I had a fantastic seasoned moms group last week and I am so excited.  First of all I should say what a seasoned mom is.  It's basically a smaller group of women in Mothers & More with school-aged kids.  Some have teenagers and young kids, some have babies, and an older child, and I have two elementary aged kids.  We get together and share our experiences, and sometimes it's a set topic like "How to handle bullies.", and sometimes it's all about the mom. 

 Right now I joined a group of seasoned moms that get together every two weeks to go through a book by Cheryl Richardson called "Life Makeovers".  I like the way the book is set up.  You read a chapter every week, and you have homework from the book.  Week 10 was "Stop Juggling and Start Living".  Our take action challenge was to consider all the "balls" you are juggling in life and pick one to "drop".  Then look at how it impacts your life.  In other words, it 's a way to drop an activity that is not a priority, but sucks time from the activities you really want to focus on.  The book gives us permission to "Drop the ball" on an activity that is keeping us from focusing on our family or ourselves.  Life won't end if I don't volunteer for every field trip at school, or every art class. 

 This week is "Check under the Hood" week.  In previous chapters we have identified our goals.  Now we need to check under the hood and find out what kind of person we need to be to accomplish that goal.  She breaks it down into 4 steps:

1.Identify someone doing what you want to do successfully:  For me this is a person juggling a career and family.

2. List 3 qualities that contribute to that person success:  I am thinking of: 1.organization, 2. supportive husband, 3. a calm cool and collected personality.

3. Pick one of those qualities that you need to develop.   Well, I think I need organization, and calmness....

4.  Look for practical ways to develop this quality.  I need to develop the systems to handle the kids schedule as well as my own, with back-ups in case of emergencies.

 This week's homework is a tough one for me.  As a stay-at-home mom of 8 years it's difficult to imagine what systems need to be in place to handle all the kids school work, play dates, and extracurricular activities, as well as a career.  I am concerned that I will fail my family if I go back to work.  I think it's mostly the fear of the unknown though, and perhaps if I worked on organizing how this would work day to day, I might ease my mind. 

Well, time to get organized!

Nancy Donahue