Welcome to The Mother Juggle!
This blog is for all multi-tasking moms out there who juggle careers and kids, laundry and lunches, relationships and recreation; the endless to-do lists of our crazy lives. Sometimes we want to step off the merry-go-round and crawl into a dark and quiet room. Other days, it all works and we’re rocking and rolling and getting where we need to be… on time… and with the right gear.
Right after I had my first baby, I vented to a more experienced mom about how busy I was and how I no longer had time for myself. She looked at me askance, and informed me that I was only going to get busier from here. Impossible, I thought. Hah! I had no idea. Seventeen years and two more babies later, I’m now at a whole new level of busy that I didn’t even know existed.
These days I’m less about diapers and childcare and more about curfews and cell-phone plans. The extra-curricular activities have taken on a life of their own, as have those teenage appetites for both sustenance and consumer products. And motherhood is only one of my full-time jobs; let’s not forget the one that pays the bills. I work in the IT industry where computers never sleep… I don’t sleep much either. While I wouldn’t have missed this ride for anything, sometimes I do envy my childfree friends their immaculate homes, uncluttered schedules and disposable incomes.
Moms, mums and mamas; wherever we are in the world, we all gain survival techniques and huge gobs of experience along the way. Let’s share and help each other on our journeys with tips, discussion and advice… or just some good old venting. Let’s have a laugh or two along the way. Let’s enjoy the juggle together.
Bio
A native of Scotland, Sally Grattidge has lived and worked on three continents. Upon completing a degree in mathematics (a real conversation-killer in the student bar), she went to work in the IT industry, and has held roles from programming to project management to senior management.
During a business trip across the Atlantic, she met a man on a plane and ended up moving to Canada. Five years later, with one-year-old son in tow, the family packed up and moved to Beijing, China, where her career took a 90 degree turn and she worked as a travel writer. She published articles in Asia and North America, and subsequently wrote a book, Big Noses in Beijing, about the daily adventure that was life in China.
Now back in Canada and the IT industry, and mother of three active boys, she juggles her way through each day, trying to keep family, personal and professional balls all in the air at once.
When she has time, her own passions are travel, sports, and great food… eating it, not cooking it. She is a huge advocate for travel as a mind-broadening experience for kids, and for an active lifestyle as a way of dealing with the stresses of the mother-juggle.
Sometimes we just have to chill