Life these days

Holy cow, the last two weeks have been so busy! I could go into a list of what we've been up to, but it's not particularly compelling in list form. To put it briefly: obligations of family and multiple jobs have consumed what feels like all of the time we usually have together, just the four of us. I attended a birth and had meeting after meeting, and Brian's had high levels of demands on his time from clients as well as a few conferences and meetings to attend. It will all slow down on Tuesday next week, after I've finished my teaching obligations on Sunday and Monday and Brian returns from his all-day conference in Detroit today.

This is nothing new. It's not news for families all over who deal with similar demands on their time. It's challenging to get through it just the same, particularly with a teething, night-waking baby and a four-year-old with preschool and gymnastics and visits with friends to schedule.

But, to take a deep breath and get to the bottom of it, I arrive at this: this busy life we're leading is due to the growing momentum of our work and family lives. Brian would never say it this way, so I will: he's really good at his job, and his expertise and thoughts are much in demand. He has a lot to say, and a lot of people who want to listen. It's been so very cool to watch his career grow from my vantage point. My work life grows increasingly busy and full, too--I'm booked for all of the doula jobs that I can take through September already, and I'm mentoring future childbirth instructors, planning to begin teaching breastfeeding classes, and working on a few articles to submit to journals, blogs and magazines.

All of these various webs and strands of our work lives reach into all hours of the day; work issues for both of us can arise from Facebook posts and e-mails, and my work obligations can come out of nowhere in the middle of the night ... literally. It can be hard maintaining boundaries sometimes--keeping work where it belongs. Neither of us has a conventional 8-5 job, and sometimes I think it would be fair to say that we'd yearn to have that on weeks like this. But not really. We have such passion and enthusiasm for what we're doing; it's that energy that keeps us going through weeks like this when we barely see each other and we're doing "tag-team" parenting the majority of the time.

But, it's time to take a collective deep breath now and let the tension go, because next week is going to be so much easier. :)