CurrentMom

Back-To-School: Kindergarten Anxiety and the Mommy Wars

 Work Wednesday

I spent last week in paradise. Not the big "P"  Paradise, but a paradise of sorts - on Saranac Lake in the Adirondack Mountains.

We had a wonderful late summer family vacation. We swam, kayaked, hiked, and camped - within the limits of two kids under six and their aging and exercise-deprived parents. I watched my daughter jump off the diving board into the deep lake without her life preserver and swim to shore. And I hiked alongside my son to our campsite in the woods and fell asleep holding his hand in our tent. I was completely relaxed. I rarely checked my Blackberry (a real feat given my confessed proclivity toward Blackberry abuse). I ignored the mental list of "to-dos" that I had planned to accomplish remotely in my pre-vacation frenzy. (Forgetting the charger for our Netbook helped.)

There was one intrusion, though, on our summer idyll. 

Kindergarten anxiety.

Mine.

I'm not, of course, entering kindergarten. (My school debut dates from the release of Let It Be, the enfranchisement of 18-year-olds, and the first Earth Day.)

My daughter is. On Monday. She's fine, I'm a wreck.

The Project Management Principles to Travelling

Travel Tuesday

it's always a tricky topic, trying to work out how to travel. Sometimes we're finding cash to do this, and then finding more to do that and we wonder how we can make it all stretch. Money can be almost elastic like that sometimes, don't you find? So when the topic of travel and going on holidays comes up, why are they invariably pushed lower down the totem pole of importance?

I know, "we'll get to it next year" or "plenty of time for that" are some of the catchcry's we can use. I'm sure we can think of a whole lot more too. Do we do that because we see travel as more of a luxury item perhaps? Or because we don't hold it in the same regard as what we might, say, college fees? Whatever the reason, now's the time to change if you want to go on that adventure this time next year, or whenever that may be in the very near future.

The way I do it is to treat travelling like a project, and like any good project, it needs a plan of execution. If you're not familiar with simple tools of project management, these certainly give you structure around assisting the decision making processes. Determining the budget and how it will be funded forms part of that process. The other thing it does is to give the notion of travel the focus it requires. If it's not part of your family planning, right along side all the other important matters, then it makes it more difficult for your dream adventures to see the light of day.

There is always armchair travelling I know, but it's not quite the same thing.

Happy Travels.
the entrepreneurial mother™

Steamy Summer Smoothie Recipe

I am so hot! But honestly, there is nothing sexy about greasy skin and frizzy hair, is there? August is a pretty relentless month in Washington. The charm of summer has worn off, the humidity is raging, and the tiger mosquitoes, OMG the tiger mosquitoes! A distinct lack of motivation to cook and general disinclination for hot foods is another marker of this glorious month. So why not turn chips and salsa into a nutritious and refreshing meal by whipping up a smoothie to go with them?

Smoothies are kind of like dancing to Prince at a wedding after X glasses of wine. They're so easy and fun that you forget they're good for you (I apologize if that is a really lame analogy - but it works for me!). Fresh (organic!) berries are chock full of vitamins, fiber and cool cancer fighting/preventing compounds. Plain (organic!) yogurt has all the dairy goodness, plus live cultures and no added sugar (unsweetened soy yogurt would be great, too). And follow the other ingredients' links to see why they're also worth keeping around. 

My smoothies, like a lot of my recipes, have a basic framework (frozen fruit and liquid), and then a lot of optional add-ons. So put on your bikini and start blending!

Julie & Julia on Marriage and Entrepreneurs

Startup Sunday

It's a strong recipe, marriage and work. Meryl Streep, Amy Adams and Nora Ephron struck a chord with me recently when discussing the importance of marriage to a woman's career, in a fascinating group interview by the Ladies Home Journal. So last night I went to see Julie & Julia, their movie about Julia Child and Julie Powell, the blogger who cooked all 524 of the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days.

It brought home to me the volatile combination of marriage and a woman's career. For entrepreneurs, marriage can be both a vital support and a nagging distraction.

On one hand -- as Meryl Streep and Amy Adams point out -- the unconditional love of a life partner gives you tremendous confidence to tackle challenges. Julie & Julia moved me to tears several times in portraying the faith of the husbands of Julia Child and Julie Powell as their wives took on a mammoth project. In the movie, Paul Child tells his wife her book will change the world. Eric Powell endures late-night dinners and early morning blogging sessions to support his spouse.

Expect Your Husband to be a Partner; He Does

Fatherhood Friday

A few years ago I attended a conference in a midwestern city that focused on developing women as community leaders. There were only a few men in the room, and they had us spread out so there was rarely more than one guy at a table. Among the nine women at my table was one, let's call her "Rhonda", who was probably in her early 60s and had strong feelings on the many topics at hand. 

One of those topics was the role men play as fathers and spouses in supporting the professional and communal endeavors of their wives. Rhonda, and others at the table (though not all) felt pretty strongly that the men she knew tended to be passive partners at best when it came to child rearing and support of their spouses in their own endeavors. In fact, she was pretty sure that women have to do it all - raise children, pursue professional goals, manage a house - on their own.

I took exception to that generalization, but viewed it as a generational thing. As I stated then - and firmly believe today - my male friends and peers take our roles as fathers and husbands very seriously. We respect our own fathers but, in general, go to great effort to maintain very different parenting and spousal styles. We not only want to be equal partners when it comes to parenting, we expect to be. We try, not always successfully but much more often than not, to make sure our actions match our intentions. And we firmly believe in our spouses pursuing their dreams - professional, personal, family and otherwise.