These are the non-returnable shoes I excitedly purchased for my children at the Nike employee store in Portland. I got Gadget the size nine black and orange Air Jordan’s, and I got the Lion the blue punk rocker size seven flats. They actually wear sizes 13 and 11. Oops. Hubby does most of the clothing shopping, what can I say? I’m a working mom that makes mistakes.

Hubby is out of town, so I had to pick up the Lion and Miss C on the way to Gadget’s school. On the way, I called the pediatrician so that they could check him out, but more importantly, so that they could write me a note saying he could return to school once his fever was under control. After arriving at his school, he was asleep on the floor, so I knew he was really feeling awful.

We got to the doctor, got the note, picked up four bottles of Gatorade from Kroger, and then I proceeded on the quest to find last minute back up child care for my mildly ill child. I called every resource I could think of: friends, babysitters, the company’s backup care, church friends, and to no avail, I went to bed with no childcare plans. I work up at four to check on Gadget, and as a last resort, I posted my troubles to Facebook. Within minutes the mommy network swarmed upon my status update and posted comment after comment with suggestions. A member of my church life group suggested the hospital’s sick care facility named Cuddles and Coughs, which had nurses who could administer over-the-counter medicine. Hallelujah! They had an opening, and it ended up being the best place for him to spend the day. The nurses checked his temp every two hours. He had crayons, movies, toys, and of course he brought his own hot wheels.

If you’ve ever read The Go-Getter I felt like the protagonist this morning! I had the kids dressed and ready to go, even when I had no confirmed childcare plans. I received the Cuddles and Coughs recommendation at 7:57am, so I got to the Symposium an hour late, but did you hear what I said… I GOT THERE!

I normally don’t post pictures that I don’t personally take, but this one made me so proud.

European Member of Parliament, Licia Ronzulli (an MEP from Italy), took her seven-week old daughter, Victoria, to work at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. [It was not a 'Take-Your-Child-to-Work' event.] She kept her baby carefully cradled against her in a wrap and occasionally leant to kiss her on the forehead. This photo was taken as she voted on proposals to improve women’s employment rights and was broadcast and published in newspapers around the world.

Life as a brand manager with three children under six is like running a marathon… except you’re sprinting. Take for instance this morning. I got up at five, woke, changed and nursed the baby, dressed her, woke the boys, bathed, packed the baby’s bottles and my pumping bag, put on my suit, threw some rollers in my hair and left the house at 6:11 (yes, with the rollers still on my head). I dropped off the Caterpillar and her brother just after 6:30, and then headed to one of the most important meetings of the year. I was exhausted. The meeting was held at a hotel, so I booked a room so that I could pump and store milk in a fridge during the day. Tomorrow, the day doesn’t get any easier. I’m headed to LA for three days, and then to Chicago for a photoshoot. Oh, and did I mention that Hubby fractured his finger? The sprint continues.

I want to capture this season of my life somehow. Maybe I’ll have Hubby do a ‘Chronicles of a Working Mom’ photoshoot. Please know that I think about writing here everyday, but I’ve just been choosing sleep, or eating or work over the blog lately and I hope to change that. Sidenote and funny story: Someone asked me if I have twenty-seven hours in my day. Haha. I wish that I had an extra three hours to get stuff done or spend with the boys. In fact, I just got back from a dinner party for work, and I have a deck (marketing speak for a power point presentation) to write. I’m about to hit the wall, but I plan to run through it.

As a result, I found myself asking to borrow his office to pump in because there was no clean place to pump. The super ignorant and ridiculous HR manager asked me to pump in the bathroom. Oh the ignorance! She even had the gall the say, “but I thought pumps were self contained”!!! As a result of not pumping for an entire day, I came home to find that I did not have enough milk for a full nursing and Amari was still starving, so I gave him formula for the first time.

He broke out in hives along his body and had projectile vomiting. I was through. The next day I marched into work and demanded that a private, clean pumping space was created. Within 48 hours there was an annex in the woman’s bathroom, partitioned off by sheet rock. It had a door that locked from the inside, a freshly steamed couch, a table, magazines and an outlet. This was much, much better.

Unfortunately, this was not the case for the the poor ex-Isotoner employee who was recently fired for taking too many pumping breaks. I will never buy Isotoner again. My experience consisted of me trying to locate a place to pump everyday, but I never felt like my job was on the line for disappearing for 15 minutes during lunch. I probably should have been pumping three times, minimum two times a day while at work, but fitting in one session was hard enough.

I hated that my life revolved around a 3-4 hour lactation clock, and I did not even get to enjoy the intimacy of breastfeeding my baby. Yes, I got to breastfeed Amari in the morning and again when I returned home from work, but dragging around my mechanical baby, aka my Avent double electric pump, was making me spite the blessing that breastfeeding was meant to be.

I was glad that after me, the 100 or so other female employees that worked in the plant now had a place to pump if and when they needed one. Unfortunately, it required me to make a bit of a scene in order to get my totally clueless HR manager to take some action.

Gadget has not taken kindly to this and has showed his disapproval in the form of acting out. The scapegoat issue was an insufficient a bowl of dried cranberries. I put some in a bowl, and he, with full attitude demanded that more be added. Because of how he asked, I told him he could not have ANY cranberries.

This news sent him into an emotional breakdown. Tears, kicking, screaming, and irrational demands resulted in forty-minutes of stress and headache for me. By the grace of God, I read this site the previous day, and was reminded how blessed I am to have children, no matter their temperament. I was able to keep my cool and not raise my voice or change my tone even once while trying to calm Gadget.

I had never seen him this hysterical, and it tore my nurturing heart to bits to hear how much he missed daddy. We spent all summer together with the boys, and this week hubby has only seen the boys a handful of hours. Is it worth it to have two full-time working parents? There is no better substitute for mom and dad, my friend Vinny C. told me, and I agree. No private school and not even the best nanny, can do all the things a child needs from their parent.

I hope hubby and I can get through this adjustment period and still be able to give our children what they need spiritually, mentally and emotionally, and go above that and give them what the love, which is our undivided time and attention.

You know on TLC, after a first-time mother sees her precious beautiful miracle for the first times she sheds tears of joy? That was not me. Of course, I selflessly, unconditionally love my children, but my first thought after I saw Amari was ‘he’s going to be an only child.’ Because I am never ever ever eva doing that again. So, with time, memory fades, and thus, I cannot remember feeling so burdened as a working mother years ago. I do not feel the guilt that so many moms say they experience. I am overjoyed to return working. I love what I am doing and where I am so, and I would not trade that to spend all day with my sons right now.

Whoa, yes, I just said I would rather be at work than playing, cuddling and kissing my boys all day. And there is a very logical reason for that. There are many, many things that come with the blessing slash chore of being a stay at home mom. The past two years at NYU I had so much flexibility that I had the best of both worlds, and now I am slave to the ‘get-through-the-day-so-that-you-can-get-ready-for-tomorrow’ task masking.

I woke up at 5:55 and hit the snooze button one time too many. After getting showered and dressed, it was 6:50 and then it was on to the boys. I got them dressed, took Amari to the potty, brushed his teeth, put oil on his hair, and then began all over again with Joshy. I changed it diaper, which thank God was just number 1, wait no, it was a number 2 this morning, got him dressed and then packed him in the stroller.

I put ice packs in the lunch boxes hubby packed the night before and then grabbed my laptop bag and headed for the car. It takes about 10 minutes to walk from our apartment door to the car and get both boys strapped into their carseats. We headed to daycare, and then parked and unstrapped, got the lunches and headed inside. I got Joshy and Amari set up at a table to eat breakfast (oh yeah, I put two bananas and cinnamon rasisin bagels into their bags before we left home). While they started their day off with a wholesome meal, I filled out their daily status forms, changed the sheet in Joshy’s crib and then initialled the sign in sheet.

By now it’s 8:10 and traffic on the Merritt is thicker than I would like. At 5:03 PM I head back to the car to do the reverse of everything I did this morning, except it’s the Thursday before Labor day, so traffic is really bad, and I’m not going to be there by 6, so I exit off the Merritt to trek through the back roads of North Stamford to make it to the daycare by 5:48. We get home (after a car ride full of questions about where’s daddy and where’s Traci), and daddy’s home! Woohoo! He fixes dinner while I finish a sell deck for work, and then I feed Joshy some spaghetti (with jerk – it was nasty, don’t do it). I put on a movie for Gadget and then head downstairs to exercise because I have not felt sweat drip down my face in the past seven days. And now I’m writing this post and it’s 10:34. I still have to shower and put up the dirty dishes. So what didn’t get done today? No one bathed the boys, but we did lay out their clothes for the week on Sunday.

And I will repeat this routine tomorrow.