Geography Lessons

Interview With ME!

My babysitter Demi is a senior in high school, taking a business development course that will help her learn about a career path she is thinking about for her future.  She loves kids and wants to be a nanny or a teacher, so she babysits for me and one other family for a total of 15 hours each week.  She has also spent time shadowing teachers of different grade levels to see what that job is like.  In between, she works with her teacher and peers to develop goals and strategies, self-assess, and think critically about ways to be an exemplary employee and find work-life balance. 

I sure wish I had a class like that in high school instead of using the school-of-hard-knocks approach during my college and career development years!

This week, her homework was to interview me about my job as a mother.  I had a fun time answering these questions, and found the answers to be revealing, even to myself!

1:  What did you do after high school?  Did you work, further your education, travel, etc?

After high school I attended St. Joseph's College in Windham, Maine.  Initially I majored in Biology, thinking I would go to medical school or get a master's degree in Marine Biology, but after dissecting my first pig, I decided it wasn't the path for me!  I switched gears and  graduated Summa Cum Laude in 1994 with a B.S. in Business, with a double major of Marketing and International Business. My college internship was 3 months spent working for the Executive Office of the President during the first Clinton administration.  Living in Washington, D.C. on my own as a 20 year old, and working across the street from the White House, was an amazing experience!

After college, I worked as the Marketing Coordinator of a home health care company, eventually rising to the level of Manager of Contracts and Sales.  I worked for the same company for 8 years and my job was to seek, manage and close contracts with health insurers that enabled my company to provide home medical services to patients of all ages and needs, but primarily children with complex medical issues who would otherwise be unable to live at home with their families.   

The independence and financial stability of those years was fantastic!  I was able to spend a month backpacking through Europe, take a few trips to Mexico, spend summers weekending on the beach in Newport with friends and winters skiing in New Hampshire.  I took golf lessons, ballet lessons, painting lessons, and developed lots of new passions!  I also loved daily workouts and yoga classes, and spent two nights a week volunteering at New England Medical center, playing with kids in the Pediatric ICU and rocking babies in the Neonatal ICU. 

2: When did you get married and where else have you lived?

I grew up in Plymouth, MA, birthplace of Thanksgiving!  My husband Marc grew up in Revere, MA, named after Paul Revere.  We met in college and got married when we were 25, after dating for 8 years.  We lived in the Beacon Hill section of Boston, MA and then moved to the suburbs when we started our family.  In 2010 we moved to Naperville for Marc's job, and love it here!

3: How long did you wait to have your first baby?

We had Jack 3 1/2 years after we got married, when we were 29.  Molly followed 3 years after that, Ben 2 years later, and Maeve 5 years later!

4: Would you ever send your kids to daycare? 

Why or why not?

Because I left the workforce to stay at home, I didn't need to send my kids to daycare. That wasn't luck, it was a conscious choice that we'd prepared for, emotionally and financially, for the three years we were married prior to having kids.  But it wasn't because we felt one option was inferior to the other, it was because it was a lifelong goal of mine to spend these growing years with my kids, both for my sake and theirs.  

If I ever needed to use daycare, I would take my cue from my many girlfriends who did not leave the workforce when they became parents and used a variety of child care options to make sure their children were well cared for, from full time live-in nannies to live-out nannies, to family, babysitters, in-home daycare, center daycare and so on. 

5: If you were a working mom, who would watch your kids?

If family wasn't an option, I'd probably use a combination of a live-out nanny (especially for the baby days when bonding is so important and their immune system is developing) coupled with center-based Daycare  There is a daycare center in Naperville named Compass that teaches children based on a Reggio-Emilia inspired curriculum, which is exactly how I play-teach-inspire my kids, so it would be a great fit!   

6: What is the difference between having 3 kids to having 4?

There isn't much difference between having 3 and 4, but the jump from 2-3 is monumental!  That's when you have to switch from a "man-to-man"  to a "zone" defense.  After 3, 4 is pretty easy!  That said, a lot of the ease of parenting depends on the ages and personalities of the children in the family.  Stronger personalities make things more challenging, and very young, or very spread out ages, make things more challenging too!

7: What is the hardest thing about being a mom of four children? 

The logistics of caring for four children is a big challenge - some days it feels like I never leave the kitchen, never find the bottom of the laundry pile, never have the house properly picked up, or never get out of the car.  The physical work is far greater, and far more boring than I ever imagined.  Staying motivated is HARD.  

But the biggest challenge is probably caring for the emotional needs of four incredibly different personalities.  Before I had children I was convinced that nurturing them was the biggest factor in ensuring their development into fabulous human beings. I thought I could shape their personalities, desires and actions in the image I wanted.  

After having children, however, I realize that while nurturing is a factor, NATURE is a far more potent factor.  They come with their personalities and desires already formed, and that isn't likely to change no matter what kind of nurturing I do as their parent.  Nurturing, instead of changing who they already are, softens their edges, fortifies their strengths, and strengthens their weaknesses.  

The most challenging part of this type of nurturing is the discipline factor.  How can you be strict and yet understanding at the same time?  How do you keep a fair system while differentiating it for four different personalities who all require different approaches?  How do you maintain order while still enabling children to make their own choices?  

Ten years in, I still don't have it figured out!

8. Do you have any future work goals? 

I'm at the end of my baby years now, and in another 4 years will have all four kids in school full time.  It's both exciting and sad at the same time, to say goodbye to one phase of life and move on to the next.  My years spent mothering have taught me much, and given me new talents and skills that I hope to build into a new career.  

My plan is to start my own photography business, taking beautiful, natural-light portraits of families and children throughout Chicagoland.  I'll never stop loving babies and kids, so just like my volunteer jobs before I had my own kids, photography will allow me to be involved with kids of all ages.  My favorite part will be working with new babies!  

McSteamy

And for the late night entertainment at chez Mallett, we are steaming it up in the bathroom with our good friend Croup.

Poor little thing.

Ben's Birthday Wish List

As always, Ben's birthday wish list is a mile long.  Basically, anything he sees or imagines in the month prior to his big day, that seems even remotely interesting, gets put on the list.  

This is why I dispose of the toy catalogs that start coming about this time of year, preferably before they even enter the house!  But the Young Explorers catalog slipped by me this weekend, and the child has been sleeping with it, eating with it, going to the bathroom with it, and even tried to smuggle it to school this morning!

Tonight he pulled me aside to show me his favorites.  "This one" he pointed out

"This one I need in case an asteroid randomly hits our neighborhood.  

Then I can take a slice and study it to see what it's made of."

Glad to know someone's got an asteroid contingency plan around here, because I sure as heck don't!

Jenga Blocks and Advanced String Theory

Ben called me in to see what he'd built put of Jenga blocks.

A Jenga tower?

No

A house?

Nah

A log cabin?

Not a chance

"It's a model of the space-time continuum, Mom!"

Of course it is!

And we wonder why he misbehaves in first grade.  Who has time to bother with handwriting and schoolwork when you've got particle physics on the brain??!!

In other news, Maevezillla got wind that there was a possible portal to another dimension, and promptly destroyed it with her trusty amphibian boots.

Just another Sunday morning at the Mallett house!

Weird Science

I found Ben in the bathroom with a gallon sized Ziploc bag, a straw, and a cup full of water.  One end of the straw was in the cup, and the other end was inside the Ziploc bag.  

He told me he'd built a contraption that would take the water from the cup and put it in the bag.  When I asked him how he planned to do that exactly, he told me he hadn't figured it out yet.

I mentioned that he probably needed a siphon, which she'd never heard of. I told him we could Google it later and I'd explain to him what it was.   Then I went to finish cleaning up dinner in the kitchen.

Four minutes later he came into the kitchen with a Ziploc bag full of water and told Molly that his contraption worked!  Thinking that he probably dumped the water in the Ziploc bag and was fibbing, I asked him what he did to get the water through the straw into the bag.

 He said, "All I had to do was cut a little hole in the straw and use my mouth to suck the water through!  Once I got it going, the straw sucked it all through!"

Well little dude, I guess you know what a siphon is, because you just built one.

And this, folks, is  just one of the reasons why there is never a dull moment around here!  With little brother following in big brother's mad scientist footsteps,  I'm just hoping that no one builds a nuclear reactor in the garage...unless it powers a time machine, in which case I call dibs on the first ride!

Girls Day Out

Had a fun morning of shopping and lunch with the cutest toddler in town.  Naperville has a brand new Anthropologie and today was opening day!