On my sleeve in Magic Marker

One of my friends tells me that I need to blog about the current state of child care in our house.

On the one hand, it does seem like the situation could be fodder for some delightful I-told-you-so(s).

On the other hand, I am genuinely hopeful that I am (instead) pleasantly surprised.

The last time I checked in about childcare, we were interviewing au pairs* to take the place of our nanny. Our nanny has been an AMAZINGLY wonderful fit who has made my transition from SAHM to full-time WOHM smoother than we could have ever hoped.

However, she is pregnant and expecting in March. Our last day with her was last Friday. It was a sad day for everyone. The kids loved her, we loved her, and I think she even thought we were an okay bunch.

(*Just to clarify, I use the term babysitter or nanny to refer to someone who comes to our house on a daily basis to take care of the kids. An au pair, however, is a young person between the ages of 18-26, from a foreign country, who would live at our home for one year and provide childcare services in exchange for a combination of room and board, college courses, and a small weekly stipend.)

Fritz and I have had a hard time deciding what we should do. The babysitter's pay takes up more than half of my salary after taxes. She costs about the same amount as an au pair, but works about half the number of hours. Our first thought was to find an au pair. Even after our struggles with Lucy last year, there's something really appealing about having a third set of hands (always) around the house to help out. We don't have grandparents or aunts or uncles nearby, so it's really hard to catch a break. I mean: of course, we can always hire a babysitter – but not for less than $80 and 4 hours. And we can ask friends – but how much are we willing/able to rely on other people's generosity? Even after 10 years, we acutely feel the weight of not having immediate family nearby. There was something magical about being able to leave the kids for 30 minutes and run a quick errand with Fritz when Lucy was here. In our current life, without an au pair, we don't have that. Whenever we want some adult together time, it's a huge production of preparation and money.

Also, remember all that work I put into getting the house ready for Lucy? We are all set up to host an au pair! (Trixie and my brother and my father and) I invested so much time and energy in getting things ready. Sometimes, I stand in our unused au pair room and feel sort of sick about all my un-utilized effort.

Well, okay, confession: *I* felt strongly about trying an au pair again. I thought we'd make a bit of a break from Lucy and try a male au pair. I hoped a male might have more energy and athleticism to keep up with my busy crew. Noah strongly supported a male au pair, too. He's at that age where he really craves male role models. I also saw the au pair as a means to completing some of more personal desires:
1) Passing off my morning wrangler and chauffeur routine. Right now, I spend the hours between 5:30am - 8:30am getting everybody and everything ready and driven to their appropriate destinations.  and...
2) Wow! Maybe I'd find some time to start running or rowing again in the morning! THAT would be awesome. and...
3) I also thought maybe Fritz and I could have some regular date nights. I really miss being with Fritz without the kids around.

Fritz, however, had other ideas. After a fair amount of hemming and hawing about the au pairs we were interviewing, he decided that HE would start taking care of the kids.

In order to do this, he would go into work every morning by 5am. That would allow him to leave work at 1pm to pick up Trixie. Then he'd spend the afternoon with Trixie, Mattias, and Noah.

Um.

(Day #2 of Fritz-care: Noah makes apple tarts)

The plan got more elaborate: Fritz started talking about how much he was looking forward to this. And how he was going to teach the kids to clean up after themselves. And how he was going to run errands in the afternoon so we no longer have to fit all our grocery shopping into the weekends and evenings. And Fritz was going to get all the laundry done before the weekend. And he was going to work with Noah on his writing and typing! And he was going to teach Noah to cook. And how Noah and Fritz were going to make a Youtube cooking station for kids.

I was like, Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Sounds great, honey!

But inside I was thinking: Can't we just have date nights and quick runs to the grocery store together and time for me to run in the morning?

To my friends, I said, "I think he's having a midlife crisis that involves large amounts of time taking care of the children, so I should just count myself as lucky, right?"

The problem is NOT that I don't trust Fritz. I do. I think he might need to lower his expectations a wee bit...but I do think this plan is great for the kids. And probably good for him, too.

The problem is that *I* want more time with Fritz. Is this plan good for us, as a couple? Um, maybe not. This plan, if anything, gives us less time together. If our first week is any indication, this new schedule is going to be grueling.

Sometimes I'm tired of being tough and responsible and always putting the kids first. I just want more time with my husband. (And I want to fit in a morning run, you know?)

Feather Weight

The other night I came home to a Shadow Puppet Theater Performance.

It was a rare moment of lightness in a week that has felt heavy.

I've been rather overdosing listening to R.E.M., which I am prone to do when I'm feeling worried, and I've got the lyrics "feathers hit the ground before the weight can leave the air" stuck in my head.

One of my undergraduate professors passed away last week. He is the second professor of mine to pass away in the last year. I'm surprised by the amount of impact I've felt when I learned of (both of) their passings.

This particular professor had a habit of thinking about his architecture students' projects in his off hours. If he knew something about your project – perhaps because you were in his studio class, or perhaps simply because he had listened to you present your project at a design review – he might stop you in the corridor and say,

"I was thinking about your project last night and I drew up this little sketch..."

And then he'd share some new insight that you had not thought of yourself. It was really cool. As a student, you were impressed as hell that someone was actually thinking about your silly hypothetical project. But also, the fact that he'd take the time to find you and talk to you about it was truly an honor.

I need to find a way to do some sort of equivalent gesture to people in my life. I'm not a professor, and I don't have students...so I'm going to have to put a little bit of thought into how to translate it.

Chalked it up to design

Some day, I would very much like to have my own architecture firm. I would like to have a smaller, design oriented firm with about 5 employees. As such, I'm constantly observing from my lowly spot and thinking about things that work and don't work for me as an employee. Here are some of my observations:

The key to working as a team is less about finding people who "work well in a team" and more about finding people who are able to communicate enthusiastically and openly about what they are doing.

I have worked with both lone wolves – the sort who like to do everything themselves – and masterful delegators – who can't stop themselves from piling the work on others. Both of these types of people can be successful on a team provided that they talk and share information. Just to clarify: I don't mean people who talk in detail about what they made for dinner last night or the antics of their cat or their kid's soccer game. I mean: people who talk about the work at hand. This could include anything from what a particular project means to them, to why they are making the decisions they are making, to what they heard from so-and-so and how it relates to such-and-such task. This talk needs to more more than the stuff of meetings, but also the idle conversation at the water cooler.

Communication is the primary way we assign value in a work setting. If project specific information is not flowing among the members of a team, it is impossible to gauge value and significance. If one person is not part of the communication flow, they start to feel insignificant pretty quickly. An insignificant team member stops being a team member. On the other hand, if you want to get rid of someone quickly, this is a good strategy: stop communicating with them.

There's also a balancing of communication that needs to occur on any team between those in leadership roles and those at the bottom. Another way to think of this is mentorship. Mentorship is so important for the growth of ideas, efficiency, and people.

One common strategy I've seen at architecture firms is to task in pairs with different experience levels. For example, there may be a team of 4 people working on a project. Whenever there is meeting, two people are sent to the meeting: one senior, one junior. Sending only two people means there are never too many cooks. It also helps to clarify responsibilities. If ONLY two people go to a meeting, they are held accountable for reporting back about the meeting to the others. There's less likely to be a situation where everyone sits in a meeting, but nobody takes notes. The pairing of 2 also  gives the junior person a chance to learn and the senior person a chance to lead. The leading part is every bit as important as the learning part. If the senior person is merely participating alone, they aren't forced to process the information in the same way. You know that saying? If you really want to learn something, teach someone else to do it? Such is the case here. But almost as important as being the teacher, is the opportunity to be the leader.

Alternatively, I've seen firms use the opposite strategy of always sending the two most senior people to meetings. This generally does not promote growth or learning or leadership. It tends to stop the flow of information by creating a barrier between those in the know and those on the outside. Firms that pair by seniority often tend to lack efficiency and standards in their business model: probably because there's not enough communication between the employees who are managing and the employees are who are actively doing. Privileging seniority is also a great way to end up with weak – or nonexistent – leaders.

I've rarely seen anyone capable of working effectively on more than two projects at a time. Whether it is the firm owner or an employee, dividing someone's time in more than two directions has more negative impacts than positive. If you've been reading this blog for a while, than you know that I even feel this way about children in families. As such, I do realize that sometimes it is simply unavoidable. You WILL be pulled in three – or more! – directions. In these times, it is terribly important to be able to step back and figuratively hand the reigns over to someone you trust. And that's when you should feel really confident about the leadership qualities you've been cultivating in your employees.

I'm always shy about adopting such a prescriptive tone on this blog. But I think it might be pretty useful to me in the future, so I'll leave it for now. Any other thoughts?