Like the one I’m dealing with now… pregnancy. Wasn’t planning to have another baby now; in fact, we were trying hard not to. But this little rascal had its own ideas.

As my husband puts it, we were upset for maybe 20 minutes. The timing is rotten, after all, with him still out of work and a cousin with a son dealing with leukemia. But really, neither of us could be that upset about having another child together. Even if it does mean we need a new car. We only have one right now, and it has 4 seats. The middle of the back seat is plastic cupholders.

I’ve been dealing with plenty of nausea and general exhaustion so far with this pregnancy, which is about 9 weeks along. Finally told the family, so now I can blog it too. It was so hard to post about anything while keeping this secret! That, and I kept catching little bugs from the kids. Having a stomach bug when you’re already nauseous from pregnancy is pretty miserable! Especially when one of the kids throws up. My husband had to take care of that one, even though normally I’m the stronger stomach.

I’m still not past the nausea, but the tiredness is slowly decreasing. That’s a relief, since these past few weeks I’ve hardly gotten ANY work done! I go between starving and not wanting anything to do with food. Cucumbers taste particularly good, which isn’t a bad craving to have. Healthy, at least.

While my due date is in early February, due to the complications I had with my son (C-section, breech and near zero amniotic fluid), my OB wants to do a C-section at 38 weeks, sooner if the amniotic fluid is low again. So I’ve told this baby two things:

1. Please don’t be born too close to Christmas.
2. Never, EVER sneak up like that on me again!

The hardest part about trying to work right now for me is dealing with a changed schedule. Evenings are still my preferred work time, at least out of habit, but they aren’t currently my best work time.

I’m figuring this out bit by bit. It means a lot of changes in how I run my day. I’m thinking I need to blog and work earlier in the day, and read other sites later. That’s rough, as it means trying to blog with the kids awake.

On the plus side, things have been going well for my personal income, if still a bit rough for my family. If I can work things up just a little better, I can keep us in this house despite my husband being unemployed. That would be huge, although the COBRA health coverage is still a big issue for us. He’s looking at some retail jobs just to get some other coverage going, as well as income. I’ve told him to ask for afternoon/evening/weekend hours so that he can still easily interview if a good job comes along. Not good for family time, but for the long run it could be important.

The end of the school year took quite a bit more out of me than I expected this year. It’s not just getting used to having 2 kids in the house rather than 1… that’s easier some ways since they love to play together.

But my kids just had to throw in a stomach bug. And my sister-in-law is in town. And some other stuff I’ll tell you about another day. Gotta tell family first, after all!

So many little things conspired to tire me out so much that these past two weeks I’ve barely worked at all. Ridiculous really, but the combination of recent events has left me completely exhausted.

But I think I can get back to work now.

There are a lot of challenges to working at home. You have a lot to get accomplished in the day and many distractions. It’s easy to have very high expectations of what you will accomplish on a particular day, and it’s not always realistic.

Worse, you probably feel guilty at times for focusing on work rather than on keeping a clean house. You’re home and you may feel like it’s a part of your job to keep that house clean. Traditional duty of the stay at home parent (especially moms) and all that.

But being at home should not mean that it all falls onto your shoulders. You need to look at what the appropriate divisions are.

The struggle often comes from it being unclear how you should divide the work up. If you feel like you aren’t contributing because your home business isn’t bringing in much money yet, you’re going to feel bad if the hours you work keep you away from keeping a perfect house. Yet you can be working long hours trying your best to make it work, and simply not have the time or the energy to do it all yourself.

I know I’m good at giving myself a guilt trip every time the house is a mess and I feel that I’m too busy to clean it up. Sometimes I think feeling guilty is simpler than feeling good about what I’ve achieved. After all, I can always compare myself to people who are doing better.

Somehow it seems to be easier for most of us to compare ourselves to those who do better than to recognize what we have achieved. There are all the things we dream about accomplishing, after all. Looking at what others have managed to do as we struggle along is just the way things go.

One thing all families should do is figure out who will be responsible for what. Working in or out of the home shouldn’t matter so much as the fact that one is working. That’s not always the reality of people’s expectations, but it’s a nice goal.

Get your spouse involved. Get the kids involved. Don’t let all the housework fall on one pair of shoulders.

Figure out what you will do at which times. Housework that needs to be done can be scheduled just like anything in your home business.

How well all of this works can tell you a lot about how supportive your spouse is of your working at home. If you both work a similar number of hours, yet you’re at home and expected to do a significantly larger chunk of the housework, you may need to have a talk to make sure that what you do is being taken seriously. Sometimes it’s not. Other times it will just be that your spouse hasn’t quite realized how much work you’re doing.

And if you’re earning enough and feel so inclined, hire a maid service to come once a week or so to do some of the heavy duty cleaning for you. This can be really helpful. If you’re earning enough it will be well worth the money. Sometimes it’s worth it even if you aren’t earning that much but need a break from feeling like you need to get that housework done.

It’s summer. Time to sign the kids up for a bunch of activities so that they won’t get bored, right?

Maybe. To an extent, perhaps.

Or maybe it’s better to give them some time to be kids. For having fun on their own terms. And yes, to be bored.

I’m not entirely against signing kids up for activities. I’m for limiting them. That’s because I don’t think children need to grow up having someone else always directing them in what they should be doing.

I certainly don’t blame kids for getting bored when they’re told to get out and play. Too many have too few chances to do just that. Most parents today are far more protective than our own parents were of us. My mother considers me to be much too protective at times. Yet I give my kids more freedom than many other parents I know.

One of my favorite things to do is to tell my kids to just go out to the back yard and play. They may grumble, but they’ll do it. And they’ll generally be having a blast in a fairly short amount of time. All I have to do is sit back and keep an ear open for the occasional screams. Meanwhile they’re finding bugs, nibbling as allowed in the garden, digging, getting utterly filthy and having fun.

If you don’t have a fenced in back yard and your kids are too young to play in unfenced areas unsupervised you do still have options. You can go with them and just lightly supervise. No hovering. Encourage the kids to settle their own arguments. Tell them to decide for themselves what is fun.

You’ll have to keep a closer eye if there’s a body of water nearby, of course, or other hazards, but children can play more or less independently even if you’re watching them. You just have to not join in each and every time. Play with them some of the time, of course, but encourage your kids to take the lead and to not always need you to play in order to have fun.

Just think about the things you remember most about growing up. Was it the classes you took, the activities you signed up for? Or was it the stuff you did on your own?

Chances are, it’s a combination. There may have been some classes or activities that really were that special to you, but doing things all on your own is probably a big part of your favorite childhood memories. No pressure, just time to be you.

And that is why I say some activities are fine. They can give kids the memories we want them to have. But the most memorable times are still likely to be just general fun things they did on their own or with friends.

Stop listening to all the people talking about all the activities their kids are in. Plan any activities based on what will work for your family, not on competition with other parents. Let your child learn what it is to win, to lose, to be creative, to get hurt at least a little, to be independent, to get so dirty you immediately throw him or her in the bath, to explore and to just be a kid.

Trust me, they’ll enjoy it. You probably will too.