule – how often were they closed. It’s kind of sad but that was really the most important thing. I could not have a daycare that closed for “drop of a hat day” or took a week off at Christmas or in the summer. Luckily the daycare I ended up with is very good for my son.
I am looking at schools now (private) and the first thing I look at is their schedule. How often are they closed? Do they have care options on Teacher training days etc? Do they have a summer session?
I actually looked at taking a lower paying public job because I would have the school holiday’s off but given the current budget mess I decided it was more important to stay with a job that was stable.
It’s really hard.

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Katrina

I wish I remember who said this:

“You can tell how expensive the school is by the number of days they are closed.”

Meaning, the more expensive the preschool, the more holidays they take. Which kind of makes sense, I guess, because families who can afford the tuition can afford to take the days off? Wait, that doesn’t make any sense…

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Suzanne

I’m a single mom too. I really feel for you. When my son was in preschool, I had childcare and a “TLC” childcare service for when he was sick. Problems was, the “TLC” service wouldn’t take him if he was contagious or feverish, so it didn’t work very often. My son is 15 now…it gets better. I remember living in fear of snow delays and sick days.

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am

It takes a village, it really does. One of the consequences of today’s lifestyle is that we have become quite insular, making it hard to set up support systems for ourselves and our families. I wish we could undo this.

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Heather

@am…This is the unfinished business of the feminist movement. As a member of this generation, I was raised to value being a worker, having money but I never valued being a mom. But the responsibilities hit me in the face, and like so many of us, here I am.

My job is strict 8-5 PM at the office, 4 days sick leave. They have been very good with me and my current job is simple. I can be out of the office with no worries.I drink my Emergen-C religiously to avoid illness for myself and it has truly helped.

Fortunately, my husband has tons of sick time accrued from his union job, so he watches our son if he is sick.

Read that again: Union job! Moms need a union.

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Tammy

“This is the unfinished business of the feminist movement. As a member of this generation, I was raised to value being a worker, having money but I never valued being a mom.”

Exactly! I like the way you put this.

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No way

Unions… Yuck. Four letter word. Get a real job.

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Katrina

I think your math is off. “Unions” has six letters.

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Cosmic Charlene

Just when I thought I’d love this page, a troll came by. Don’t hate the unions, they’re the ones who historically secured the very thing that this page exalts; PTO, weekends = time with our kids and spouses. Boo to you.

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am

make your village however you want – as long as you have one!

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Rachael

Our 2.5-yo son is in preschool three days each week, and I work at home, freelancing. I was overbooked this January and have since been trying to cut back my hours. Except that in February our son missed three full days of school, plus got sent home early two days, plus had a week off for vacation (the preschool follows the public school calendar). And I got sick in February, too. Because I work at home, I absorbed pretty much all of that time off — i.e., lost tons of time to work on projects that are due this month. And so now March has been as hellish as January as I try to catch up. In short, this year has been pretty awful. Having been raised Catholic, I tend to feel that the universe is punishing me — in this instance, for being “arrogant” enough to believe that I should create a more reasonable schedule for myself.

Anyway. Two lessons learned: (1) I need some time off (starting 4/4, whew). (2) My working at home does not mean that I can be the only one to take care of a sick child. My husband is going to have to share in the responsibility.

Thanks for this post, Katrina!

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Katrina

Ugh! That’s not your punishment, just the dark side of freelancing. Good lessons learned!

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Jax

I am so relieved that you wrote about this issue and I am NOT the only mom struggling with this! I have a 2 y/o and 1 y/o twins and work full time (as does my hubby). Since the beginning of the year, we have been out 10 days and that does not include doctor appointments. Every time my kids get a sniffle, cough, runny nose, I get a knot in my stomach from the stress I go through discussing with my husband who will stay home/cancel meetings/delay projects. Then there are those days I wipe my kid’s nose and send them off secretly praying the cold waits to hit until the weekend! It is a terrible feeling—guilt when you go to work and then guilt when you don’t. I think I spend most of my time feeling like I am not doing enough on both fronts:-) Thanks for writing about this—-it is such an important issue!!!

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Pauline

I AGREE!!!! I am BLESSED to have a very flexible supporting understanding supervisor (a mother herself) and corporate culture. And my husband works from home. I can do what I need to do to take care of my kids. And if I can’t because of an important meeting or because I took the hit last time, my husband can do it. And we also have retired parents who live not nearby, but a three hour train ride away who can help out is a real pinch (like when my husband was hospitalized for an infected insect bite and then our baby was born and our 7 YO needed to be taken care of for three days while the entire rest of his family was in the hospital!) We also have an incredibly generous and loving friend of the family who happens to be unmarried, love kids and have a flexible retail job with mid week days off who usually helps us with those random half and full days off you mention.

In my world we are really taking the “it takes a village” route to parenting.

I would also like to take this opportunity to RAIL at the public school system for those random days you mention. I mean if my kid is sick, I get it, he needs me! But the random half days on a Thursday and days off on Tuesday make me insane with rage that the SCHOOL SYSTEM of all institutions can’t make a LITTLE effort to make parenting less difficult and at least put a few of these on Friday so we can DO something with the days we have to take off. And in SF you probably don’t have snow days. There were about 4 of these this past year in addition to sicknesses (three days out of school plus a weekend with pink eye, because the doctor gave us an ineffectual antibiotic the first time) and school holidays and half days.

Thank goodness summer is on the way. Summer camp, here we come!

Katrina, keep up the great blog! It makes me feel so much better knowing I am not alone!

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Melissa

Wow. I feel the same way. I have 2 kids ages 5 and 11. We live in East TN. I was a stay at home mom for a long time (don’t bash me!) and due to financial reasons I had to go to work full time a year ago. It has been the hardest year of our lives and there is no end in sight !!

Shuffling the kids back and forth has been a nightmare. My son has had a rough time with kindergarden— lots of sickness which is typical. My daughter has started 6th grade and has had a rough time with stress and sickness.

I worked a job with 10 hr shifts with 1 day off per week and occasional Saturdays in the next city over for eight months. It was a 25 minute commute each way.

So..I found a job working 8-5 near my home and horror of horrors my kids brought home a stomach virus the weekend before I was starting my job. So guess what happened to me ?? THURSDAY of my first week of work I had to MISS work because I caught the virus !! I had to drag myself to the doctor to get an excuse because I am still on probation at my new job. My dr said I was dehydrated…my temp was 101 and he put me off until Monday.

It’s a mess. My husband is out of sick days and PTO hours b/c of all he missed with the kids and his own sickness (Thank God it’s January and he will be starting over with vacation hours). I am starting a new job and already had to miss 2 days my FIRST WEEK.

Then all the school holidays and inservices, summer break (thank God for grandparents nearby), and lovely SNOW days and snow schedules …2hr delay, 1 hr delay, etc. We get a snowflake around here and all the schools shut down.

How do you explain THAT to your boss ?? Gee…I will be in 2 hrs late today.

I envy all you moms who have been juggling work + kids for years and years. You are saints. You deserve an award. ONE year and I am ready to throw in the towel, sell the house, do whatever it takes to live off one income again !!! Then I think about MY future ….if I don’t keep working now and build a resume NOBODY will ever want to hire me on down the road.

I give up. There needs to be a better answer !

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Katrina

You poor thing. At least we don’t have snow days in Oakland. Although, we may have furlough days since we have seriously underfunded the CA schools, even before the recession, and now they’re cutting everything. I guess it’s tough no matter where you are…

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Michele

Oh yes, I too am living the dream. We’re both working real JOB jobs right now because we’re trying to get out of debt from my husband’s recent year and a half of being unemployed. DD#1 was just diagnosed with ADHD, DD#2 has SPD with mood disregulation and almost got tossed out of preschool today for an explosive tantrum the likes of which they have never seen before. Never mind illness, what am I going to do if she gets tossed out of preschool?? Much as I would love to stay home and personally field all of her explosive tantrums, we simply can’t afford to be back down to 1 income again right now. So between the 2 kids we have ~2-3 doctor’s appointments/week. Now while we both have some ability to flex time and work from home, there just aren’t enough hours in the week to go to all of these appointments, but we can’t NOT go to them – they are very necessary. Sigh. I really wish we had a grandparent or two nearby. Treadmill is right.

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nomi

GREAT post Katrina! its SUCH a struggle. we had one ortho appt today, which I had blocked on my calendar as tomorrow. I couldn’t take my son, so my husband dropped the younger one at pre-school then took the older one to his appt. BUT I also had an important meeting this afternoon, so I had to ask my husband to also do pick-up (normally im home at 3) and then I walked out of the meeting a bit early, so that I could get home in time for him to get to work. its like a big puzzle trying to fit it all together! AND we have 2 more sets of dr appointments this month. SIGH – feels quite impossible at times.

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Katrina

Oh, don’t get me started about the ortho appts! You’re right, it’s a big puzzle, or a logic game. If I move this piece then this piece goes here but…what about this piece?

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Kerry

Ugh, feel your pain there. Luckily, like you, we have the ability to work from home. When my husband is not traveling, he works from home full time and I can work from home whenever I need. But exactly as you said, it feels like I’m then doing neither job well — looking after my sick child or doing work. My husband and I have tried to carve out definite “on-off” times during those days so it is like a relay — he’s on parent duty and I’m working with the door closed and then we switch. Doesn’t fully satisfy the problem on either end but it’s something anyway. Yeah, not looking forward to the random school days once my oldest starts kindergarten in fall. That’s just going to be plain ugly.

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Izzy

We had a bad stint when my 1 year old, at the time, was going through the 4 Week Flu, and I was working full-time, on a new team for only a month. This experience left me drained, and terrified about having another child. (I had one at the time, and still only have one).

Something in me broke down, and I spent four weeks in nervous breakdown rehab, got on anti-depressants, and somehow went back to work the next month.

I am still looking for a long term solution. Let me know when you find one. I am thinking about moving to Norway to get a PhD and so that I can hopefully take advantage of the life balance friendly policies.

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Amanda Baker

It has been so uplifting to come across your blog and others comments on here. I am a full time mum (husband also full time working shifts) and we do have a ‘whole village approach’ with friends and family helping us in the UK. I often find that mums compete and judge each other too much in the UK and I read comments and feel even worse about working full time. But here you are all truly supportive of each other. I have to work full time to make ends meet and for my own sanity, and I dont want to leave my kids with nothing – life is going to be tough enough for them when they grow up without worrying about money too. Love the stories about giving calpol and sending to school anyway – better to show up at work and be called away than not appear at all… I also have to drop my 3 year old to nursery (not open before 8am) as well as be in a meeting as near to 8am as possible – we were there so early the other day – I just grinned meekly at the nursery lady and she let us in ‘selling’ it to my daughter that she had the pick of the toys 🙂 Brilliant blogging – glad I’ve found you.

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events in las vegas march 2013

Die Weisheit eines Menschen mißt man nicht nach seiner Erfahrung, sondern nach seiner Fähigkeit, Erfahrungen zu machen.

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