by Fiona Biedermann (Australia) | Oct 7, 2013 | 2013, Being Thankful, Communication, Economy, Family, Health, Husband, Inspirational, Life Balance, Life Lesson, Motherhood, Oceania, Older Children, Relationships, Stress, Teenagers, Working Mother, World Motherhood
I try to do the right thing most of the time by setting a good example for my teenage / adult children. However, like most mothers, sometimes I’m torn between doing what feels right for me and doing what might be right for the family. I guess that’s because sometimes the two are in direct conflict, or often they seem to be.
On the 9th of August, I walked out of a well-paying job with a company that I’d been with for 12 years. I gave my requisite four weeks’ notice with no job to go to, no immediate plans and only a belief that I had to take the leap because I believed I deserved better.
It was perhaps a little selfish financially in terms of my family, and my husband was totally against me resigning without something else to go to. He had legitimate reasons given that the job market in Australia is considerably flat at the moment, as I’m sure it is in many countries.
I was also worried whether I was setting the right example for my children by just walking away from a good job, I was basically throwing in the towel because things had gotten too hard. My husband is also not a man who likes change, which made my decision even more difficult.
The thing is for many months I felt like I’d been dying inside, I felt like my job was sucking the life out of me. I was working in a company which was under new management and was undergoing massive change and restructuring. The biggest problem was that the importance of change management and communication had gone out the window, things that I hold in very high regard.
Morale had dropped, staff were miserable and were leaving in larger than normal numbers. In the end I decided that my family deserved more than my misery and unhappiness and more than that, so did I. Home was not a happy place for those first few weeks after I resigned, but it hadn’t been for months anyway.
Seven weeks of job searching and plenty of soul searching and I finally have landed the job of my dreams. There are many who voiced their concern and worried about the mistake I was making, those loved ones are now eating their words and telling me that I did the right thing and how brave I was to do it.
My brother recently sent me the following quote, which ironically also arrived in my letterbox in the form of business coaching advertising material in the same week I got the job offer.
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got” Henry Ford
As scary and as uncertain as my decision was, I fully believed in myself and I took the leap. I knew what I wanted and I was determined to find it, plus I was totally prepared to accept whatever might be.
I knew that I may have to take an interim job in the meantime, if that’s what it took to find the right job and still keep my family on track financially.
My decision could have gone pear shaped and turned out badly, but I’m a big believer that sometimes you just have to believe.
The biggest lesson I’ve taught my children is that you have to believe in yourself, fight for what you are worth and be brave enough to follow your dreams. I’m doing exactly that, I’ve landed my dream job with the financial and personal rewards I know I’m worthy of. I’m now excited about going back to work.
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve taught your children and do you back up your words with action?
This is an original World Moms Blog post by Fiona from Inspiration to Dream of Adelaide, South Australia. Fiona can be found writing or reading in every spare moment that isn’t filled up with work and her family.
Image credit Cliparto ID 3130264 – This image is used in compliance with the terms of the Cliparto Standard Royalty Free License Agreement.
Fiona at Inspiration to Dream is a married mother of three amazing and talented MM’s (mere males, as she lovingly calls them) aged 13, 16 and 22, and she became a nana in 2011!
She believes she’s more daunted by becoming a nana than she was about becoming a mother! This Aussie mother figures she will also be a relatively young nana and she’s not sure that she’s really ready for it yet, but then she asks, are we ever really ready for it? Motherhood or Nanahood. (Not really sure that’s a word, but she says it works for her.)
Fiona likes to think of herself as honest and forthright and is generally not afraid to speak her mind, which she says sometimes gets her into trouble, but hey, it makes life interesting. She’s hoping to share with you her trials of being a working mother to three adventurous boys, the wife of a Mr Fix-it who is definitely a man’s man and not one of the ‘sensitive new age guy’ generation, as well as, providing her thoughts and views on making her way in the world.
Since discovering that she’s the first blogger joining the team from Australia, she also plans to provide a little insight into the ‘Aussie’ life, as well. Additionally, Fiona can be found on her personal blog at Inspiration to Dream.
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by Angela Y (USA) | Aug 16, 2013 | Being Thankful, Communication, Domesticity, Family, Grandparent, Home, Humor, Husband, Kids, Life Lesson, Motherhood, Parenting, World Motherhood, Younger Children
My dad is famous for his quotes. Some of them are wise words that we all repeated as children, like “When the sun comes up, it’s time to get up. When the sun goes down, it’s time to lie down.”
Some are spin-offs of known quotes; for example, “The early bird gets the pizza.” (Instead of “The early bird gets the worm.”) In this case he is referring to the leftover pizza in the fridge; it does make a great breakfast the next day, especially with a fried egg on top!
But the saying that my dad is most famous for, that is, amongst our family and friends, is what we have dubbed, “The Rule of Doing.”
The “Rule of Doing” is simple: “The one doing the doing, gets to do it his or her own way.” Simple? Very. Highly logical? Yes. Easy to break. All the time! (more…)
Angela Y. is in her mid-thirties and attempting to raise her two daughters (big girl, R, 3 years; little girl, M, 1 year) with her husband in San Francisco, CA. After spending ten years climbing the corporate ladder, she traded it all in to be a stay-at-home mom! Her perspective of raising a child in the city is definitely different from those who have been city dwellers all their lives, as she grew up in rural Northeastern Pennsylvania (NEPA) surrounded by her extended family.
Angela Y. and her husband are on their own on the west coast of the United States — the only family help they receive is when someone comes for a visit. But, the lifestyle in San Francisco is like no other for them, so there, they stay! This exercise conscious mom is easily recognized, especially when she is riding around her husband-built bike with two seats on the back. And, when she’s not hanging out with the girls, you can find Angela Y. in the kitchen. She loves to cook for her family, especially dessert, and then eats some herself when no one is looking! Sneaky, mom!
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by Ecoziva (Brazil) | Aug 12, 2013 | 2013, Being Thankful, Birthing, Brazil, Child Care, Contraception, Family, Husband, Kids, Life Balance, Life Lesson, Marriage, Milestones, Motherhood, Nature, Parenting, Pregnancy, Working Mother, World Motherhood, Younger Children
It is no secret to those who know me that marrying and having kids wasn’t exactly part of my life plan. I thought someday I might want to, but up to my 24th year of age – which is when I got pregnant with our first child – the feeling hadn’t come up. My husband, on the other hand, wanted to marry and have a bunch of kids from the time he was a teenager!
After a lot of inner work and, above all, after seeing our son’s face for the first time, I fell in love with motherhood. The issue then became: how many children would we actually have? What exactly would be the average between my hesitance and my husband’s “as-many-as-I-can-convince-her-to”?
The answer was part instinct, part serendipity. As a wedding gift, one of my husband’s college professors had a painting made especially for us. The painter did not know us, so (as the story goes) the professor described us as two young, nature-loving, alternative creatures. The piece that resulted – which now hangs right here behind me – portrays a solemn-looking, round-faced couple that is so close they could be Siamese twins. The left hand of each rests on the other’s heart. The girl wears a flower printed dress, has flowers in her hair and a single flower in her hand. The guy wears a suit of sorts. On the side of each of their shoulders is a green, succulent plant, and above each plant is an angel resting on what seems like a marble pillar, one blue, one yellow. Above the couple is a yellow, flying fish.
I was five months pregnant then and had just found out the baby was a boy. The name we chose means “he who tills the earth”. I don’t know who said it first, but we started joking that the blue angel was our boy, the yellow angel was our future second child (a daughter whose name would mean “lady of the waters” in an Indigenous language) and the flying fish would be our youngest (a little boy whose name – a reference to a famous Greek character – would mean “he who balances himself in the air”).
Coincidence or not, here we are almost nine years later with the three of them, born in that order and aged nearly nine, two and a half, and five months. And with the added bonus that both our lady of the waters and our little “flying fish” were born in our tub, to the sign of Pisces!
Having gone through a particularly difficult pregnancy this last time, I constantly tried to convince my husband to undergo a vasectomy. He, however, did not even want to hear about it (like many men I know, he has a huge needle phobia!).
Later, while I was in labor, he said he would do it (talk about good timing!). At that moment I was ecstatic, yet after the baby was born I began to question myself about our decision. I look at that cute little baby (it doesn’t help that he is so calm and sleeps so well!!) and think wistfully, “Oh my, this is the last baby in the house until we have grandkids!” Or now, as the time approaches to start introducing food in addition to nursing, “This is the last time I will be able to smell this pure breast milk breath all the time!” And so on…
My husband of course took advantage of all this and decided to postpone the vasectomy for another two years until I am absolutely sure.
When I stop to really ponder, three seems like a perfect number considering our life style and the way we raise our kids. For instance, we enjoy working from home as much as possible and choose to rely on as little outer help as possible; all of this gets harder with more kids.
Of course, if we “accidentally” did have more children we would find a way. On the other hand, if my husband did undergo a vasectomy and then we later changed our mind, we could adopt (which was a possibility we had considered before having our third child).
Do I really want more kids or am I just attached to this cute baby phase? The truth is, I don’t really know the answer right now! Let’s see what the future has in store…
And you, how many kids do you have? Was it a planned number or did it just happen? How did you decide? Please share your story!
This is an original post to World Moms Blog from our enviro-mama and mother of three in Brazil, EcoZiva.
The photograph used in this post is of the referenced painting commissioned for the author and her husband. It was submitted by the author.
Eco, from the greek oikos means home; Ziva has many meanings and roots, including Hebrew (brilliance, light), Slovenian (goddess of life) and Sanskrit (blessing). In Brazil, where EcoZiva has lived for most of her life, giving birth is often termed “giving the light”; thus, she thought, a mother is “home to light” during the nine months of pregnancy, and so the penname EcoZiva came to be for World Moms Blog.
Born in the USA in a multi-ethnic extended family, EcoZiva is married and the mother of two boys (aged 12 and three) and a five-year-old girl and a three yearboy. She is trained as a biologist and presently an university researcher/professor, but also a volunteer at the local environmental movement.
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by Kyla P'an (Portugal) | Jul 29, 2013 | 2013, Family, Family Travel, Humor, Husband, International, Kids, Travel, USA, Vacationing, World Motherhood, Younger Children
Our luggage for a three-week trip to Europe for a family of four
We just returned from a family trip to Europe. It was the first time we took our kids, ages 7 and 4, on an overseas vacation and we wanted to be sure to make the most of the experience. Right from the outset, we did two very un-American things: 1) we took more than two weeks off for the trip, and 2) we packed really, really light. For four people on a three-week vacation we took just three carry-ons and one back pack.
Possibly demanding even more attention than our travel itinerary, our luggage became a bit of an obsession for my husband.
When we decided to take my cousin and his wife up on their invitation to visit them in Poland, we wanted to be as economical as possible, both about getting to Europe and traveling within it. Thanks to my husband’s frequent cross-country business trips over the past two years and the added perk that his company’s European headquarters is in Cork, Ireland, we were able to cover three of our four tickets without spending a dime. We figured once we got to Ireland, like well-traveled Europeans, we’d rely on discount airlines to get us where we wanted to go.
The challenge became figuring out which carriers would get us where we wanted to go for the least amount of money. From Ireland, we wanted to get to Poland, and from Poland, we wanted to fly to London. Then from London, once more to Ireland, for our return flight home.
Ryanair, a notorious (and insidious), Irish, discount carrier was top on our list for cheap flights. Following a close second was Easy Jet.
Though Ryanair has incredibly low prices—we bought tickets from Cork, Ireland to Warsaw, Poland for US$70 per person—they also have ridiculously restrictive carry-on luggage requirements. This is how they are stated on the Ryanair website:
“Strictly one item of cabin baggage per passenger (excluding infants) weighing up to 10kg with maximum dimensions of 55cm x 40cm x 20cm is permitted. (handbag, briefcase, laptop, shop purchases, camera etc.) must be carried in your 1 permitted piece of cabin baggage.”
If your carry-on does NOT meet these requirements or fit in the miniature luggage cage positioned
by the Ryanair ticket counters and flight gates, then these are the penalties:
Extra/oversized cabin baggage will be refused at the boarding gate, or where available, placed in the hold of the aircraft for a fee of £60/€60. Fees are subject to VAT on Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German domestic routes at applicable government rates. If you are unsure, check at the Bag Drop desk before going through security.
In other words, if your luggage doesn’t pass, at the gate you may be forced to pay as much as or more than your actual flight ticket to check the offending item.
I’m pretty sure Ryanair caters to the weekend travel crowd, whose weekend’s worth of necessities easily fall within these parameters but for a family of four on a European sojourn, the restrictions were crippling.
The restrictions caused two dilemmas for us. The first dilemma was that the standard size of all US carry-on suitcases exceeds Ryanair dimensions. In fact, after browsing multiple websites and purchasing and returning two, new carry-ons, we could not seem to find wheeled luggage small or light enough to fit their limitations. The second dilemma was that without wheels, our children were not old enough nor strong enough to carry their own luggage. Meaning that everything we needed for our three-week trip would have to be carried by my husband and me.
Armed with a tape measure and digital luggage scale, my husband became a man possessed by the Ryanair luggage restrictions.
Our packing list went from vacation-size to commando-style. Each of us was rationed: five tops (two long sleeve, three short), four bottoms (two pants, two shorts or skirts), seven under garments, three pairs of socks, two pairs of shoes, one sweater, a swimsuit and a travel-raincoat.
Added to this were toiletries, my husband’s laptop computer, business attire for the days he needed to put in at the Cork office (including a sports coat and a pair of dress shoes), entertainment items for the kids (foam-weight, modeling clay; travel journals; crayons; a travel game; a deck of cards; markers), a DSLR camera, and a tablet computer loaded with books, two movies and a variety of travel apps.
We divided these items among our backpack and three small bags, weighed and measured each one…twice. Then stood on our bathroom scale and weighed them again. When we were pretty confident that our luggage met the size and weight requirments—dictated most restrictively by Ryanair—my husband added a contingency plan, which involved wearing all of our heaviest and bulkiest clothing items on travel days.
We were determined to travel small, light-weight and efficient, just like our European counterparts.
So though Ryanair set the stage for our minimalist luggage, thankfully, we only flew one flight with them. In comparison, Easy Jet was a luxury liner with far less restrictive rules and the three other regional carriers we flew even allowed passengers to check items, free-of-charge.
Considering the stress that packing for our trip caused up front, in the end, it was a great lesson in minimalist travel:
- confined to a week’s worth of clothes, we were able to do laundry twice on our trip.
- With careful and clever planning, our clothing choices yielded 21 different wardrobe combinations, preventing us from looking like we had on the same outfits in the copious number of pictures we snapped.
- The time we spent in airports was significantly reduced by the lack of our need to wait at the luggage claim each time.
- And, perhaps most rewarding, we’d like to think we blended in with other European travelers, rather than sticking out like typical boisterous Americans on holiday.
This is an original post for World Moms Blog by our Managing Editor and mom of two in Massachusetts, Kyla P’an.
Photos credited to the author.
Kyla was born in suburban Philadelphia but spent most of her time growing up in New England. She took her first big, solo-trip at age 14, when she traveled to visit a friend on a small Greek island. Since then, travels have included: three months on the European rails, three years studying and working in Japan, and nine months taking the slow route back from Japan to the US when she was done. In addition to her work as Managing Editor of World Moms Network, Kyla is a freelance writer, copy editor, recovering triathlete and occasional blogger. Until recently, she and her husband resided outside of Boston, Massachusetts, where they were raising two spunky kids, two frisky cats, a snail, a fish and a snake. They now live outside of Lisbon, Portugal with two spunky teens and three frisky cats. You can read more about Kyla’s outlook on the world and parenting on her personal blogs, Growing Muses And Muses Where We Go
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by Ewa Samples | Jul 12, 2013 | 2013, Babies, Communication, Domesticity, Family, Husband, Kids, Life Balance, Life Lesson, Maternal Health, Motherhood, Polish Mom Photographer, Relationships, World Motherhood, Younger Children
A few months ago, while waiting in our laundry room, I saw some magazines left on the table. I picked one of them and started flipping through. Being in a not so very happy period of my life, one article drew my attention: Give yourself a happiness makeover. Beneath the title: Longevity expert, Dan Buettner traveled the globe to discover what makes people happiest. This caught my attention more than the title itself.
Essentially it was an article about how to improve your happiness in 10 steps. I normally don’t read that crap but then I thought: what the heck, it won’t hurt me.
So here are a few steps listed in this article:
- “Make the most of your mornings.”: CHECKED. Two kids (one newborn), three if counting husband, four if counting a recent (at that time) addition of a high-maintenance puppy to our family. I didn’t even remember my mornings…I didn’t even remember my name!
- “Stop spending; start saving.”: Don’t have much to spend or save, I thought. CHECKED.
- “Get a daily dose of friends.”: Well, I have 303 friends on Facebook…CHECKED, right?
There was even advice for those who don’t go to church: “Start going.” Duh!
Anyway, the list went on, and then, there it was, the golden advice: “Gain Peace With a Pooch.” Now it got more interesting! (more…)
Ewa was born, and raised in Poland. She graduated University with a master's degree in Mass-Media Education. This daring mom hitchhiked from Berlin, Germany through Switzerland and France to Barcelona, Spain and back again!
She left Poland to become an Au Pair in California and looked after twins of gay parents for almost 2 years. There, she met her future husband through Couch Surfing, an international non-profit network that connects travelers with locals.
Today she enjoys her life one picture at a time. She runs a photography business in sunny California and document her daughters life one picture at a time.
You can find this artistic mom on her blog, Ewa Samples Photography, on Twitter @EwaSamples or on Facebook!
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by Mamma Simona (South Africa) | Jul 10, 2013 | Divorce, Friendship, Husband, International, Living Abroad, Marriage, Moving, Relationships, South Africa, Uncategorized, World Motherhood
On 15 May I wrote a post about searching for an old boyfriend, which caused a few of my awesome fellow WMB moms to don their detective hats. They helped me find two possible addresses for the man I was looking for. After much soul-searching, I eventually decided to send a letter to each address. Just over two weeks ago, I printed the letters, added a copy of my blog post (as well as a copy of the last poem he’d sent me) to each envelope and invested 25 rand in postage fees. I was told that the letters would take approximately 14 days to reach America.
To be perfectly honest, I didn’t really expect a reply. Imagine my surprise when exactly 2 weeks after mailing my letters, I found an email in my inbox from “my” Campbell T Fisher Jr (aka Toby)! (more…)
Mamma Simona was born in Rome (Italy) but has lived in Cape Town (South Africa) since she was 8 years old. She studied French at school but says she’s forgotten most of it! She speaks Italian, English and Afrikaans. Even though Italian is the first language she learned, she considers English her "home" language as it's the language she's most comfortable in. She is happily married and the proud mother of 2 terrific teenagers! She also shares her home with 2 cats and 2 dogs ... all rescues.
Mamma Simona has worked in such diverse fields as Childcare, Tourism, Library Services, Optometry, Sales and Admin! (With stints of SAHM in-between). She’s really looking forward to the day she can give up her current Admin job and devote herself entirely to blogging and (eventually) being a full-time grandmother!
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