Exhaustion: Now it's gone too far

Have you ever fallen asleep WHILE TELLING A STORY? Twice now, I have done this. Both times my story just took a weird turn and I started using weird words that didn't mesh with the theme.

It was dark and I was rocking the kiddo before bed. We had already read a book, so the next step is to turn out the lights and either sing a song or tell a story.

I was telling a story about Winnie the Pooh having friends over for dinner and they discovered they were out of honey. They decided that Tigger should go to the beehive to get more because Winnie the Pooh made the bees very mad last time. Somehow my story morphed into Tigger needing to be the CEO of the industrial operation in order to lead the team to greater efficiencies... and that is when I heard, "Mommy, WHAT are you TALKING about??" Jolted back awake, I asked him what I said and he said, "I don't know, but Tigger just needs to get the honey, okay, Mommy?"

Yes, moms are tired people. I admit it.

Here's to a great new year, and a full 2 hours of "momming"!

I found that as the year wore on and things got more hectic at work, I began to let work creep into my 2 hours with my son each evening. I had the laptop with me in the bathroom while he took a bath. I sometimes chatted on the phone with a colleague while making dinner. I hoped that he would let my husband put him to bed so I could get that extra 30 minutes to sit in front of the computer.

My New Year's Resolution is to stay strong during my 6-8pm time with my son. I will PLAY with him while he takes a bath. I will cherish the bedtime routine. I will let him help me cook dinner (when possible... he is only 3, after all). I will decline any work conversations during those two hours.

Now to tackle that weight loss resolution....

The 2-Hour-Mom Third Birthday

My child turned THREE today! I cannot believe that we have survived each other for three whole years. Lately, my work life has crept ever more into my 2 hours of mom-time and I desperately want it to stop. I find myself cooking dinner with my laptop in the kitchen so I can respond to the urgent requests - and even so I can respond to the not urgent requests just to keep up with all of the emails in general.

But my amusing 2-hour-mom story from last night was that my parents bought my son a Black and Decker toddler workbench with light up and noisemaking power tools. I had conference calls with Asia last night from 9 to 10:30, so I spent my evening with my trusty headset putting together my child's birthday present while conversing about metrics and post-mortem reports.

On the birthday morning, I had a 7:30am conference call and the birthday boy was just eating breakfast when the call started. Ever-disrespectful of my morning conference calls, he continued to beg me to play with him and talk to him throughout my call. Luckily the conference call participants were friendly and tolerant of my situation, but it was still not ideal.

To the folks who advocate that the World is Flat and globalization is upon us, I ask: at what cost?

Early morning and late night conference calls with large groups are generally ineffective. We are forced to multitask to keep up with the pace of our lives. But are global corporations too far gone to break the cycle? How can we adapt our lives so we actually see our families while maintaining the speed (and time zones) of business?

2-Hour Moms all working together

So myself and two other 2-Hour Moms are sitting in the workroom during an event chillin', relaxin', and working... and wining. Yes, wine-ing. A couple of us Skyped the kiddos today to tell them goodnight (we're on Pacific time and they're on Central time), so we got about 2 minutes of mom time today, but at least we got to share it with our friends in the workroom!

All of our bloggers have been so insanely busy since September that we haven't even had time to check in and blog about how crazy life has been!

Just want to end with a nice shout-out to my wonderful kid for being so awesome on 4 plane rides this past weekend and a wedding!!

What matters most...

My God, my family, my friends, myself.

The past few weeks I've had strong feelings of self-doubt. Especially at work. I've decided this evening to focus on the things that matter most to me and not let the other stuff get me down.

Sure, it's hard when someone at work sends you a crappy email that's out-of-line. After which, everything goes wrong when dealing with this person resulting in more things for them to point out as your shortcomings...sigh.

But what's harder is reminding myself that the person who made me feel bad isn't really who matters. This is my struggle that I vow to work at.

I'll begin by referring to the list above because they are what matters most to me...AMEN!

As my baby girl, Teresa, says every night, "Good night, mama....sweet dreams, mama....I love you, mama....sweet dreams, mama..." Repeat until the bedroom door closes.

SWEET DREAMS MY FELLOW 2-HOUR MOMS!

One-liners & memorable quotes

I feel like we capture life in Twitter spans now. I actually look for those awesome "what kids say" moments and immediately post them to Facebook. My child is 2.5 and is currently amazing at one-liners! Here's a sample from just this past week:

• "Mommy, you're old. I need a new mommy."
• Me: "Reilly, are you a monkey?" Reilly: "I not a monkey. Monkeys don't talk."
• "I a big boy toddler big flashlight guy."
• Me: " [something something]... your father." Reilly: "That's not my father. That's my Daddy. His name is Jeff." Me: "What's my name?" Reilly: "Um... I don't know. You don't have a name."
• Me: "How'd you get so cute?" Reilly: "Daddy." Me: "How'd you get so smart? (say mommy!)" Reilly: "No! Daddy!" Me: "Well what did I do?" Reilly: "You make me dinner."

Then there's this note that came home with him from daycare yesterday:

Ahhhhh, the moments we live for!!

Why social media scares me

I long to be this amazing goddess of social media and events. A maven, if you will. A guru. One who can write a book and not market it and people will flock to Amazon to buy it based on my name alone.

But then I read this post on Social Media Today about this blogger's schedule. She starts her morning at 7am with an hour of blog work. She then goes to her real job, and checks back in for 15 mins around 10am. Then spends her whole lunch time working on blog and Twitter stuff. Then another 15 mins at her break at 2. And then evenings from 7-8:30 blogging, consulting, etc.

So obviously, she is single. Or at least doesn't have kids. And she didn't even mention her Facebook account!

This makes me sad... how will I ever find the time to truly be amazing if I have to go on having a family? That settles it. I will have to give up having a family. Somebody notify my husband and child, while I sneak out in the middle of the night tonight! Hmm... but should I take the dogs with me or leave them here?

Yeah, that just won't work. Guess I'll have to go on being average. Have a job and two blogs that only get posted to a couple of times a week. I guess I can settle for not being famous... for now.