Welcome to My Glamorous, Food-Stained World

I have never had a blog before. To be honest, I’ve never had time for a blog before. I still don’t have time, but this is the era of tweets, posts, blurgs, blips and blops (whatever) so here I am, boldly going where this woman has not gone before, ready to clear the smoke and shatter the mirrors we working moms have carefully staged to make it seem like We Can Do It All. (In fact, I wonder if we have an iphone app for our blog software so I can blog while I’m at my son’s orthdontist appointments?)

In addition to overseeing the editorial operations of Seattle magazine and 8 other publications that Tiger Oak Publications produces, I am married and have two young children, 6 and 4. My kids, Alessandro and Luca, are at the age when their social schedules are starting to overshadow ours, and things have gotten very interesting. Case in point: each of our boys has a birthday party to attend this weekend—and these are after their regular swimming lessons and guitar lessons. Oh yes, and we are entertaining my parents who are coming up for the weekend. I promised myself I wouldn’t become That Mom—the one who overschedules her kids to the hilt—but there are some days, unless you want to be the one to break the news to your kid that he can’t go to Jimmy’s birthday party because Mommy is losing her mind, you cave.

The number one question I get when people meet me is: “How Do you Do it All?” The answer I usually offer is: “I don’t. I am losing my mind!”  There is polite laughing and I wonder if I should tell them I’m serious. Well, I suppose I do a little of it all, in some capacity, or I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale, but I don’t do it all well and certainly don’t do it all gracefully. I have to work—for financial reasons as much as for my own sanity and fulfillment. I love my kids and husband. I love my work (not always in that order). But the balancing act never ends.

To top it off, Seattle, as I learned when our kids were born, is the second most childless city in the country (after San Francisco). Despite sightings of hipster parents strolling Capitol Hill and the farmers’ markets, I didn’t fully feel the “it takes a village/we’re all raising the kids together” love until Alessandro started school. At least that’s how it was for me in the early infant years of my kids’ lives (though my new moms PEPS support group was a savior when Alessandro was born, and we still get together). Seattle can sometimes be a lonely place to raise children, especially if you’re a working mom with one foot in both worlds.

Which is why I chose this topic for my blog: to shed some insight into this wacky life and to showcase local people and resources who can make it all a little easier. Whether working in the home, outside the home or some combination therof, we moms are doing ridiculously crazy things to keep it all together, but we also want to have a life. I promise it won’t all be about working mommyhood–I am desperately clinging on to the notion of having a life of my own, after all. I certainly don’t have it all figured out, and probably never will, but I hope you’ll join me for few laughs at my expense along the way.