Get the Best Kid-Friendly Activities
Sent to You Weekly!
Of course, there are days when it feels like we are walking a tightrope between our work schedule and our family's needs. As hard as we try, we cannot be at home every moment, so we rely on the help of neighbors, grandparents and babysitters. These loving people — our "net" under the tightrope — are essential to our personal and professional success.
New technologies help things run more efficiently, too. GPS helps us move in the right direction and cellphones keep us connected when the traffic slows us down. Of course, we also spend a lot of time at the computer. While the kids are playing upstairs with friends, we are often downstairs writing our e-newsletter, mixing a podcast, or designing a flier. It gets hectic and our eyes often get blurry, but we have learned to thrive amidst the chaos of children and phones ringing off the hook. Luckily, we can distinguish between our children crying out for a little attention (which usually requires them to be patient), or really crying out for help (which requires us to put down the mouse and pick up the pieces of a broken lamp or friendship).
Best of all, our clients, most of them moms, sympathize with the demands of working with children at home. We have booked many gigs in-between temper tantrums on both ends of the phone. The unplanned benefit of some of this drama at home is this: Attending to our off-stage relationships have definitely improved our work on-stage. How else could we confidently write, sing and teach children about tolerance, conflict resolution and communication skills if we were not living these lessons in our own home? We write songs about the challenges of family life because we live it every day. It is all "grist for the mill", as they say.
So, when people remark on the astonishing fact that we spend so much time together as a couple, we try to take it as a compliment, an acknowledgment that we are getting what we want out of life on our own terms. And it of course begs the question of other couples: "How could you two possibly spend so much time apart?"