The Working Mom by Kay Luna

Can you guess why I’m so excited about New Year’s Eve?!

Well, I am looking forward to enjoying a few adult beverages for the first time in ages. When you’re in serious Mommy-mode like I am, that kind of fun doesn’t happen very often.

But I’m most excited about ushering in the New Year by GOING TO SLEEP. And I mean, really to sleep without just getting into a deep sleep before the baby cries and startles me awake, forcing me to fumble for a bottle, sleepwalk to the crib, rock and rock and rock, only to go back to bed and then hear her cry ALL OVER AGAIN.

Yes, indeed, Miss Babycakes Luna is having her very first sleepover at Grandma and Grandpa’s house tonight. I know I will miss her, and worry about her, but Mama is ready for the mini-vacation. I’m even thinking about sneaking in a little nap — oh, just the THOUGHT of a glorious nap makes me beam with happiness! — before the party gets started.

And as for Babycakes, she’ll be enjoying a tradition that her big brother and cousin started years ago: Sleeping over at Grandma and Grandpa’s, playing games and eating snacks together on New Year’s Eve.

What are your family’s New Year’s Eve traditions? Do you incorporate your kids into the festivities, or do you excitedly get a sitter for your kids, too? Fill us all in.

It’s Christmas Eve, and Babycakes is more than ready to tear into those presents — because, after all, she just learned how!

Her first birthday was Friday –can you believe she’s 1 already?!! – but we waited until yesterday to have her birthday bash with family and friends. We had a house full of kids and grown-ups and birthday cake and wrapping paper and noise — and she seemed to LOVE the chaos of it all.

You couldn’t wipe that little toothy grin off her face.

As I watched her learn how to open up gifts, tearing at the paper and then handing me little bits and pieces of it along the way, I was amazed.

Because she suddenly didn’t look like a baby anymore. She looked like … well … a little girl.

And that little girl has opinions, let me tell you. She loves her little friends, and loves dollies, but isn’t a big birthday cake fan. She hated the feeling of that sticky frosting on her fingers, and whined until I got her out of the highchair.

She fought off taking a nap until late in the afternoon, when she fell asleep on Mrs. Stacey’s lap clutching Baby Sarah (her beloved little raggedy doll that she carries everywhere) and a new doll that looks like Baby Sarah’s sister (who is officially unnamed at this time, but is being called “Claudette” by my mom and sister, in honor of a book that my mom sings the words to! haha!).

The excitement apparently wore her out. She slept nearly all night — yay for Mommy and Daddy!

Tonight, the challenge will be to keep her away from the Christmas presents until morning. She’s got the hang of this opening-gifts thing, and she might want to practice.

But me? I already have the best gift any mother could ask for: Two beautiful children, both under my roof for Christmas, and an overflowing love for them that just keeps getting bigger and stronger.

Merry Christmas!

It finally happened … the “Daddy Wars” are here.

We probably all have heard about the “Mommy Wars” — infighting between mothers who choose to stay at home with their kids, and those who opt (or NEED) to go back to work. Now, Daddies are talking about the same thing in the public arena.

Click here to read this story in USA Today that highlights fathers in the working world who say they feel torn between work and home. One dad even says he and his boss have opposite philosophies about how the two forces should be balanced — and feels pressure to stay at work, when he’d rather be home with his young children.

Gosh, I don’t know about you, but I feel this pressure just about every day. I adore my job — I really do. But I also hate to leave the baby too long or too late at the sitter’s, where she’s learning to do things that I’m missing out on …. like WALKING.

(Yes, little Miss Babycakes has started talking some wobbly steps on her own! She takes two or three at a time, and then sits down. A girl has to take a rest now and then.)

That tug between home and work really doesn’t end when the kids get older. I still feel torn between finishing a story here and getting home to be with my teenager.

I honestly don’t know if the fathers in my life feel quite the same way.

So, here’s the big question for you: Do you think the “Daddy Wars” are real?

Do they think most working dads feel even HALF the tension — that pull between work and home — that most moms feel?

With my first child, I talked up the many wonders of Santa every chance I got.

He understood that Santa had “many helpers” who dressed up as him at stores and such, and then reported children’s wish lists to the big guy back at the North Pole.

He wrote notes to Santa that we mailed. He always received a note back from Santa, in Santa’s unique handwriting, that was left in our house during his visit on Christmas Eve.

I nodded knowingly, telling my boy how amazing this all was.

He believed me. I was his Mommy. Why would I steer him wrong?

Then, he went to kindergarten. He came home one day, absolutely disgusted with some other boys at school, who doubted the Santa story.

“They said there really isn’t a Santa Claus!,” he said, shocked by the thought. “I told them I would go home and ask you, Mommy.”

It was a fork in the road. I didn’t know what to do — except to follow my gut.

“Santa is real, in our hearts,” I told him. Boy, that didn’t cut it.

He was RAGING MAD, that little 5 year old, and when I bring it up today, he gets mad all over again about me “lying” to him about it. He trusted me, he still says with an urgency in his voice, even all these years later.

So, now I have a new baby to anger … um, I mean … share all the joys of Christmas with, and I face this dilemma: What is the “right” way to present Santa?

How do you handle this with your kids???