To find the balance between kids and work

I have always seen myself as a working mom. My mom was a working mom and she was amazing at balancing her time between work and home. So, after I graduated, I seriously started looking for jobs and unfortunately in my case no one was ready to sponsor a work visa even though I had a temporary work permit and all. So, I was forced to spend my days at home and I hated every bit of it. I got my permanent work permit when I was 8 months pregnant with Sarath. So, I decided to look for jobs after he was born. The fact that I graduated in a Science field did not help me at this point. Since it was almost 3 years after I graduated, no body was ready to take me as I did not have enough experience. It was a really tough time and I made the toughest decision of my life to change into the IT field, get some experience working freelance and then  find a job. I spent a lot of time learning all this new stuff and finally after we moved to Seattle, I got my first big break and found a job. I was just so happy.

So, me getting a job means, that Sanjay has to go to day care. That part was not very pleasing to me. Sarath went to day care after 2 years. So, I had an amazing time with him at home. I was able to teach him so many things including talking Telugu. I wanted to do the same with Sanjay. I knew all this when I was applying to jobs as well. I still applied and when I go the job, I was very excited. I knew that Sanjay would be fine in a day care. So, we started looking for day cares. Sarath was already going to one and it is a really good one. But, they did not have room for Sanjay. So, I asked my parents to come over for a few months until we can find something for Sanjay. That actually put my mind at ease. But, they came here 3 weeks after I started working. So, S worked from home for those 3 weeks to take care of Sanjay. My brother-in-law and his wife had moved to Seattle and were staying with us until they found their apartment and she helped S take care of Sanjay.

My parents being around for 4 months has really spoiled me. My mom used to cook dinner pretty much every day and sometimes she used to make enough for the lunch next day too. I did not have to worry about being late or taking care of two tired, cranky kids all by myself in the evening. They left after Thanksgiving and by that time Sanjay was already going to day care part time. After they left, it was really tough. I could barely manage everything in the evenings. The kids missed their grandparents a lot. Sanjay would just not let go of me after coming home from day care.

Finally, now things have stared getting back to normal. My resolution this year to learn to manage my time effectively between kids, myself and work. I strongly believe that if I can manage time, everything else will fall into place. I Googled for articles on Time Management and I did find a few useful points in each. I started implementing a couple of those ideas with my own tweaks and so far this week, it seems to work. See, I also got some time to blog today 🙂 YAY!!!

I will write about it in detail at the end of the week. Now I am going to use the extra few min I got today to catch up on my sleep 🙂

PS: This is my 100th post 🙂