If a father took a part-time job at home he would likely be referred to as first an employee of XYZ company and second as the primary care giver of his children.

I’d prefer the term “flexible work arrangement” which would mean that the job allows you to work around caring for your children. Why should ads touting jobs for stay-at-home moms not continue? Because those ads lessen the work of motherhood. Being a full time caregiver IS a job. When we expect women to both care for children and hold down paid work we are expecting too much and setting up moms to feel like failures.

I need to squeeze in at least one hour of work to check emails and send out a few critical pieces of correspondence but PBS Kids isn’t cutting it. He’s wandering around looking for something to do. That means pulling all the tape from the tape dispenser, removing every star shaped sticky note from the pad, and dumping paper clips across my work table.  Actions like this used to bother me a lot but what am I going to do? Getting upset about it won’t change the situation. He needs my attention and I have responsibilities to both him and work.

Now that I’ve caught up on my emails he is helping me write this post by pushing the enter button every few spaces. In a few years both of my kids might  actually be helpful around the office. I can assign little chores or they can do their homework at my work table while I type away at the desk. For now, however, on the days when they are home thanks to a snow day or illness I’ll do my best to enjoy their busy little hands getting into everything and creating paper clip works of art around my office.

The lousy thing about telecommuting is that because I work from home it just naturally falls into my lap that I “stay home” with the kids on the snow day. Should I work in an out-of-the home office I suspect we would flip a coin to see who calls in for the day.

You may be able to check a few emails here and there but a day’s work will not get done (at least get done well) with small children running afoot.

It was time to fight for mom time.

Kids safely occupied in the playroom I begin my new journey toward health with an old fitness video that I am very fond of. The first half of the video goes well, with my kids occasionally coming in to the room to see what I am up to. They look at the video for a minute, attempt some of the cardio moves (adorable), then move back to their toys.

The problems begin when I hit the floor for ab and leg work. My two-year-old thinks it is funny to get into the rolls of toilet paper stashed in the bathroom (a common theme) then drag the rolls into my workout space. From my vantage point I can see toilet paper all over the place, laying in mounds on the floor, trailing behind his little diaper clad bum.  Ugh.  I’m not going to quit, I tell myself. I am thirty plus minutes into this video. If I stop I will lose my momentum.  Just as I come to relative peace with the toilet paper strung about, he walks over to me with a grin and piles toilet paper on my head.

Time for flat-on-the-back ab work. Two year-old thinks it is funny to sit on my chest. I push through. I…will…not…quit. And I don’t. I keep doing sit-ups. This is just like using a medicine ball, I tell myself.  A twenty-eight pound medicine ball.

It feels like I crack my hip when the two-year-old jumps on my leg, mid leg lift. The four-year-old follows. Ouch.

A few more days of this chaos during mommy’s workout time and they begin to wear me down. But I’m not going to quit! I decide maybe it’s time to see what other fitness videos are out there, thanks to Netflix instant streaming.  I come across a video with one of my favorite instructors, Ellen Barrett. It seems fun. Wait… there is standing ab work.  And the leg work incorporates lots of standing lunges. Success! I have outwitted the kids!

…Until I get bored and need to find another video. Maybe I’ll have to incorporate some kid-friendly hikes into our future. Or purchase that Hawaii chair Ellen was so fond of.

• We all have children under the age of 5
• We are all within a few years age of each other (Gen X)
• We have all found ways to work that allow us to spend time with our kids

What is most remarkable is that everyone’s paid day job is something they want to be doing. One mom works three days per week in a science field, another works one day in the office and telecommutes a few other days as a journalist, another works some weekends as a coach, and another works part-time, splitting child care duties with his spouse who also works part time.

During my college days I recall being saddled with the label “Generation X: the slacker generation.” On the contrary, I think my generation has made great strides in creating a better balance between work and family. There’s nothing slacker about it. We’ve decided we want to spend time with our children as well as work, and we’ve been rewriting the rules to do so.

Rewriting these rules is exactly what Katty Kay and Claire Shipman have written about in their new book “Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success.”  The book talks about how women can influence the balance between work and family, and that we don’t have to climb the corporate ladder in the traditional sense to achieve success.

There’s a good interview on US News & World Report’s site about moms finding creative ways to work.  The interview is  with author Sharon Reed Abboud about her book “All Moms Work: Short-Term Career Strategies for Long-Range Success”.

We strolled the one aisle looking for some fun activities. My three-year-old son became very excited when he saw the Perler Beads package with the trucks and cars made out of “pegs.” He was very disappointed, however, when we got home and opened the package. Each bead is very tiny, perfectly fitted to his hands, yet he didn’t want to take the time to place each one onto the pegboard. I think he thought they were going to be similar to Lite-Brite sized pegs. “This is hard work,” he said. So mommy spent the next hour and a half placing beads onto the board, picking red ones and yellow ones from the tub, while my fingers became increasingly stiff and my shoulder muscles tensed up into a solid arch.

The most fun was fusing the beads together with a warm iron, but again this was a mommy duty. While ironing one of the vehicles my son said “This is really hard work.”

Hmmm.

I handed the finished vehicles over to him, which were pretty neat, and which, oddly, gave me a great sense of accomplishment. But the best part, aside from spending two uninterrupted hours with my son while the baby napped were his admiring words. “Mommy, you are really good at this,” he said. And that made my day.

I spent much of my twenties caring entirely too much what everyone else thought about me. But now that I take my kids to the grocery store/post office/Target/dry cleaner/insert a multitude of locations here, there are countless opportunities for embarrassment. Were I not a telecommuting mom, working from home with kids undertow, I think these opportunities might be fewer; not obsolete, but certainly fewer. How could they not? And after pulling my toddler up from the floor of the busy post office, screaming because we have no letters to put in the mail slot today, or watching him toss himself onto the mall floor (do you notice a trend?) because he wants to ride in the special firetruck-shaped stroller, I simply don’t have the time (or energy) to care what everyone else around me is thinking. I care about what is happening in front of me now and how I can turn the situation into a life lesson for my children. And though embarrassing at times, I’m still glad I’m the one who is teaching them.