Balancing career, parenting, chores, cycling..

[LadyinWhite]

How do we do it? I often sit in awe reading about these long rides taken and I ask myself "How do they find the time?"

Today:

Up at 6 - Take care of job related paper work, get the princess off to school, confirm tonight's little league game with DH, start laundry.

Realize the boy's too sick to go to school, medicate him and get him settled in for the morning. Make a couple of business calls, move the laundry around (washer to dryer, dryer to basket)

Head out for a ride - a rolling 22 mile loop.

Stop back at home to check on the boy, return a couple of business calls. Make sure all is well, head out for a ride - a flat straight shot out to the ocean and back (22 miles)

Get home, feed the boy, move the laundry, shower, grab the boy and head out to run errands before the princess gets home and Mom's taxi opens for business.

I'm riding in the Tour de Cure on June 2. I'm trying to get out on my bike every chance I get to get some miles under me. I'm telling you ladies - I don't know HOW you do it. After work, by the end of the day after dinner, chores, errands and parenting I'm exhausted and in bed by 10. Tomorrow I'm teaching 8 - 3 then 5 - 8pm.

Weekends are filled to the brim with Little League, traveling baseball, in law visits, chores, errands, take the princess here, pick her up from there. If I can squeeze a 90 min ride out it's a miracle and even then my cell is bound to go off at least once while I'm out there. (I almost never ride on the weekends)

If it wasn't for this June 2 ride coming up, I probably wouldn't care. Being a wife and mom, holding down a job, these are all things I love and embrace in my life and am more than happy to invest the time to do well- but with this ride coming up, I'm starting to freak.

T

[mimitabby]

Lady
my kids are raised. I have enough trouble attending to everything i need to juggling house, job and exercise.
When just DH was riding, it wasn't so bad, I just did more chores. But now I'm riding more too... and there's no one to pick up the slack! sometimes now DH will do stuff (please don't get me wrong, he helped some when just he was riding too) but there's entire AREAS like yardwork that have become poor forgotten orphans in our lives.

I frankly don't know how you do it!

When my kids were little, I really focussed on them. Once they were self sufficient i started taking better care of myself. So i guess it gets better.

Good luck!

[IFjane]

LiW - I agree with mimi. My children are grown and gone. When they were little all I did was devote my time to them, my job and the house (oh yes, and my EXhusband).....and gained 69 pounds I didn't need in the process. It wasn't until the oldest was off to college that I had a little slack time to start working out and take off the weight.

I honestly do not know how mothers with children do it! My hat is off to all of you for being the incredible women you are! I wish I had some words of wisdom to tell you, but all I have are words of awe.

[maillotpois]

LadyinWhite - don't freak - breathe....

It is definitely a juggle. I have an 11 year old and a full time job as a litigation attorney. Frankly, during the week, my job interferes more with my family than riding does - and I am not particularly happy about that. (DD is always wanting me to drive all the field trips, etc. I do what I can - and more than a lot of non-working moms in our school do, quite frankly, but I can't do it all. )

During the week, I will either get up before dawn (4 - 5) and ride outside (I have GOOD lights) or I will do a spinerval on the trainer. I am lucky if I can ride 1 - 2 hours each day on 3 days a week during the week. I won't even try to ride at night because that's my time with my daughter.

Weekends would be tough without very supportive in laws because most of one day a week is spent on long rides.

DH and I ride together often - we both coach for Team in Training, and we are training a group to do the Death Ride in July. So some of that time is our "couple" time togther, which is nice. We don't generally get babysitters and go out on dates at night - we ride together instead. We'll ride Davis double century together in a couple of weeks, which will be fun, too.

The brevets have been a bit tough this year and DH (who isn't doing them with me) was worried about me riding through the night yet again, so he (nicely) asked me not to do the 600k I was planning. That's fine. I'll stick to easier doubles for the rest of the year.

And remember - breathe! It doesn't all have to get done right now. And if your kids are little, the riding may have to take a backseat for a while. That's okay. When the kids are a little older and more self-sufficient, you can spend more time on your bike. You only get one childhood with them.

[LadyinWhite]

LadyinWhite - don't freak - breathe....

It is definitely a juggle.

Whew - glad it's not just me. The kids are pretty old. Boy is turning 13 in a few weeks and the Princess is 15. That's the only reason I got out today, I could leave him alone nursing his cold for two separate rides.

They are incredibly mature and self sufficient but I'm still in hot demand. Especially on the weekends! Which, I guess, is a good thing

You are right about one thing - it's now or never with them. The princess is off to college in 3 short years, the boy right on her heels. These crazy days will be gone before I know and I'll be wondering what to do to fill the hours.

T.

[maillotpois]

It's funny - as they get older, they get more self-sufficient, yet you want to be more and more involved because the potential for them getting in trouble, doing bad things, etc. just gets higher. The stakes get higher.

Right now, I wouldn't hesitate to leave my daughter home alone for a couple hours to get a ride in. She walks hom by herself, she gets herself to school most mornings after we leave for work. We live in a very safe area (knock on wood). But in a couple of years when she's in middle school and then high school - I am not so sure. Much will depend on how she conducts herself and who her friends are then.

So I was expecting your kids would be younger, but I totally get that as they get older you almost have to be more involved. I am hoping work is more flexible in a couple of years to facilitate that.

I don't do much laundry.... (Actually, the kid is getting pretty good at it, but I pay a price. Literally... )

[Crankin]

I didn't ride when my kids (now 22 and 24) were young, but I did teach aerobics and live at the gym. I mostly did this at 5-6 AM and then went to work. My husband was always the morning person (when he was in town, since he traveled a lot) and when they were really little and he wasn't around, (under 5 and 7) I had a teenaged babysitter who would come to my house at 4:40 AM so I could go teach aerobics, come home and shower, and then wait for my nanny to come. They just knew that mom was at the gym... I would get up early on weekends and go at 8 AM, so it didn't interfere with any family plans.
My kids were very self sufficient and I never hesitated about leaving them to go ride when they were teenagers. By this time, my oldest was about to graduate HS and the younger one was already a ranked junior level racer. He was gone riding more than me! Of course, they never did anything to make me not trust them. I am a strong believer in not sacrificing your whole life for your kids. I've seen too many people who end up having no life and no relationship with their spouse when the kids leave, including all of my friends from AZ who are now divorced. Of course, we did a lot with them when they were growing up, but my husband and I went out just about every Saturday night alone, or with other couples when they were growing up. We still do now, but we also spend most of our time riding together. Some of our non-riding friends think it's "over the top," but while they are sitting there complaining about how overweight they are, I am out doing something active.
Sorry to digress!

[Batbike]

My children are still both young, but old enough to be left alone for short periods of time -- ages 10 & 13. However, most everything I do, whether it be work, cycling, home chores, or the many other small stuff that needs to be done, I do when they are in school or at some other activity. So, I don't do long rides, unless it is a weekend and my DH is around, or I don't need to work that day and can get in a longer ride while they are at school. My average ride is 1.5 - 2 hours ... tops!

As for work, I work a part-time job -- I gave up a paying fast track career when I had children. I feel the value of my children outweigh the value of any paycheck! Basically, I work for "bike parts". One day they will be grown and gone, and I want to be able to say I gave them the best of me that I could while they were growing-up. That means I take care of me, but not at their expense, and I take care of them until they can be independent and take care of themselves. Thank goodness my DH has a career that can support this decision!

Most of women I know that ride LONG rides are women who's children are in college or out of house. Some of these women work so much that they don't even ride LONG rides, except on weekends, but build their overall fitness throughout the week by going to the gym for hours in the early AM or late PM. They have the time to work on themselves because their immediate family needs have lessened. So, take care of yourself, take care of your family -- keep it balanced because one day it will be ALL you and you'll want the energy and fitness to do whatever you want to in the LARGE amount of time you will have to do it!!

[xeney]

The question I have here is whether all the dads also gave up riding ... or running, or fishing, or whatever their thing happened to be. Because from looking at my friends, that doesn't seem to be what happens. Dad keeps doing what he always did, and Mom -- whether she works or not -- stays home doing all the "balancing."

I don't really expect it to be any different in my family. If I can get a babysitter, I will probably be able to do some of the things I did before I was pregnant (hiking, cycling, canoeing). But I am one hundred percent sure that my husband will keep doing those things with or without a babysitter.

[Triskeliongirl]

For me, I have always cycled, had a pretty intense career (I run a research lab at a major research university where I also teach), and raised two so-far well adjusted and productive kids. We are soon to be empty-nesters as our youngest heads off to MIT this fall (daughter is at wellesley), so how do we do it all? For one, somewhat in response to the last post, it has always been we (my husband has the same job I do). I think that is key, both partners sharing the workload (and fun!) equally. That doesn't mean at every moment, but that the overall balance is there. It also means not being afraid to pay for help, we earn enough money that we could afford high quality day care when our kids were young, a women to clean our house and wash our clothes, etc. While recreational cycling has taken a different role in our lives at different times, one thing that has helped us stay active even when our kids were young is to cycle commute. Yes, when they were young we had those chairs that sit on the back of a bike like a rack, and now make me cringe that we ever did that, but that was all there was, and that was how our kids got to and from day care (nowadays there are trailers). As our kids were growing up, they would bike with us on family vacations, we even did Ride for the Roses one year as a family. As our kids got older yet, and wanted to do their own activities, we started to club ride early on weekend mornings, but would forgo club social acitivities to get home for a family lunch. Its nice cuz as we become empty nesters, we have our cycling to keep us busy and missing the kids less. We still get together for active family vacations, in fact we are planning a family scuba diving trip to florida this summer before our youngest starts college. I saw two couples show up for a club ride, and each guy had the kids in a trailer on his bike, while the wives were on single bikes, and that ended up also equalizing their speeds (these were racer boys) so they could ride as a group. I also have friends struggling with this that bought tandems as a way of combining family time and cycling time. So, it can be done, but you have to figure out what makes sense for your family.

[Bikingmomof3]

The question I have here is whether all the dads also gave up riding ... or running, or fishing, or whatever their thing happened to be. Because from looking at my friends, that doesn't seem to be what happens. Dad keeps doing what he always did, and Mom -- whether she works or not -- stays home doing all the "balancing."

My husband's life changed as much as mine did when we had our children. He is very involved in their lives and has always helped out with child rearing, shopping, cooking, driving the kids around, doctor's appointments, etc. We changed as a couple when the kids arrived. We have been very fortunate and neither of us have any regrets. Maybe he is a rare father/husband, I do not know. I think he is wonderful.

[lph]

No, I like the Falldron quote. She doesn't say not to be a mother, or not to stay at home, she just says you shouldn't "give up your life" for them. That's pretty individual for each person whether that means working, staying at home or whatever. If you enjoy staying at home you're not "giving up your life", you're just changing it.

I like her point that giving up too much for your kids can put an burden of guilt on them. But then - my mother is the queen of passive aggressive guilt trips...

We manage the juggling act by working parttime (80%) both of us. And living in a small apartment, with a cheap car. Etc.

But hey - I don't do long rides anyway

[SheFly]

I just want to say - WOW! I admire all of you moms - stay at home and working - who have achieved such balance. I honestly don't know how you manage.

I, on the other hand, am one of those "childless by circumstance" people, and later, "childless by choice". That certainly makes it easier for me to be able to have a career, manage the house(s) and still focus on my passion - cycling. I certainly would not be riding over 5000 miles a year, and competing in 41 races if I had children in addition!

I promise, after reading this thread, however, not to complain about being too tired anymore .

Thanks to all of you moms - you're doing a GREAT job!

SheFly

[limewave]

The question I have here is whether all the dads also gave up riding ... or running, or fishing, or whatever their thing happened to be. Because from looking at my friends, that doesn't seem to be what happens. Dad keeps doing what he always did, and Mom -- whether she works or not -- stays home doing all the "balancing."

DH gave up cycling all together when DD came along. He'll do a family ride with us, but he doesn't go to group rides or race anymore. He took up running instead because it takes up less of his time. However, DH's work schedule is such that I am the one left to do the "balancing" on a day to day basis. I knew that getting into the marriage. Two weekends a year DH takes complete charge of DD and I get to go on my own personal retreat to a BB or to visit one of my friends.

[Triskeliongirl]

I don't want to get into the stay at home vs working mom debate, I respect all women for deciding to do what is right for them and their families. But, it is interesting while at certain times as a working mom I did worry about not being there enough for my kids, but talking to my daughter now as an adult, she tells me what a great role model it was for her, to know you could do it all. I think its not a coincidence that she is studying neuroscience now (just like me). She said when they have forums about career vs family at college, she was surprised to see how many young women are conflicted on this point, cuz their mothers told them they must choose. Even though I always worked a lot, I was always there for my kids. They knew they could talk to me about anything, at home at night I might write while they did homework, but as Mimi said we'd be together, eat together as a family, etc. But, I did expect my kids to take on as much responsiblity for themselves as they could handle, which I do think helped them develop into self confident adults (kind of like how I train my graduate students ). Another smart thing we did was buy a home walking distance from my kids school, so they could walk or cycle to school, after school activities, etc., to cut down on the chauffeur role. I also remember when my kids were young I did a lot of exercise videos after they were sleeping, if I couldn't get outdoors to exercise. Taking care of yourself is critical if you are going to take care of others, you just need to be smart and effecient about how you do it.