Finger painting

Now that we have half of the family room set up for Lily to play, we moved her little table and chairs down from her room and created an art corner.   Today after dinner she wanted to finger paint!

Now that I have the time...

So.  I read with interest and emotion Anne-Marie Slaughter's article in The Atlantic.  Working is kind of a hot button issue for me.  I find it a horrid double standard that almost no one tells the new dad, "Wow, I could never let strangers at some daycare raise my child!" (said in a self-righteous tone) and yet I've heard it myself.   I'd venture that many working moms have heard comments along those lines, where a stranger, acquaintance, or even a friend or relative tells them that while they ostensibly have choices, their choice was WRONG.   Well, my choice is to work - except that it wasn't really a choice, it was a financial necessity that I knew would exist long before we had a baby.  

I have a bachelor's and two master's degrees.  I work in a fairly male-dominated field and industry and because of what I do and where I work there's a pretty significant dearth of women in our upper management.  I have never had a female in my supervisory chain; it's always been men.  Even now the only female manager in my organization is a single woman with no children.    There are older women who are technical leaders but the folks who set the tone for their teams and for the organization as a whole are men.   Many of those men have wives who have been at home since their kids were born, and so things like taking a sick child to the doctor, flex-timing so I can go to my kid's daycare ice cream social, or even something as simple as working from home for a few hours to meet the chimney sweep make me look like a liability compared to a single male coworker who never has to do any of that.   I've been in meetings where I'm reluctant to say, "I have a hard stop at 5" because I worry that they'll think (correctly) that it's due to having to pick my kid up at daycare.   When Lily was young I had to call into 8 PM teleconferences with her nursing, hoping she didn't cry and disrupt the call, all because I didn't feel I had enough job security to say "Sorry, that's my baby's bedtime - how about 9?"  And I pumped breast milk in an effing bathroom next to a toilet for 8 months because my employer's HR people basically said that it just wasn't important enough for them to follow state and federal law for one of their engineers.  

Slaughter makes excellent points about lack of support for families in most American corporate settings.   While her piece focuses on parenting, specifically mothering, really this could apply to anyone who has significant family commitments (perhaps an aging parent or a disabled sibling).    While many jobs have to be done in-person and on a set schedule (teacher, nurse, doctor, police officer, etc.) there are many like mine that could be done in a far more flexible way.   My employer offers flexible work arrangements but it's wholly dependent on the agreement of one's supervisor.   Face time still contributes to how you're perceived;   I'm sure that my leaving work by 4 or 4:30 is giving me a reputation as a clock-watcher, while a coworker who stays until 6 and answers email all evening from home appears to be much more devoted - even though he spends more than half of his "workday" goofing off on the Internet and playing his fantasy sports teams.

To me, "having it all" is having a job that interests me and that helps pay the bills, without requiring so much time at the office that I feel like I'm neglecting my roles as wife and mom.   I need sufficient time to play as well as work.  When it boils down to it, my family is the most important thing in my world.  I saw early in my career that having a family and having a robust family life was not going to be compatible with smashing the glass ceiling and rising to the top the way a naive, idealistic 20-year old me expected to.    I've effectively been Mommy tracked and while I don't like it, I don't see an alternative that allows me to parent the way I need to.   Either I go into a job where I work 60+ hours a week to get ahead and sacrifice my family in the process, or I continue on my current path and accept that I will get paid less and have less of an impact - but can be the mom I want to be.  

Yeah, when I retire I'll fondly remember the people I worked with and I'll be able to look back at the patents and the awards and have the satisfaction of knowing that people around the world are using things that I helped to create.  But if I don't have Mark and Lily and any future kids - maybe grandkids - to share in the celebration of that long and fruitful career, none of that will matter much to me.   

On "having it all"

I have a lot to say about Anne-Marie Slaughter's very insightful and interesting piece in The Atlantic, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All".   I need to get the kiddo fed and to bed and then I'll comment while I roast a spaghetti squash.  :-)

It's official...

I'm done with grad school FOREVER, or at least for what my employer will pay for.   The degree came in the mail today!   I officially have an M.S. in Engineering Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  I'm also officially done with getting master's degrees since my company now will only pay for one degree at each level.  I could get an associate's degree, a bachelor's degree, or do a company-approved graduate certificate program, though.

I considered starting a certificate program in manufacturing engineering but with Mark planning to start his MBA in September and both of us working full time, we agreed that only one of us should be taking classes at a time.  I've had my turn and he's been such a support through two master's degrees now; it's his time to have the ability to go to grad school.    It'll be a 3-4 year program for him, and the manufacturing grad certificate will still be there for me to do when he's done.

Run, baby, run

I'm using the Ease Into 5K app on my iPhone to get back into running.   Prior to getting pregnant with Lily, Mark and I did a number of 5Ks, but during my pregnancy and afterwards for the better part of a year I had a lot of joint laxity that prevented me from starting to run again.   It's going really well now, though!  

I've decided to stop with the initials.  Anyone who can use Google and knows my name can figure out my husband's and kid's name, and what I post here is pretty far from controversial.

Mother's Day at the Connecticut Science Center

For Mother's Day, Mark and Lily took me to the Connecticut Science Center, where they were offering free admission to moms who came with their kids.  Lily got in for free, so the cost of Mark's admission was barely higher than the cost to park (don't get me started on THAT).

Lily's a little young for some of the exhibits but she had a blast checking everything out.   We wore her in the Boba because the Science Center's website suggested not bringing strollers in, but we totally could have strollered her!   The first thing we came to was a really fun water exhibit - smocks provided:

   

Then we moved to a building activity and a golf ball spiral:

Next we started heading upstairs and saw the really cool dinosaur exhibit.   There are fossils and animatronic dinosaur sculptures.   Lily was OK with the dinosaurs until the very end, when a T-Rex scared all three of us!  

After beating a hasty retreat from the dinosaurs, we were able to let Lily dig like a paleontologist and then checked out some really fun music and lights activities:

We continued through the science center to exhibits about sports, the human body, and climate change.  There was also a very interesting exhibit on the flora and fauna of Connecticut.   She got to pet a snake and was very gentle with it.  

We rounded out our visit with some playtime at the area sponsored by the fine folks at Lego.

Did I mention that their elevators are "mine" and they're in glass hoistways so that you can see the inner workings? 

Overall, we enjoyed our time at the Connecticut Science Center very much.   It was a great place to spend Mother's Day with my family.   We rounded out the morning with lunch at The Counter in West Hartford and then it was home for Lily's nap.  

Spring cleaning

I'm trying to get some spring cleaning done.  It's not going smoothly, since we have a perpetual mountain of laundry in the basement, but this is an ongoing issue for us that I'm trying to get control of.   The first (and really, only) step is to wash everything and either pack it away in storage or put it in closets/dressers.

I called out sick today because I really do feel like crap, but I can't justify laying on the couch so I'm trying to be productive.   I've done two loads of laundry from the mountain, packed away all of L's 12-18 month clothes and her 18-24 month cold weather clothes, cut out PUL for a diaper cover that I'm going to sew this afternoon, touched up paint from when we installed chair rail in our dining room six months ago (embarrassing that it's taken this long), and worked on organizing the playroom.   We need to anchor the new desk to the wall for safety and then M needs to move his desktop computer over to it.   Once that's done, we can move the old desk to the basement for storage, move L's toys in from the living room, and we'll be in business!

M and I are planning our summer DIY/home improvement projects, but now that our playroom will be done and the dining room "refresh" will be finished, most of those projects will focus on the exterior of our home.   At some point we need to hire a chimney sweep to come in and sweep the chimney and install a cap so that we can safely use the fireplace next winter.  As a result of the three trees that came down in our backyard during last year's freak October snowstorm, we'll have a ton of firewood (maybe literally!).