I’m getting ready to watch my friend Melissa’s kids who are approximately the same ages as my kids. If you never hear from me again, you’ll know what happened.

We traded, yesterday she watched my kids, today I’m watching hers for an hour and Friday I will watch them for four hours. Friday I’m watching my friend Tara’s kids too, so that means 3 one year olds, 1 three year old, one 2 year old and one 4 year old. Yes, I am THAT crazy.

Monday one of our employees quit, which caused a huge upset, he was a friend before he was an employee. Poor Jim, he’s had so much to stress about before all this, and now his workload has doubled. I wish I could help him more. I’m thinking about working one more half day a week, that would make it 3 half days/week. I could help free up both Jim and his business partner, so they can focus on their most important tasks.

I go back and forth about leaving my babies, but I’m going to work during nap time, so I won’t be missing much. I think for the time being, it’s just a “sacrifice” we need to make. The business is just on the verge of doing REALLY well, and I need to take the next couple of months to help it get over the “hump”.

I think the reason I struggle with leaving the kids is that I NEVER saw myself as being a working mom. I’ve always strongly advocated staying at home. I’ve definitely changed my stance to a degree; I see that I do SO much better if I get a break from my kids. I have a hard time self motivating and having to be somewhere three days a week helps so much. Some people are just so much better at being home all the time and being organized with it; it’s been kind of hard figuring out that I’m not one of those people. I’ve expected myself to be, but I’m just not.

As long as the kids seem happy and I don’t feel like I’m slacking on my job as a parent, we’ll try this. We’re just taking it a month at at time to see how it works. I want everyone in my family to be happy, even me.