Good "Practice" Run

On Tuesday my sister-in-law Julie was kind enough to do my 100,000 mile maintenance on my car, so I was lucky enough to babysit her two kids for the day (I do sincerely mean that, she has great kids!). Being that Adam and I now have like 40 nieces and nephews (I lost count since it grows every year) I have definitely done my fair share of babysitting. In fact, I've even watch kids for days and weeks at a time, so I was pretty sure I knew what I was doing. The one thing I failed to take into account, is that previously, I never tried babysitting kids and working from home at the same time.

I only had the kids (a 4yr old and 6 month old) for about 6 hours. I thought that it would be easy to work from home at the same time. Well, I'm sure any mom right now is just laughing at me. After trying it, I realized working from home is going to be a little harder than I originally thought. Luckily Julie has really good kids. The baby just sat in my lap and played with toys and the dogs (and sometimes my computer) when she wasn't taking a nap, eating, or enticing me to stop working and play. She only cried when she was hungry or needed her diaper changed. The 4yr old mostly entertained himself, with a little help from me and the dogs. Still, even with that, I only got about half the amount of work done in those 6 hours that I normally get done.

Good thing for me I actually got up at 3:30 that morning and started working (I couldn't sleep) so by they time they got their at 9am, I had already been working for 5 and a half hours. So, once you add in the equivalent 3 hours of work I got done in 6 hours, I really did get a full days work in, it just took me a lot longer.

This did teach me that I have a lot more preparing I need to do before I'm ready to work from home with a child of my own. I need to get used to starting earlier or working later to get the same amount of work done. So, my hat is off to all of you moms out there that currently work from home! Someday (hopefully sooner rather than later) I'll be asking you for tips!