The Story of Thy Scatterbrained Self

I feel like I should have more to contribute. I'm sitting here in my dining room, watching the baby stir (she's probably waking from an amazing fantasy that involves eating) and knowing my time is short. I need to write a blog. What should I write about?

How about the chaos that is married life with three kids under five, two businesses, and a freelance writing career? I will take them one-by-one.

Married Life with Three Kids Under Five

Photo via Flickr by anotherlunch.com.
No, I don't put together impressive spreads such as this.

Yes, it sounds daunting, but it's not so much because of the children themselves. If you asked me what it was that makes three kids under five so difficult, I would tell you it's the fact that they eat. If I never had to actually feed my children, parenting would be so much easier. Hear me out.

First off, my two older kids are beyond picky when it comes to food, and they are picky in opposite directions.

While my daughter will eat vegetables, I don't think my son has ever eaten anything that has ever grown out of the ground. At least on purpose. My son isn't a crazy snacker and he doesn't care much for sweets. My daughter is asking for something every 2.5 seconds and lives for dessert.

As someone who needs silence to feel centered, being asked for food 5,214 times a day and being met with, "NOOOO!" whenever I serve something is enough to drive me to drink. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I digress.

Then there is the baby, who obviously needs to eat regularly and, when she does, needs to be fed by me. This results in contorting and balancing as I try to get other things done while feeding the baby. Ironically, the ability to nurse my baby makes things more convenient in many ways, but having to feed a baby in general throws a wrench into things.

The bottom line is that kids do, in fact, have to eat. So this reality won't be changing anytime soon.

Not One -- But Two -- Businesses

Evie's future. Image via Flickr by GYLo

Now that pregnancy is over, having my own business has an entirely different set of challenges, though I obviously prefer the baby over pregnancy.

Especially since Tara and I were somewhat of a waddling sideshow when we would meet with clients. It's one thing to have one pregnant PR person, but two? Our prize is that we now have two teeny-tiny mascots.

What this baby has forced me to do is learn how to manage my time. I have to squeeze every bit of productivity out of every minute I have, which isn't really a strength of mine.

I am someone who wants to get everything done all the time. Getting anything done is impossible when you're thinking about all the things you aren't getting done while trying to get something done. Right? I'm sure you followed that.

The teaching element is a good one for me, though. I have to learn how to do one thing at a time and take breaks when I need to. I usually get tunnel vision and lash out at anything breaking my concentration. As a woman with three kids, this method isn't going to work.

I'm also selling Rodan+Fields, which I initially didn't think of as my own business. Now that I've been in it a month, have gone to an awesome seminar, and have seen some of the impressive women who have made a lot of money for themselves, I recognize it as my second business. The great thing is that it is exactly what I do well: marketing. What it's doing, though, is drawing my attention away from everything else because I'm so excited about it I want to do it all the time.

Freelance Writing

In addition to my family and my two businesses, I've taken a freelance job with CopyPress. The entertaining part about this job is that it throws extremely random assignments at me with a two- or three-day turnaround. Looking at my planner, one would find, "Finish story on Lobster" next to "Write press release for Wicked Awesome Wishes." I'm learning about a lot of random topics, I'll admit.

This is my scattered self right now, with humorous kid lines mixed in, of course.