The monkeys learned the song My Funny Valentine at preschool for Valentine’s day. (I love the monkey’s preschool!) They’ve been singing it for a few weeks now, and I’m finally learning the words. But between the three of us, we all mess up the song almost all of the time. Tonight at dinner, the wrong word led to screams and shouts.

I don’t know about you but screams and shouts are two of my least favorite things to have for dinner. So I decided to put a stop to the arguing by listening to the song on You Tube. We listened to this version by Chet Baker, this one by Etta James, and this really great oneby AJ, who I’ve never heard of.

Listening to different variations, we heard different singers use a few different words and treat the vocals very differently. I tried to tell the monkeys that these variations are what makes music interesting. I talked about how different singers interpret the song differently, and that’s what makes it interesting. How you can learn from each version, or listen to them all and decide which one you like best. I promoted this approach to listening to and making music over their current approach, which involves screaming and fighting over whether the words are “is your finger less than Greek” or “is your figure less than Greek.” 

But I have to admit I was  talking for the sake of pleasing myself, instead of actually teaching them anything.

As music novices, they’re still sticklers for rules. They learned the song one way and that’s how it goes. As they get better at singing, and learn more songs, they’ll become more comfortable trying varying approaches. But not until then.

It’s kind of like how it’s often harder to work with a client who is new to an organization than it is to work with someone who has learned the rules and knows which ones can and should be bent. Or like how a seasoned researcher can divert from textbook research methodologies and still get insights that are interesting and valid, because she knows the rules that underlie the methodologies, and therefore can alter the way the research looks without altering how it works. But someone who is new to the field will tell you that things  MUST BE DONE A CERTAIN WAY.

With experience, comes appreciation of variation and diversity. When you’re still learning something, that variation is confusing and consistency reigns. It was fun watching all the videos, and the monkeys did enjoy them. But I’m still going to have to weigh in and resolve the argument: it’s figure, not finger. Go figure.

“Mommy, if you and me, and Monkey #2 are in the potty, we can say butt,” proclaims Monkey #1.I’m trying to teach them that some words are OK at home, but not in public. “Yes, we can say butt at home, in the potty.”

“But if we’re in the potty with Lucy, we can say butt,” he continues.

“Well,” I said, first of all, “you shouldn’t really be in the potty with Lucy. But if you are, it’s kind of public, because she’s not family, so you shouldn’t say butt.” I know, it’s shoddy logic, but it’s been a long day.

“Well I want Lucy to be family,” says Monkey #1. “She can be family, even though we don’t live together.”

“Not really,” I say, “If you want Lucy to be family, one of you has to marry her.” Between Cinderella, The Sound of Music and 2 family weddings this fall, the monkeys are pretty into the idea of weddings.

“I’ll marry Lucy,” says Monkey #2.

“OK,” I say. “That makes you, Monkey #1, Lucy’s brother-in-law. And you, Monkey #2, her husband.”
“What does a husband do?” says Monkey #2.
“Daddy is my husband. What does he do?”
“Cooks,” he replies. “But I don’t want to just cook.”"Ok,” I say, ‘you can also…take out the trash.”
“I want to work,” says Monkey #2, earnestly. Then he thinks for a second, “but I don’t have a computer.”

I must admit I’m quite pleased that my son wants to be a husband who cooks and works. I’m sure Lucy won’t mind taking out the trash.

 I find that those are the days when I overeat, snacking not because I’m hungry but because I need an excuse to walk downstairs. I’m trying to shift those snacking breaks into less caloric forays. If I need to take a walk downstairs, I could just as easily do it with my arms full of laundry – which has the added benefit of getting laundry done. Or, if I just need a mental break, I’ll allow myself 5 minutes to check out the blogs I read, or watch a video at Momversation. These 3-5 minute video conversations between mommy bloggers are always kind of funny and sometimes even informative.

I’m pretty sure that replacing real snacks with virutal snacks will impact my waistline. Hopefully it won’t kill my productivity.

And really, I’m not sure why I said it. They’re not afraid of him, and really, he was working at a cafe. What was he going to do?

I must have gotten it from my mom, who would routinely make the same threat. While it might have been somewhat more effective, because my dad was much more removed from the day-to-day  parenting than Mr. Daddy is, it couldn’t have really been that effective. After all, in the house where I grew up, my dad was the softie and my mom was the disciplinarian. It’s a good bet that had my mom called my dad, he would have been as likely to brush her off or talk her down from her anger as he would have been to punish me.

I can only guess that my mom was doing the same thing I was, using a threat that her mom used. And from what I know about my grandmother and grandfather, I’m guessing that the ‘I’m going to call your father’ threat was actually effective three generations ago. I think my grandfather could be pretty scary when he wanted to be.

This kind of passing on of tactics from one generation to another doesn’t just happen in households, it happens in offices, too. Just as I learned how to parent – both how to parent well and how to parent less well – from my own parents, I learned how to manage and lead from those people who have managed and led me. And I’ve got to say, I think I’ve had better role models in the house than in the office.

Either way, though, it’s really easy to find yourself parroting a voice that you heard long ago. We think of legacy systems as technology or organizational structure, but there are implicit ‘systems’ of leading and managing that get passed on in organizations, too.

As a parent, I feel like it’s my job to make sure that the monkeys don’t resort to an ‘I’m going to call your mother,’ when they’re trying to wrangle their kids. And I think most parents are already pretty concious about not repeating what we see as our parent’s mistakes. As a leader, I feel like I need make sure that I’m equally concious of not repeating the mistakes of mediocre or bad leaders or managers that I’ve encountered during my career.

We talked about it a lot the next day. How there’s only 1 mommy and 2 sick boys, and I needed to try to be with both.

Monkey #2 said, ‘I wish there two mommies.’ Monkey #1 seems to be a bit better at conceptual math. ‘Next time, each of us could have half a mommy and half a daddy to sleep with us. That would work.’

Not willing to be outdone by his brother, Monkey #2 topped him with this: ‘If we had 100 mommies, a few could sleep with each of us, some could sleep with daddy, some could sleep with Misha and some could sleep in the basement.’

And some could cook dinner, and some could fold laundry, and some could work. I’m liking that last plan.

Here’s what I planned to do:
Blog every day
Reflect on the past year, create goals for the new year
Exercise frequently
Hang out with Brett
Host a party
Have friends over for dinner
Go out
Read some business books, some novels

Here’s what I actually did:
Wrote 3 draft blog entries; published none
Reflected for a total of about 2 hours
Read 5 novels, 1 nonfiction book, 0 business books
Exercised about 5 times
Hosted 1 party, 1 cocktail hour, 3 dinner parties, 1 play date
Went out with friends
Played 7 games of Zingo, 2 games of Ned’s Head
Acted in 8 performances of Jack and The Beanstalk
Cleaned the house about 6 times (see hosted)
Saw 1 movie at a theater, 4 movies on DVD
Went to 4 parties

There was a lot more play and socializing than I expected, and a lot less writing and reflection. It’s amazing that even if you set priorities in advance, your true priorities will emerge in the doing.

As someone who agitates for things to look and feel different, it’s a big deal to shift to a mindset where growth doesn’t always mean that you’ve changed a situation, but it can mean that you’ve changed your response to the situation.

Happy New Year, readers! More soon.

Cleaning up rocket ship debris

From the bed

Hidden among the crumbs

Endless rain falls outside

As we trample

From room to room

Trying to entertain, and engage, and play, and referee

I finish the last bits

Of work for the year

and then

I finally shower at 4

Today, I’m going to accomplish both of them. But to do so, I knew I needed a change in venue. So I’m writing from the local coffee shop. I’ve treated myself to a latte and I’m not leaving until I make concrete progress on both items.

A break in routine or a new environment can be just the physical change you need to change your mental frame around accomplishing a daunting task (or two). Now, I’m off to accomplish my goals. Just as soon as I finish blogging.

1) Being highly involved with your kids and your career means that you sometimes have to temper your ambitions.
I read Baby Makes Three (and Book Makes Four), the story of Alexandra Levit’s joyful birth of her first baby and her latest book in the same month, with interest and empathy. I freqently find myself in situations were I feel I need to temper my career ambitions so that I can protect my time with my monkeys. And I’m frequently unsure if I’m doing the right thing. But, like Levit, most of the time I feel lucky to have a career I enjoy and a pair of loving monkeys who I get to raise. 

2) It is possible to create a good situation for juggling family and work before you have kids. But it’s about demonstrating your value, not setting a schedule.
Levit writes that the advice from her mentors was to not worry about juggling family and work until her children were born. Only then, according to the advice, would she know what she wanted. She ignored that advice and is grateful that she did. I think that the advice was partly right and that ignoring it was partly right.

It is true that you don’t really know how you’ll feel about working vs. staying at home until you’re a parent. I’d even go as far as to say that even once your kids are born, you may change your mind a few times over the course of several years.

Which is why it is good to partially ignore that advice. Clearly establishing your value to employers, clients, or anyone else who who matters before you have children will most likely buy you the flexibility you need to figure things out after you have kids. It doesn’t mean you’ll know what works. It just means you’ll be more likely to be able to figure out an arrangement that works.

3) It’s easy to focus all your energy on your work and your kids. But if you don’t spend time on yourself, you won’t be the only one to suffer.
I did start to get a little worried about Levit, though, as I finished the article. She writes that with limited time to spend with her son and limited time to work, she has to maximize every moment. That includes not going to the gym or grabbing a coffee. This worries me because what I’m reading between the lines is that Levit is making time for work and for her family, but not for herself. I think that’s an unsustainable bargain, and one that’s likely to leave her depleted. Instead, I’d recommend that she make time to also do things just for herself. And I’d bet that they’ll somehow end up energizing her work and her interactions with her son.