A year ago, to the trepidation and cautious excitement of my family and friends, I gained a business partner.

This week, Kirsty and I got the keys to an office, and have been painting and cleaning like crazed bees for the past three days (thus the quietness around here).

What a year. We now publish a monthly community magazine in my hometown, build websites, social media training & graphic design and of course Durham Region Kids.

I’ve never been more terrified or excited in my life. I feel like I did on the cusp of labour with my girls: scared, hopeful, excited, worried, elated…and the most exhausted I’ve been since the newborn days!

Much is revolving around this office. We hope more organization, more ideas, more continuity, downtown exposure, professionalism, time saving, more projects. Eric is in the background screaming, “AND MORE MONEY! MONIES WOULD BE NICE!” ‘Cause no matter what they say, holyhannah being self employed really only pays around 10 cents/hour.

But how many of us can say we love our jobs? Are truly doing what they want to do? A year ago, I was contemplating going to work at a golf course filling divets just to bring some money in but still be close to my girls. Tomorrow I will drive to my very own place of employment and do incredibly fulfilling work with the only woman I’ve ever met who so passionately and clumsily and successfully attacks projects and life in the same way I do. Maybe even, eventually, for 20 CENTS/hour.

I hope all of you, in some measure, are doing what you love. Even if it’s only in a hobby form for now. As my good friend and motivator Corrie keeps saying to me on our morning walks: You can’t get to the top of the mountain by standing at the bottom.

If you’ve tried and have not won,
Never top for crying.
All that’s good and great is done,
Just by patient trying.

If by easy work you win,
Who the more will prize you?
Gaining victory from defeat,
That’s the test that tries you.
-poem I learned as a kid and randomly recite in my head each week

They say that after seven years together, couples get the seven year itch.

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Tonight. Girls in a MOOD. Post-weekend crabiness. Lucy got a time out for *ppplbt*ing at me after I told her to stop colouring for dinner. Alice grabbed at the hot stove, emptied three kitchen drawers and pitched the HUGEST tantrum (at my feet in front of said hot stove among the contents of said drawers) when I refused to dole out another cup of milk.

(Now I’M in a mood. And yelly.)

I call Eric my wind of calm. He arrives home from work, and the chaos almost instantly alleviates. The girls are distracted by him, there’s one more set of hands to headlock handle dinner battles, and his patience is fresh from his drive home…and untainted by 1.5 hours of 2-under-5 (years)-around-5 (p.m.) drama.

We get through the girls’ dinner. We go see my new office space, yelling at each other over Lucy and Alice screeching, giggling, tripping and throwing drywall dust in the air. We grab Thai as a treat to eat after the girls are in bed.

And when they are, we literally collapse on the couch, plates on our lap, to watch some trashy TV. We grin in the triumph of silence.
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He calls me a donkey. I pretend to stab his ear with kitchen scissors. He makes fun of my canning (“Glad we’re all stocked for the long, harsh winter with our NINE JARS OF RELISH AND PICKLES.”) and I his taste (“How can you tell if that melon is rotten when your claim to fame is once eating sour milk on cereal for three days?“).

We like to wrestle. He hates spit so I always lick him and win.

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Seven years ago at this time, we were tipsy on love, Jackson Triggs dry white wine, and the most perfect wedding ever surrounded by family and friends.

My Eric: Thanks for keeping all my itches scratched. Happy anniversary.

Squee! Vacay!

This weekend we start our much-anticipated, Internet-free family vacation, which is why it’s been so quiet here this week. We’re all desperately trying to get our work done so we can not work! Then come home and make up for not working!

Hope all is well with everyone. Looking forward to returning refreshed and rejuvenated and ready to tackle a ton of new and exciting projects here and over there and there.

Happy summer!

Carly, Eric, Lucy, Alice and Spencer Dog

Downstairs in the basement we have a whiteboard. It’s in our laundry room beside the dryer, and is filled with check boxes beside various to-do items: paint the bathroom, fix the burn-out lights in the hallway, make and birth a baby (Alice!) etc. We started it a few weeks after we moved in to our house in the Boonies in 2007, and it’s almost all complete (we need to take a pic and start a new one, three years later).

One of the items is launch daycare site. And that we did in the late summer of 2008. Durham Region Daycare went live in September 2008. I started it after struggling to find daycare for Lucy. Word of mouth just wasn’t working, and other sites out there were poorly designed, hard to navigate and very out of date.

One of my mantras in life — and for most mothers, I think! — is that if someone isn’t doing it (or doing a good job), I’ll do it myself.

We paid my uber-talented sister, Michele, built the database from scratch, eventually using it for her thriving Quilt Shop Locator site.

Despite some bumps along the way — including an angry phone call from one competitor, absolutely incensed that we had the audacity to start something remotely similar to their own site — Durham Region Daycare thrived.

But after Alice, after Uxbridge Town Talk, after Sweet World Media, the site became a huge stress point. Unfortunately the hours in the day are finite, and it kept getting pushed to the bottom of the list.

I knew the time had come to say goodbye.

So now my second baby — after this site — is in the hands of a wonderful home daycare provider from Oshawa named Tamara. She was my number one supporter from the start and as the site grew, and I’m so thrilled Durham Region Daycare is with someone who works daycare, who adores kids, who genuinely wants to see it succeed as it should.

Tamara will be posting about crafts, adding new providers, sending email newsletters (here’s a great one today about men in daycare) and more. If you’re looking for childcare in Durham, I hope you’ll continue to use this free resource site for parents.

I was going to write about watching planes yesterday. Or the definition of you outside of being a parent and woman. Or the story of green soup from the weekend.

I was going to do two interviews for Uxbridge Town Talk. I was going to make a great Monday night dinner with leftovers for our now busy Tuesday night.

Instead, Alice woke up with her eyes almost completely crusted shut, covered in green…yucks, swollen and red. Yesterday we wiped fluorescent green discharge from her eyes all day, but hoped it was just a virus that would be gone in the morning.

Nope: Double pink eye.

Today I carted her to a photograph for an ad, and a meeting shortly after. My business partner and I worked the phones and email together while Alice watched Baby Einstein and snacked on fruit strips. She had a quasi-nap while Kirsty was here so I could meet with an important advertiser. Then we went to the walk-in clinic. Shopped downtown. Went to the library. To a contest winner’s house to surprise her. To daycare to pick up Lucy.

It was madness. Alice was exhausted at bed. I AM exhausted. We got home and were getting dinner ready when Alice had a GIANT poop that leaked, well, everywhere. Immediate bath time with poop on her hands and floating in the water.

(Thank goodness Lucy is 4 and so damn helpful. She ran around all calm and got us plastic bags, wipes, face cloths and clean clothes. My Little Mommy!)

But what an example of working motherhood today was. I am proud of  me (or us) and all we got done, considering. Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do, right?

Sad, sad Doodies. Today with more crusties.