Ten Tips for Working from Home with Toddlers

In April 2014, my husband and I became parents to our eighteen month-old grandson. We had a lot to figure out, but one thing we knew was that we wanted to have him at home and not in daycare at such a young age. So, I began to pursue opportunities to create income from home. I started doing virtual assisting and I also went back to college in August 2014 to open opportunities for myself at a later date. I am kind of crazy like that-one challenge isn't enough for me, no sir!

I began to comb the Internet for tips on dealing with toddlers while working from home. Some ideas had merit, such as work when the child is napping or asleep. Other ideas weren't so helpful for my situation, such as put them in daycare, or wait to start a business until they are older and in school. I mean, really? That was not helpful in the least.

Here are ten tips that worked for me and hopefully they will be helpful to you too.

1. Spend time with your child prior to trying to do any work. If I spend a good twenty minutes with my little guy, then I can count on just about the same amount of time to do some work, maybe even longer. Before I start my work, I make sure he has eaten, we have read books and played, and I have some special toys ready for him that he doesn't see often. I repeat this cycle of play and work all throughout the day. 
   
2. Teach your child that when you work, he/she gets to do something that he/she really enjoys. My grandson likes to watch Daniel Tiger. When I go to my computer to do some work, he gets to watch an episode of his favorite show. I also reserve special toys for work time that will keep his interest for an extended period of time and I rotate them so they are fresh and fun when he does get to play with them.
3. Offer a lot of praise for good behavior while you are working. I tell my grandson what a good job he did being quiet while I worked or while I was on a phone call. I thank him for making good choices so I can get my work done.
4. Keep a consistent schedule of meals, naps (if they take naps), and activities. Children are much more compliant when they know what to expect and when. Ever changing schedules are hard on kiddos and in turn, hard on parents.
5. Don't try to take care of your child, work from home, and do housework. If I were out of the house from 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m., I wouldn't be washing dishes and laundry, so I don't while working from home. You need to view your work time as work time. Don't visit Facebook, clean the house, or babysit for friends while you are working. 
   
6. Take a lunch hour. Making sure you and your child are nourished is very important to getting through the day well versus just surviving. Plan the week's lunch on the weekend and have the lunches you need ready for the work week.
7. Get dressed and dress your child. You will feel more productive and your child will realize that the day has started if you both get dressed instead of wearing your pajamas or exercise clothes.
8. In the summer, if you can, adjust your work schedule to take advantage of summer events like free summer movies, free bowling, participating in library summer reading programs, or going swimming. These activities are enriching for your child and will give you both a sense of having had a nice summer.
9. Don't work on the weekends unless you can't avoid it. It is important to have normal family time. If work is always intruding, your child will be resentful of your work and not as cooperative.
10. Point out to your child how your work benefits the family. Even small children can learn to appreciate that your work provides juice boxes, toys, and other niceties. When they understand the correlation of work to things they like in their life, they deal with the fact of a parent working a lot better. 
    

Are you a parent who works from home? What tips and tricks have helped you to manage your days with little ones while trying to earn a living? Please share in the comments section below.

My Crazy Life Gets Crazier...on Purpose!

You may remember that my grandson came to live with me on  April 1 of this year. My then 19-month-old grandson. To a home of adults who weren't expecting a little child to be in residence 24/7. We were all a little shell shocked to say the least.

Liam hugs our trees every day
during our evening playtime. 

Talk about a major life changing event for that sweet little boy and all of us, which includes my husband and two young adult sons in their early twenties. The dogs also were taken off guard by this tiny human who thinks that they are little horseys for his riding pleasure.

Here we are just about in mid-August and we all have settled in to a routine that includes locking every door in the house, always having company in the bathroom, and hoping for a good nap time.

Not content to leave things static, I have decided to complicate my life further by going back to college.

Yep, this grandmother (Gigi to be exact) is a college freshman (because my previous college was on semesters and the credits weren't acceptable to my new school). I took the assessment tests and passed all but the math with flying colors! Take that assessment tests!

I will be taking English Composition I and Intro to Speech this semester. I will also be working while going to school because we  have this habit of enjoying food, shelter, and clothing. ; )

I am working on a liberal arts degree, mainly because I am too much of a dilettante to buckle down to just one discipline. I will get to study English, history, French, and art and at the end I will be the proud owner of a Bachelor's Degree!

I am also working on moving my blog at some point to a self-hosted site. As I said, my crazy life is getting crazier on purpose.

I am striving to get back on a blog posting schedule but I am not making any promises. You may have to come see me on Facebook (Holly Williams Urbach) or Pinterest (whollyholly) to keep up with me.

Menu Planning Ideas for Frugal Busy People

Over the years I have had many challenges in my life. Who hasn't? One of my biggest current challenges involves menu and meal planning. I used to be really good at it but lately, not so much, due to a jam-packed schedule and the unpredictable way we do our grocery shopping.

This not a typical meal served at my house these days!

My husband does some of our grocery shopping and buys whatever he can find that is marked down or on clearance. This stretches our funds and is a huge help, but it also makes meal planning have to occur once shopping is completed rather than before. Most every article I see about meal planning encourages a person to get the sale ads, make a menu based on what is on sale, and then go shopping. We end up seeing what we can get for the funds available and then I have to gather my cookbooks together to compile recipes and a menu that make the best use of the raw materials I have available.

Frozen chicken tenders, a can of black beans, a can of corn, and a can of tomatoes and green chiles are the main components of Santa Fe Chicken. The canned items were all purchased on markdown by my hubby and cost 50 cents each!

The completed dish of Santa Fe Chicken. We serve ours over rice and with either tortilla chips and a salad or with flour tortillas. Some of us like to sprinkle a little Monterey Jack or Cheddar cheese over this. The total cost to feed four of us was around $5.00!

In addition to the challenge of creating a menu based on available ingredients, four out of the seven nights of the week, I do not arrive home until between 7:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. This makes cooking a meal a little dicey unless we want to eat around midnight. So, I am currently reformulating my cooking routine.

On Sundays now, I am making two meals. One to eat on Sunday and one for Monday. Reheating an already prepared meal is much easier than preparing a meal from scratch. I am now avidly searching online and in women's magazines for recipes that are cook once, eat twice type of recipes. A recent issue of Family Circle was a big help in this area. Some ideas they featured were: roast a chicken one day and the second day make a pot pie, serve spaghetti and meatballs one day and the second day serve meatball sub sandwiches. This type of meal preparation will go a long way to make serving meals in my home much easier. Here are a couple URLs that look promising to me: http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20333807,00.html and http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes_menus/recipe_slideshows/cook_once_eat_twice_recipes.


I used to do freeze ahead meals years ago and I think I will incorporate that into my meal planning as well. I really enjoyed looking at the nicely stacked packages filling the freezer shelves and knowing that we had meals at the ready. I used Once-a-Month Cooking by Mimi Wilson and Mary Beth Lagerborg as my guide to cooking up to a month's worth of meals in one day or over a weekend (check out cookbooks in my Amazon store link http://astore.amazon.com/thewhollyholl-20/detail/B0072O02AA to get their books). Most likely I won't have enough groceries at the ready to do a month of meals in advance but perhaps I can start with a week and utilize a freezer meal once or twice a week for those days when I am extremely pressed for time.

I am also employing the power of crock pot cooking at least once a week to help me over the meal planning and eating later in the evening hump. I am enjoying perusing the recipes at Stephanie O'Dea's website devoted to crock pot cooking. A big bonus for me in following her blog, A Year of Slow Cooking, (http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/) is that she is also gluten-free. I have eaten gluten-free since 2007 and I really appreciate being able to grab a recipe and not have to take the time to convert it to a gluten-free concoction.

Stay tuned as I share favorite recipes from my frugal busy cooking journey and please share how you handle menu planning and meal prep in your household. I need all the help I can get right now because last night I had to make a stop at Little Caesar's!

Manic Monday

My Mondays are really crazy. Everyone has crazy, busy days, I know. But, check out how my Monday currently goes-

6:00 a.m. I get up.
6:30 a.m. I do the Classical Stretch workout on my local PBS station-KLRU-Q.
7:00 a.m. I make sure my 19 year-old-son and 21 year-old sons are both awake and I make coffee and eat breakfast while walking my dogs.
7:15 a.m. I get dressed, fix my face and hair.
7:40 a.m. We leave the house and head to Austin.
8:00 a.m. The 19 year-old gets dropped to catch the bus to downtown Austin where he has an internship and takes college classes. Then the 21 year-old and I head to his workplace about 25 minutes further in southwest Austin.
8:30 a.m. I drop my son and head to work myself.
5:00 p.m. I finish work and head to my 21 year-old son's workplace which is a combination martial arts and fitness studio. I do child care for the yoga and crossfit particpants children.
5:30 p.m.-6:30 p.m. Child care.
6:30 p.m.-8:30 p.m. I get on my netbook and do writing projects (like this!) while waiting for my son to finish his training.
8:45 p.m. We start the 45 minute trip home.
9:30 p.m. We arrive home, I take out the dogs, feed the dogs and cat, and get something for us to eat.
11:00 p.m. I start getting ready for bed and hope to be asleep by 11:30 p.m.

Yep, that is my Monday. I am always trying to make my schedule more productive.

Today, I didn't end up having to go to work so I baked some chicken leg quarters to eat because they can be eaten cold or hot. Sometimes I make breakfast for dinner on Monday nights. This won't always be my schedule because once my sons have money to buy their cars, I won't be the only driver in my "car pool". For now, I am enjoying my time with my guys. We have lots of great conversations on these long drives-some serious, some funny, and sometimes we don't talk at all.

What do you do to manage your crazy days?

Time Management

I can't believe it is already Friday! The week has gone by in a whirlwind. Writing projects got short shrift, the house is begging to be cleaned, and meal planning has been by the seat of my pants.

I need to get a better handle on my time. ; )

I am out of the house a lot right now- Mondays I leave at 7:15 a.m. with my two youngest sons to head to two different places. We don't get home on Mondays until 9:30 p.m.!

Tuesday we again pour out of the house early (7:30 a..m.) to get my youngest son off to his college  class (he is finishing his senior year of home schooling and is dual enrolled). I then go to tutor a sixth grade home schooled student. We get back home around 4 p.m.

Wednesday I don't usually need to leave early (hallelujah!) but it is a jam packed day. I do an hour or so of a combination of stretch class, yoga, and fitness activities and clean the house. I attend a Bible study Wednesday night. I pick up the college boy at 9:30 p.m. and head home.

Thursday I take this same child back into town for another class (leaving again at 7:30 a.m.) and his brother comes along to get  a ride to his job. I then head to two jobs and we return home finally by 7:00 p.m.

Friday I can sleep in until 7:30 a.m. and enjoy a long, leisurely workout. I love Friday! Hubby and I use Friday to get household and gardening tasks completed. We call this our Friday projects. In warm weather we sit outside together in the front yard enjoying our breakfast and coffee together.

Saturday my middle son and I are off by 9 a.m. to the martial arts and fitness center. Where he is in three different Kung Fu classes plus instructor training and I do child care for the Yoga participants' children.

I have been working at keeping Sunday as a relaxing day. I generally don't work on Sunday, I try to stay home, make an early dinner, read my Bible, and enjoy my family.

So, perhaps part of my time management process needs to be to realize that I am using a lot of my time productively right now and I am getting a lot done. I just think I can always get more done. Once the two youngest boys graduate in May, get their drivers licenses and buy their cars, my life should be more manageable...until I fill the time once again.