working mom Archives - Old Mom Diaries

November 2, 2017

#19- Making it all Work for a Working Mom

Most days this working mom goes from 5:00 AM to 8:30 PM with no breaks unless you count my commuting time. 5:00-6:00 AM is my time. Shower, breakfast, and lots and lots of coffee. I also try to squeeze in a load of laundry and empty the dishwasher.

When the kids are up before 6:00, they go see Daddy. Most days he gets at least one of them dressed. Then we get them fed, teeth brushed and a last 10 minutes to put on shoes and coats before we head out.

We drive half an hour to daycare then I drive another half an hour to work. I try to have good heart-to-heart chats with the kids during our car time because it’s important to me that those chats don’t get lost in the runaround. I do mental lesson planning and meal planning during the quiet half hour.

My work day is so fulfilling, but so physically and mentally exhausting. I get to teach children through musical play (the way its supposed to be done if you ask me). We sing, dance, play circle games, play instruments. I love it all, but I’m 41, and it takes a lot of energy to get through the day.

During the commute home, I reflect on my work day. What went well, what can I do better? I pick up the kids and we talk about their days. On the good days, they can make it halfway home before the tired, hungry monsters take over and they argue about everything from what actually happened at daycare to where the moon is tonight or whose turn it is to sing 5 Little Ducks.

When we get home I cook supper and try to pick up a bit and maybe get one more load of laundry done. We push through bath time, story time, and stagger the bedtimes. Any time left over I use to exercise and prep my lunch for the next day. I sit and relax for a few minutes with my husband and then go to sleep and repeat.

Making it a little easier

I have a few kitchen tools that help manage the craziness of my day. My slow cooker is my biggest kitchen helper. I made sure to get one with a timer so when I’m out for 10 hours, the food can sit on warm for the last two hours. It’s also great for cooking in big batches so I have leftovers for lunch or to put in the freezer for another day.

The second thing I use all the time is my hard boiled egg cooker. You don’t have to watch a pot waiting for it to boil so you can time the eggs. You just put them in with some water, push the button and it beeps when it’s done. I can prep breakfast ahead for a few days or make egg salad for a family lunch, all while finding something else that needs to be done. Yay, multi-tasking!

The last thing I’ll share are these cute little reusable containers. They are just 1/2 cup which is perfect for snacks. I use them for crackers, baked oatmeal servings, dressing for my salad, nuts. And I like to put those containers together on the weekend so I can just grab a few containers to put my lunch together every night. Such a cool size for a reusable container.

Being a working mom is hard. What secrets do you use to make the most of your mom time?

Photo by rankun76

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October 9, 2017

Let’s Talk Diapers

For any mother, diapers are a part of life. (The alternative would be unthinkable.) We are a disposable diaper family. We’ve been through a few brands and styles with our kiddos. After 4 1/2 years of diapering, we’ve finally got our diaper management down.

With Sweet Boy, we started off with Huggies. I started with size one because the doctor had told us he was going to be a really big baby. Then he arrived early. We scrambled to get the newborn sized diapers delivered while we were still at the hospital. Here’s what I learned about the newborn diapers- they have a U-shaped cutout that doesn’t rub against the umbilical cord. Seriously, nobody ever told me that when I was pregnant. We continued with Huggies for the first months, because we really liked the wetness indicator.

I would buy the cases at the local discount stores. I could never figure out how to make the coupons work so the small packs were cheaper. I’ve read a bunch of articles on saving on diapers, but it just didn’t work out for me.

As Sweet Boy got older, we switched to Luvs. I learned from Baby Bargains that Luvs are made by the same company as Pampers. They have fewer features and no featured character on them, but the absorbency is the same quality and they are much cheaper. Like $10 a case cheaper. And they have coupons available in the Sunday paper too. We never went with the store brands because several daycare providers had told us that they are not as absorbent and can cause diaper rash.

Every mom should own this book

When Girlie was born, the newborn size was not an option for us. She was nearly 10 pounds and they just didn’t fit. We went right to Luvs for her. With the second child, the wetness indicator wasn’t as necessary. Momma just knew.

We continued shopping in stores for diapers. Our daycare provider joked with me one day that I seemed to stop at the store 2-3 times a week between Girlie’s diapers, Sweet Boy’s Night-time Pull-Ups, wipes and other baby needs. It became too much, so I switched to the Amazon Subscribe and Save program. We already had Amazon Prime for streaming and shipping savings, so it made sense to take advantage of the Subscribe and Save program.

Subscribe and Save

If you are not familiar with Subscribe and Save, they offer 20% off your order of diapers and 5-15% off other items, like wipes. So now, every month we get a case of diapers for Girlie delivered to our front door. It is very easy to change your order when they grow into a new size and it’s 5-20% off. We get Sweet Boy’s Night-Time Pull-Ups every other month, for 5-20% off. The case of wipes seem to last me every month and a half, so I set it up for a monthly delivery, and skip a delivery when I don’t need it.

I have a few other items on my Subscribe and Save list – protein powder, baby soap, cleaners. I try to schedule those items so that I have five items delivered each month, so I get my maximum discount. And it is so easy to reschedule a delivery as long as you do it with a week’s notice. If I can’t get five items in a particular month, I still save a few dollars off the store price, and it gets delivered straight to my door.

We did run into one issue with diapers for Girlie. For a few months, Huggies were on a super discount on Amazon. I think they were changing the packaging or something. We started getting the Huggies for Girlie. She had the worst diaper rash I have ever seen. We brought her to the doctor about five times before we realized that the diapers were the problem. We switched her back to Luvs and the rash went away. Sweet Boy never had a problem with Huggies, but kids are going to react differently to different products.

What Works for You?

This is the system we really use. It saves us time and money, both of which are precious when you are a working mom with kids in daycare. If you have any ideas that work for you, please share in a comment to help other moms.

September 12, 2017September 12, 2017

#11 – Baby Girl’s First Year was “The Blur”

The best way I can describe Girlie’s first year is “The Blur.” Between Sweet Boy‘s asthma and Girlie’s teething ear infections, there really was no time to be anything but a working mom. And I really didn’t feel like I was doing either part of it well.

Girlie had an ear infection on the weekend of my 40th birthday. My poor husband couldn’t do anything right. He offered to take the kids to day care so I could have some quiet time, and I snapped at him because it was half an hour out of his way. He offered to take the family to dinner and I told him I just wanted to stay home after five hours of sleep in the previous two nights.

At least I can say I was too tired to have any sort of 40ish mid-life crisis.

Mommy, Mommy, Mommy

Girlie was not easy when she wasn’t feeling well– still isn’t. She would only sit with me or her favorite day care teacher, and even that would only bring the crying down to a barely livable volume. If I left the room, everyone knew, including the neighbors. She got 16 teeth in eight months with an ear infection each time. She was really uncomfortable and really miserable for the first year. I think Girlie was about 18 months old before my husband felt like she didn’t hate him.

Sweet Boy’s asthma was really bad that year as well. He was on a three-tier preventative treatment program, but he still ended up at the pediatrician for steroids four times that winter. Poor kiddo was completely bonkers all winter. All that medicine left him completely unable to handle his emotions–something that is pretty difficult for a healthy 3-year-old.

It all became too much for me to handle. The doctor’s appointments, the weekly trips to the pharmacy, the exhaustion, the commuting, the non-stop crying, a husband with a very time-consuming job. I needed help, but there really wasn’t anywhere to turn.

Photo by quinn.anya