Category: Parenting

It’s Fall, Y’all–Ring in Autumn with this Checklist

Photo by energepic.com from Pexels Alt Text: Black woman’s hands holding pen and writing a checklist.

So technically Fall doesn’t begin until Sept 22. But if it’s September and you or someone you live with is back in school, psychologically, it’s Fall. The changing of the season is a good time to take stock of yourself and your remote work. But don’t worry–this isn’t going to be one of those checklists that assumes you have any free time or bandwidth. It’s an opportunity to reflect in whatever moments you have.

How Much Bandwidth Do You Have?

Hint: If you laughed when you read that sentence, then the answer is ‘none,’ and you are nearly done with this step. You know what you have going on in your life right now. Some of you are trying to work while virtually schooling/homeschooling your children. If that’s your situation, I have a badge for you:

If you’ve had to manage your kid’s schooling, you have unlocked this achievement. ALT Text: Image says ‘Homeschool hero, you survived! You are amazing! Crying is okay!’

The only thing left for you to do is let go of the idea that you should be able to manage your kid’s schooling (whether online or homeschooling) while killing it at work, without breaking a sweat. You aren’t a bad caregiver. You are, in fact, amazing. Full stop. No exceptions. Rock on with your bad self.

If you find yourself with more bandwidth in September, I encourage you to take some time to think about what you need more of in your life. This doesn’t have to be profound. It may be that you really just need a nap. Or, in my case, I need to work on a health issue that got pushed aside at the beginning of the pandemic. The important thing is to make sure your aspirations don’t exceed your bandwidth.

Perhaps you have enough bandwidth to help other people. That leads into the next question to ask yourself.

How Are Your Friends and Colleagues Doing?

Whether or not you have extra bandwidth, it’s good to check in with your friends and colleagues. You might not be able to do anything with the information, but at least they’ll know you care. If nothing else, you can send each other memes and other gallows humour to help you through the current craziness. A text or email that says ‘I was thinking about you. Hope things are less crazy’ can make people feel seen. This is super important when we’re all living our lives remotely.

And if you do have extra bandwidth, you might try to help. Recently, an childless acquaintance reached out to a group of us with an offer of help. She suggested something specific-that she could look stuff up on our behalf. It was a very specific and thoughtful form of support. You can also show support by being calm. Anxious, overwhelmed people can be short-tempered and rash. The biggest gift you can give someone in that moment is your forgiveness.

Do You Have Your Supply of Happy-Makers?

Covid hasn’t gone away. There will be days when our uncertain situation will weigh heavily on you. You’ll need a small cache of simple things that make you happy. For me, those things are yarn, chocolate, and books. Whenever I feel anxious I crochet hexagons. They’re simple enough that I have the pattern memorized, but interesting enough that I get a little break from whatever’s bugging me. As a bonus, I will have a hand-made blanket at some point.

As you see, this isn’t a complicated checklist. But if you take a small amount of time to check-in with yourself, your friends and family, and your supply of happy-makers, you’ll enter fall on the right foot.

Stuff I’ve Published

This week’s published writing is all comedy. Some of you might suspect that I use comedy writing to cope with the Pandemic. You would be correct. On Thursday my humorous nonfiction piece Dye-ing for Alone Time, a Henna-Made Tale went live on Sallymag. I wrote this piece in April with no idea where to place it. My writing often has humorous elements, but it was the first intentionally funny piece I’ve written for publication. This was the story that pushed me to take satire classes with The Second City.

On Tuesday I published volume 2 of Good Girl, Aggie! This is my advice column written by Aggie Green, the mascot of the comedy magazine Greener Pastures. I had no idea if other folks would like Aggie. Imagine my delight when I had messages from people I don’t know, thanking me for giving them something to laugh at. I don’t know if there will be a third Aggie column. We’ll see.

Also on Tuesday, I published Emergency Meeting of Bigger, Better Gender Reveal Parties: New Products to Top the California Fire! On Monday, around 10am, I saw the news about the gender reveal party that sparked yet another fire in my home state of California. Evidently my subconscious had a lot of opinions about people who set off incendiary devices in the middle of a drought, and I wrote this piece in a couple of hours.

Goings On in the Douglas Household

The kids started school. I’d like to say that I did a ton of stuff during the 2.5 hours that they were gone (the first day was a health and safety orientation) but I don’t believe in lying to you. I sent emails to people who were waiting on me for things. I stared at my screen and thought of nothing at all. The fact is, I’m so accustomed to being interrupted that I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to focus. I expect I’ll get that back again if Covid case counts stay low enough in Vancouver that the kids stay in school. If I had to make a prediction, I predict that the kids come home to online school in November. So after a few days of recovery, I’m going to use the child-free time to write as much as I can.

That’s it from my neck of the woods. I’ll see you next time.

Turning of the Season

Photo by Daniel Jurin from Pexels

We’re in the home stretch of summer. The last few mornings of August were chilly here in Vancouver, and I’ve been trying to push off Fall through sheer force of personality. I think it worked because the first few days of September have been spectacular. Anyway that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

A Podcast, and an Article on Influence

Today’s post is going to be a short roundup of some of the things I’ve done in the past week or so. First off, I had a great time talking to the folks at Olympia Benefits about getting stuff done at your remote job. I really liked talking to Morgan, the host, because we spent some time talking about team dynamics. When most of your communications happen over text, it’s very easy to view your colleagues in a more negative light. We talked about some ways to get around that. You can also check out Olympia’s YouTube account if you would rather listen to the episode there.

I also wrote an article about building influence so you can be a force for positive change at work. To put it bluntly, if you want to make a difference inside your company, you have to be someone others listen to. In this article I talk about how to asses where you are as an influencer, and how to increase your influence.

The Kids Go Back to School Next Week

And now you know how the kids feel about school. This said ‘First day of school’ until they modified it.

I’ve spent as much time as I can giving the kids a good end of summer. We ate popsicles and potato salad (not at the same time). We went to the beach. I read Charlotte’s Web to my son, and was there to see his face when the spider dies. My daughter read the book on her own two years ago, and I remember how puzzled she was that I would let her read something so sad. But when my son had trouble sleeping a week or so ago, she was the one that suggested the story.

It’s a bittersweet tale, and the message of joy and loss and the changing of the seasons felt apropos this week, as many of my colleagues were laid off. I’m trying to lean into the good memories I have with them. There are a lot to choose from.

We’ve been fortunate here in Vancouver. Our COVID numbers are low and the kids can go to school in person. I assume that at some point our numbers will go up, and the kids will go back to learning from home. So if you are looking for me, I’ll be the one writing at a picnic bench outside, savouring the warmth and the light.

Diverging Paths

Last week my daughter’s best friend moved to another country, and I spent time helping her deal with that separation. I’m no grief counselor, but a wise person once told me that whatever you feel while grieving is the right way to feel. It’s a sentiment that’s helped me during my own grief, and I think it’s helping my girl through hers.

There have been a lot of diverging paths this week. Today (Thursday) is the last day of school for both of my children. BC managed to bring students back into the classroom for a month without creating COVID outbreaks. It’s a tremendous accomplishment. I’m happy about that, and frankly, happy to stop homeschooling my kids. Here’s hoping the public school system takes the next two months to figure out how to streamline online learning, creating a system that does not assume there’s a parent available full-time to educate the children.

Everyone did the best they could in an unexpected situation. But now it’s time to iterate and do better.

Dropping Things Left and Right

This week I also left the writing group I’ve been with for about a year. They’re a lovely group of people, but not the right fit. Back in my twenties I would have agonized over the decision to leave my writing group. I would have second-guessed myself, wondering if the problem was me, if I was just being too picky or demanding.

Gosh I’m glad I’m not in my twenties any more. All that second guessing is exhausting. Now that I’m older, I know that that some relationships end. And I chose to leave before I could start resenting the group for not being the right fit. I have no doubt they’ll do just fine without me, as they all knew each other before I showed up.

I Fed the Beast

Lastly, I finally took the writing path I’ve been avoiding for the last few months. I spent some time trying to write about my grandmother. After a great deal of effort I have exactly one sentence. That wasn’t what I was expecting. I thought I would vomit words onto the page, have myself a good cry, and save the document to edit later. Instead I ran headfirst into a brick wall and bounced off of it.

Apparently that was enough blood to feed the creativity beast, because I wrote a third of a management article this afternoon, and I only stopped in order to write this post. Did I mention that my creativity can be a jerk sometimes? This was another one of those times. My plan is to post the article on Medium when it’s done. I’ll add a link here when I do.

This isn’t me giving up on writing about my grandmother. I can feel the seedling of that story sort of working its way through my subconscious. When it’s ready, I’ll write it. In the meantime my management writing mojo is back, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

My Book is Turning Japanese I Really Think So

Photo by Aleksandar Pasaric from Pexels

How is it even May? On some days it feels like the date is March 147th, 2020. Still, as I write this at 8:40, there’s some light left in the sky, so I know Spring is well and truly here. Time doesn’t stop because we have to spend a lot of it indoors. And it’s been a pretty busy Spring.

At the end of March an agent who handles Japanese translations emailed me. She wanted to represent my book. I referred this respected person to my publisher, and tried to forget about it. Just because someone offers to represent your work doesn’t mean it will get published. All it meant was that someone liked my book and thought it was marketable to their particular audience.

On Wednesday my publisher told me they had signed a contract for the translation rights. My book will be translated into Japanese! I’m going to get a copy once it’s done and everything. What makes this even more meaningful is that one of my co-authors has a deep connection with Japan. He went there to teach English back in his college days, and ended up meeting his future wife. They spend time living in Japan every year so their kids can maintain a connection with that part of their culture.

Traditional publishing takes time even when you don’t have to translate the book first, so I don’t expect to see a physical copy of my translated book this year. It’s nice knowing it’s coming though. I’m celebrating the occasion on Thursday by getting some takeout and drinking a margarita.

April was Hairy

I’m learning new things during the pandemic. At the beginning of April I learned that inviting my children to steal my stuff and write me ransom notes to get it back in an effort to make education fun was probably a bad idea. At the end of April I learned to cut male hair. It was super intimidating. I don’t know why. Hair grows back. And we all had to stay home and stay away from people in April, so the stakes were low.

It can’t be the idea of cutting hair in general. I layered the front of my own hair in April, and tasked my ten year old daughter with trimming the bits I couldn’t reach. I cut my son’s hair when he was a toddler. None of that scared me. But all of that cutting was with scissors.

The little buzzy shaver intimidates me. I feel a little stupid admitting this but it’s true. Just the idea of accidentally lopping off a hunk of hair makes me wince. It’s like the semi-automatic rifle of the hairdresser world. I had visions of accidentally driving that thing right through the middle of my husband’s hair and giving him the world’s worst male-patterned baldness.

I dealt with my feelings of inadequacy the way I usually do. I researched the crap out of hair cutting. There are approximately eleventy-hundred ‘how to cut men’s hair’ videos on YouTube, and I watched them twice. Then I girded my loins in courage and practiced cutting hair on my son. The boy doesn’t care what he looks like, and I care more about what his father looks like, so my son became the guinea pig.

There’s a Reason I Outsource my Son’s Haircuts

I promptly remembered why I outsourced his haircuts when he turned three. The boy hates sitting still for me. He’ll do it for his hairdresser. All of the ladies at the salon make a big deal about how handsome he is, how good he is, and he eats it up. Also, they give him lollipops. And they can finish his hair in ten minutes.

The social distancing haircut took an hour. Right at minute 45 he had a great haircut going, if a little long. I should have stopped right there. But I got greedy. Just a little more feathering in the front, I thought, would make this masterpiece complete. I swapped the buzzer for my scissors and leaned in to cut a bit off the front.

And my son, who was tired of standing still, looked down just as I snipped. I ended up cutting a chunk off the front that made him look like a Vulcan from Star Trek. I was so upset. I spent fifteen minutes trying to fix it before I gave up in disgust. “This is what happens when you move!” I said sternly. Unrepentant, he glanced at the mirror and said “It’s rough, I like it,” and wandered off.

My husband thought I did a good job on the boy’s hair, and asked me to do his next. Fortunately my husband has some personal dignity and an idea of what his hair should look like, so the haircut went a lot better. I won’t be hanging up my pen to pursue a career in haircuts, but at least I can keep the Douglas males from looking shaggy. Mostly.

The Writing Keeps Rolling On

Some point soon I’ll have an actual remote work article to share with you. I have it partially written, and if I can manufacture some alone time I’ll finish it off. There are two other finished pieces currently making the rounds looking for a good home. Once they find somewhere to land I’ll share the links.

As Do the Appearances

On Friday I’ll be on The Round Table Talk Show with Sharifah Hardie at 8am Pacific, 11am Eastern. Log on and have a listen if you’re so inclined. Other than that, I’m doing various presentations on working remotely while parenting, and on remote worker wellness, for various organizations. Those talks have fallen into my lap, and it’s been super fun talking to people about how to make the best of the current circumstances.

I hope you’re doing okay in YOUR current circumstances. Every day isn’t a holiday over here. We’re all doing the best we can. And just in case someone hasn’t told you lately, your best is good enough.

What I Wish School Staff Knew About Remote Working Parents

Photo by Emma Bauso from Pexels

Yesterday I nearly forgot to pick up my kids from school. My only excuse is that it was their first full day back. I had finished work for my day job and was deciding between writing or practicing my guitar when I remembered that I had somewhere to be. 

Technically, I could have waited a little longer before driving to the kids’ school, but I knew that if I left home early enough I could write in the pick up line while I waited. The plan would have worked perfectly, too, if it hadn’t been for those dang kids. My son was on the playground and he saw me drive in. At that point he and his friend spent a good two minutes trying to get my attention before the supervision aide told them to “let your mom chillax in the car!” 

While I appreciate the sentiment, that innocent comment reminded me of all the assumptions school staff make about parents generally and remote workers in particular. We may look like we’re all scrolling through social media in the car, but the truth is a little more nuanced. If you work at a school and want to get more participation from the remote working parents, then here are some things you should know.

Summers Are Stressful 

We remote workers usually have more flexible jobs than our office-based spouses. This usually means we’re the ones who’ve spent the summer attempting to work while the kids are home. It’s tempting to say that teachers work surrounded by children all the time and seem to do okay. However, children are the work in this case, so the comparison isn’t a good one. Picture holding a sensitive parent/teacher conference in the middle of a classroom while surrounded by all the other children in the class. Now picture doing so for 8 hours a day for 40 days. Summers aren’t restful. 

School staff will have a better chance of getting remote workers involved in school activities if they assume we’re exhausted and behind at work. We do want to meet our children’s teachers and school staff. We don’t want to come to multiple events scheduled closely together. Instead of holding a meet the teacher event one week and a back to school BBQ the next, combined those two events into one meet the teacher BBQ. Please and thank you.

Our Remote Jobs Are Real Jobs

I no longer tell my children’s teachers that I work from home. I used to, but I had one particular teacher who took this as a euphemism for ‘unemployed and available for last minute requests’. Now I tell them that I work full time and leave it at that. 

This is a lost partnership opportunity both for me and for any school who has parents that work remotely. We remote workers can flex our schedules around to a greater or lesser extent. Give us enough notice, ask respectfully, and many of us will move things around to help you out. We know that schools are under funded and rely on parent participation to get work done. Some of us chose remote work in order to get more involved with our children’s lives. But that doesn’t mean we can drop everything to attend a field trip with 48 hours notice. 

Be Strategic with Your Requests

Personally, I either need to work late into the night or use a vacation day to make room in my schedule for you. Other remote workers might have to work on the weekend or take a pay hit. There is always a cost. The shorter the notice, the higher the cost. We’re much more likely to volunteer if we can trust that you will minimize that pain for us. 

You’ll Get A Faster Response From Us If You Go Digital

Not everyone has access to the internet at home. I am not suggesting that digital communication replace paper communication. Rather, give us the option to choose electronic communication over paper. Someone creates 90% of those forms on a computer anyway. Send them to us via email or upload them to the school website. 

100% of my children have lost paper permission slips. I think their back packs eat them. It would be really great if six year olds could responsibly manage their own paperwork and day planners. But even some university students can’t do that consistently and they have a much better grasp on reality. My kids don’t always know what day it is. Once, when my son was six, I interrupted him in the middle of tying a jump rope around his neck. The other half was already tied to the stair railing. He thought this was a great way to jump off of the top of the stairs without killing himself. Teaching my kid to give me notices is a lower priority than keeping him from dying. There are only so many hours in the day. 

That may look like an ordinary back pack, but it’s really where permission slips go to die. This is also the only first day of school picture my kids allowed me to share on the internet.

Digital Payments Are a Thing

Last year my children’s school gave us the option to pay for school expenses online. It’s wonderful. Now I get an email when I need to pay something, and I go in and do so. This cuts down on the number of phone calls I get from the school asking if I will allow my daughter to go on the field trip I didn’t even know about. Canadians are indeed a polite people, but they can weaponize that politeness like you wouldn’t believe. I only wish the website came with the ability to sign permission slips, too. A woman can dream. 

Digital Communication is Also a Thing

And speaking of dreams, many of us would love to sign up for things like parent/teacher conferences electronically. Please don’t make us sign a paper taped to the classroom door. Trying to find a parking space at the school during pick up or drop off time is like going to fight club. I have seen people pull up onto the sidewalk right in front of small children, or speed the wrong way down the two lane road, just to grab the last spot in the loading zone. Don’t make me leave the car protecting me from those people. 

I would love to tell my children’s teachers that I have a flexible work schedule. Remote work provides greater opportunity for parental involvement at school. Maybe some day things will change. However, that can only happen if there is respectful, efficient communication between school staff and parents. That sort of healthy relationship starts with a few tweaks to existing assumptions about remote workers. School staff should plan school events strategically. They should provide a variety of options to communicate, pay for items, and sign up for events. If they do so, they may find that more parents—not just remote workers—become more involved in school activities, to the benefit of the children. 

Drummer Boy

My son has a drum kit and lessons. I hope our neighbours keep speaking to us.

My son had no idea he was a drummer until last week. I knew. He hears music in everyday things. As a toddler he moved to the music that the wind made as it rattled through the autumn leaves. As a preschooler he boogied to the beat of the dishwasher.

I didn’t do anything about it because drums are really loud and our home is pretty small. He’s young and clearly had no idea he was missing something. But I knew. I knew and a part of me has been on the lookout for when I would have to do something about it.

The breaking point came in the Vancouver airport. There we were, waiting for our flight to California, munching on breakfast sandwiches from Tim’s and trying to stay awake, when the boy started grooving to a beat only he heard.

“Someone’s playing music,” he said, his eyes watching me, waiting to see if I could find the beat he heard.

It took a while. It was early and I was tired and the airport people were paging a long list of passengers who were about to miss their flight to Seattle. They had been paging the people off and on for half an hour and the kids and I heartily wished they would just give up and let the people miss their flight already.

Eventually I heard it. He was bopping to the beat that the printer made as it printed out boarding passes. I bopped along to the beat with him, as I always do, and he went back to playing Minecraft.

I thought, He has no idea. As far as my boy knew, everyone heard the music in ordinary things. And I suddenly couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand the thought of keeping him from a piece of himself just because I didn’t want noise in the house. It took until middle school for me to figure out that not everyone could write stories. I wanted him to meet the other piece of himself now.

Taking it to the Street

You can find anything if you know enough people. A few of my neighbours recommended a good place for drum lessons, and I took the kids there without telling them where we were going. I only planned to sign the boy up for lessons, but I ended up coming home with a used drum kit too. In my defence it was a used kit that came in that morning, and I paid half of what it costs new.

So now we have this drum kit in the living room, because that’s the only place it fits. And my boy took his first drum lesson and his teacher says he’s incredible.

All I can say is that it’s awesome watching him with his drum. He’s inspirational. I’m learning guitar so we can form our own band. No one tells me I sound incredible. That’s okay. And we may be wearing noise cancelling headphones in our living room for the next fifteen years, but I don’t mind that either. The boy found his thing. I can’t wait to see where it takes him.

Remote Work and Motherhood, the Canadian Springtime Edition

What’s it like parenting in the same place where I work? There is no easy answer.

Photo by Michal Mrozek on Unsplash

It’s almost time to break out the eye masks. The clock on the dresser says 5:30, and bright, buttery light is already streaming through my window. Pretty soon I will have to start using my eye mask if I want to sleep in past 5am, but not yet. It’s early May in Canada and the light feels like a gift after months of short dark days. Not yet. I’ll put up with being tired a little longer.

Everybody is up earlier. I start work at 6:30 so I can get some work under my belt before the children wake up, but the light drives them out of bed at 6:40. My early morning financial analysis now happens while I field requests for cuddles, breakfast, and chat. This is my quiet time to work while you are asleep, I say, and the kids are old enough to understand that means ‘leave mom alone.’

‘Alone’ is a relative term that usually means ‘go lay in mom’s bed and read while waiting for a cuddle.’ By the time 7:10 rolls around, my husband is downstairs making the kids’ lunches, and the entire house smells like his breakfast sausage. Soon he will leave for work.

Outside the sky is as bright as afternoon. I can hear the complaining cries of the eagle chicks in the Douglas Fir tree across the street, and I look up in time to see the Bald Eagle parent leave again to look for food. It’s 7:30 and I need to go make something for my own chicks. I swoop in to give them their daily cuddle, my mind already on my morning latte.

I don’t really believe in aiming for a work-life blend. That sounds like what happens when someone turns on a blender before putting on the lid. I like to keep guard rails around my family and work time, enforcing a separation between the two so I’m not pulled to pieces trying to cover too much.

If I had to pick a metaphor, I’m aiming for something like Butchart Gardens-a full lush life with little green breathing spaces between the various things. In the morning, though, it feels like I hop over fences at high speed, switching between co-parent and employee in a way that is both intense and routine.

I wonder if work/life blend believes in me, even if I don’t believe in it, I think, back at my desk after dropping off the kids at school. My latte is still warm and tastes like ginger and cloves. Or maybe the different parts of my life are like the oregano in my community garden–if given sun and good soil, they will try to spread out and colonize all available space. Some days I resent how often I have to trim the oregano back to keep it from overrunning everything else in my garden. Most days I’m grateful for it’s abundance.

And that, perhaps, summarizes the way I feel about working in the same space as I parent. Both my children and my work want my attention. Neither really likes to share. The only boundaries they recognize are the ones I enforce. And yet, like the light on a Canadian Spring day, this particular time with the children is fleeting. I can put up with being tired a little longer. I sit here in front of my spreadsheet, latte in hand and the memory of childish kisses warm on my cheeks, I am grateful for the abundance.

Spring Break Baller

Life in the (Not So Fast) Lane

Life in the fast lane.
Photo by The Creative Exchange on Unsplash

I’ve been looking forward to this week of vacation since mid-February. It’s the busy season at work, and between that and additional work responsibilities, I’ve spent the last few months rushing from task to task in an effort to keep things from crashing to the ground.

I can go into hyper-drive and get an amazing amount of work done in a short amount of time–I am both a mother and a project manager, which is the same as saying I am magic–but I can only do it for so long before I run out of gas. I passed that point at the end of February. Since then, I’ve used chocolate and caffeine to prop me up until I could take a break.

This week is my break. And yet, even knowing that I need a break, I’ve been tempted to fill the free time with all of the things I’ve neglected while work has been busy. And I don’t mean cleaning. That’s pretty easy to ignore.

It’s the fun stuff that’s calling to me. The kids and I should explore Vancouver! I should go back to learning the ukulele! I should write all the things! I should make time to exercise every day, and maybe cook better, more elaborate meals. I want to film a really fun idea I have for a social media video for my book, and go on a reading binge, and start my kids on 5k run training, and sew a shirt for me and a skirt for my daughter, and…you get the picture.

The kids are cautiously optimistic about their ability to walk a 5k

I am a goal-driven person, and I like getting stuff done, but even I knew that cramming all of this stuff into my week would send me on a one way trip to insanity-land. And my kids (who are on spring break) would be miserable.

Manufacturing misery seemed like a poor way to spend my vacation, so I settled on a loose plan of exercising for 15 minutes in the morning, and writing for 30 minutes or so before my kids got up. I would then take my children to one kid-friendly activity out of the house. The rest of the time would be free for whatever floated our boat.

Cinnamon rolls definitely float our boat.

On Monday we walked on the beach. On Tuesday we played at the pool for hours. On Wednesday we had cinnamon rolls, and found new books to read at the bookstore. Today we’re going to Science World, and Friday we might try our hand at making soap. I’ve knit a lot, read some, and neglected the morning exercise in favor of reading in bed. In short, I’ve spent the better part of my week well rested and unstressed.

It’s glorious. I hope to hang on to this feeling when I go back to work next week. Who knows? Maybe I’ll have enough energy at the end of the work day to pick up the ol’ uke again.

Morning Cuddle

Yesterday I had to tell the kids that today’s morning cuddle needed to happen an hour earlier than usual. I had a meeting with someone who works on Eastern time, and that meant an early start for my Pacific time zone self.

I promised my son that I would wake him up in time to cuddle. If I didn’t, the boy would be up at 1am, checking to see if it was time yet, and nobody wanted that.

I woke my son and daughter at the appointed time, and they followed me back to bed, still half asleep. My son was quite annoyed at the way work encroached on our family time. He’s never quite given up hoping that his father will take over my job so I can take care of him full time. He figures that if I just stopped taking video calls, no one would ever know the difference.

I transitioned to remote work while 7 months pregnant with my second child. I’ve had to take the occasional business trip, but for most of his life I’ve worked in the next room. I am at home when the kids leave for school. I am home when they come back again. During school vacations I am still there, doggedly trying to work as the kids stampede through the house and argue about who’s turn it is to play Minecraft.

My work/life situation is neither idyllic or horrific. I get to see my kids more than I would if I worked in a traditional office. I am happy for the opportunity, and aggravated at how often random people assume that working from home means they can give me things to do.

Of all the opportunities remote work bestows upon me, the morning cuddle is by far the most luxurious. It’s a little (okay a lot) squishy. The bed hasn’t grown the way our children have, so somebody is always balanced on the edge. My husband gets kneed in the back more often than anyone should have to deal with.

And yet I remember dropping off my infant daughter at daycare in the early morning dark, and picking her up again in the evening twilight, already nodding off to sleep. I hold a child in each arm, and I am grateful. Grateful that I replaced a morning commute with fighting over blankets and talking about weird dreams. Grateful that we can spend most mornings cuddled up together for a few minutes before we scatter to our various responsibilities. I hope my kids remember these times fondly.

I already do.

Do the Kids Even Know that I Work?

If you work from home, do your kids register you as a working parent? And other concerns.

How do I model my professional status when I work from a home office?

Mother-daughter selfie

Sometimes I wonder what my kids think of their remote-working mother. They must know I work—I feel like I spend 90% of their summer vacation ordering them out of my home office—and yet they will bypass their dad to interrupt me because he’s “busy.” Is this because of deep-seated gendered biases that they have absorbed from our culture? Is it because they think I’m a softer mark? It’s hard to tell.

Remote work has given me more freedom to choose the type of mother I want to be. Before my daughter was born I decided I would be the mother who cooks. I am also the mother who works full time, but that was a given. I prefer to keep my family in rent and groceries. Ergo, I work full time. Cooking from scratch is my choice. I grew up in a family that showed love through good food. As an adult I equate simple ingredients with health. And so I make time before work, on my lunch breaks, and after work, to do things like make bread or simmer chili. Instead of commuting to work I make waffles.

I love that I can be the mother I want to be. I also worry that my kids think I’m doing it all. Or that they discount the outside work I do because I perform it inside the home. My daughter in particular is trying to show maturity by taking on the domestic tasks that I normally perform. She spent this weekend making salsa and baking bread. She also tries to soothe her little brother when he gets hurt and help him with his homework. I am both flattered that she wants to emulate me and worried that she assumes this is what women do.

I want both of my children to learn to cook good food. I consider it a life skill. But I also want them to know that they can choose what they’re known for. Cooking does not define me, but it is part of the complicated definition of me. I cook because I want to, because I enjoy it, and because I think it’s important, not because it’s expected of me. And so I talk about why I cook, and I also talk about the things I do for work.

The nine-year-old’s first independent cupcake attempt. She says the frosting looks like poo.

I think some of the meta message must be getting through. Grandma recently sent both kids a sum of money. My daughter approached me this weekend with a plan to use that money to start a baking business. Did she approach me because I’m the softer mark? Or did she correctly identify the parent with the business background? It’s hard to tell. All I know is that it’s her choice, and I’ll be supporting her startup any way I can.