Momartfully

God Rest We Weary Working Moms

Every working mom sings the same song this time of year;

 

Debi Stack is hilarious. And awesome.

Google ate the working moms

It's been eight months since Currentmom asked "Where are the real working moms?"

I've come up with a theory; Google ate the working moms.

Let me explain.

A little less than a year ago Mama bee wrote about how working moms are invisible. Despite working moms being over 70% of the population of mothers working mothers are not considered "typical" or "normal" mothers by most in the media.

Instead a minority of mothers - higher income and predominatly white women who write in blogs are regarded as the "typical" moms - as representative of all moms. Whenever a "mom issue" is covered in the news or radio or print or online or on TV the same small group of mommybloggers will be trotted out to address mom "issues" and speak for all women with children - as if having children makes us all the same cookie-cutter model. Interestingly, we don't see the same five men being trotted out to speak for all fathers - even if they're bloggers... or not.

I have a theory about how we got here - with the invisible majority - and my theory is grounded in  experience in the world of media production and in long experience with online marketing.

The Pitch

Imagine the life of a hungry reporter or PA... let's say you're a twentysomething hungry PA, fresh out of college and you've been given the chance of a lifetime - you get to pitch a story for a television show or an article that could be professionally published. You've been told your topic has to be contentious, geared toward the daytime television market or for the audience that controls household spending - and your topic has to pull in viewership. Huge viewership. You're told to maybe try a "mom topic" - but you're not a mom. You don't know anything about modern moms - none of your friends are moms... so what do you do?

Desperately, you turn to a resource you think has all the answers - a search engine. You Google "mom debate" or "mommy wars" or another "mom topic". Google (or Bing, I'm equal opportunity, after all) feeds you a brilliant, long list of "mom bloggers" and links that you can use for your pitch. You check the blog links and all the moms indicate on their blogs that they'd love to entertain any offers to speak to the media.

Perfect - you've got someone to provide content. Extra bonus points if they're going to pull in their blog traffic to your story.

You the reporter or PA never look past the second page of search results. You've got two or three likely candidates, and you're not going to spend time vetting those candidates or digging deeper. You've got names, now you can pitch.

In reality, you don't really care about the authority or expertise of the person who will speak. What you're looking for is traffic - or better yet a contentious viewpoint. To you, a non-mother, it looks like giving birth makes anyone an "expert" on "mom issues" for every mom on the planet. Giving  birth is the only qualifier - and the only measure of authority is search engine results.

The problem is that Google isn't representative of authority, expertise, or population - but millions of people think that the results are. If Google says it, it must be so.

I'm saying this as a professional web publisher - I've created SEO strategies, I worked on the inside of a BIG search engine (as a reviewer). Search engines have never indicated authority or expertise on topics. Search engine results indicate marketing activities, keyword buys, and all the heavily massaged, manipulated and populated data of those with enough time to build a search optimization strategy.

In short popularity - not authority.

The new authority is search engine ranking - not experience - not scholarly expertise - not wisdom or longevity.

Which is why I laughed, a lot, when Twitter recently told me that Dooce was "Similar to You". I don't have anything against Heather, but we are not similar. Yes - we've both been blogging forever, but she enjoys a very rare work at home situation for a very high income, with a paid assistant - while I have the much more typical experience of being a working full-time, out of the home mom, for a very typical income and no paid help.

Heather is a celebrity who earns an income, but she's not a typical working mom - she's never written a thing about the issues that plague most working moms. Yet, Heather is  considered an authority on working moms by many media outlets.

Work it

Working moms have also become invisible for another reason - semantics.

There has been an ongoing campaign to "redefine" the term "working mom". It is no longer acceptable to indicate a paid, out of the home career with the term "working" because of the popularity of the bumper sticker philosophy "all moms are working moms". The goal of this quip is to elevate every mother by giving them all credit for working - by diminishing the work of working mothers.

Working moms have had the term "working" stolen from us - we're not allowed to use the word "work" out of fear of backlash from those who have co-opted the word. We are not allowed to say what we are.

Blogs from moms with full-time careers (hi!) are almost impossible to find - because every mom calls herself a "working mom" now.* Hobbies with tiny incomes or no income but lots of goods-in-trade are now equated to full-time careers. Everybody's "working" at home. Volunteering is now "working". Hobbies are "working". Everything is "work"... except work.

Working moms need working moms

Working moms understand working moms - and we need to hear from moms with experience and authority in this topic - other working moms. We need to find a different way to network working moms that doesn't rely on marketing massages and popularity contests. Search engines will never be a resource for working moms who want to find each other - working moms don't have the time to massage our search results - we need to find each other quickly and build our network so that we can speak for ourselves.

* Yes, motherhood is hard - I didn't say it wasn't. The word "working" doesn't indicate "hard" or "difficult". Working indicates working - why is it that can we use the word "working" as a adjective for all nouns except "mom"?

What would Seth, Ashton and Avinash do with my Poof?

I've been in this career for more than 15 years - and I'm good at it - really, really good at it.

I'm a web publisher; I design, deploy, edit, educate - from social media to nuts - I've done it all. I've been a blogger for a decade - that's longer than The Huffington Post, Perez Hilton and Dooce. I've blogged, Tweeted, Yelped, Googled, Flickrized and YouTubed for companies, organizations and myself for years. I've managed websites that have millions of visits or are part of Fortune 500 companies. I've taught college students to CEOs and I've helped manage on-line communities with thousands of members or thousands of threads and built strategies for everything in-between. I've managed, mediated, marketed, designed, Flashed, waded through metrics and mollified trolls. My teams have been happy, my students employed and my clients thrilled.

Until recently.

Suddenly, I've lost all my web skills. Completely. Poof.

At least - that's what the boss told me. I don't have any web skills. I am now incapable of providing any web solutions. Actually, the whole team's skills are just - gone. Completely. Group "poof".

Of course... there was no objective measurement of our skills, no input was actually requested from us - and our innovative and amazingly productive history with the company was not wanted - that would just confuse the issue.

After the meeting where I was informed of my sudden loss of skills, I posted this Facebook status update:

FOR SALE: Web Publisher. Includes; upgraded software, three key peripherals and classic hardware with ongoing updates. Also included; user friendly interface, multiple input channels and an extensive database with reasonable service contract. Fairly low maintenance although does require occasional applications of Venti coffee and IABC seminars. Relatively cheap - but not easy. Apply within.

So, now I'm at a cross-roads.

Maybe I'll ramp up this blog - advertising, reviews, community participation... I'll have to switch lanes and start thinking about what kind of changes I'm going to tackle. I need to channel my Seth, jump on a Ashton train or ask myself what would Avinash do.

Mostly, I'm just tired. Disheartened and tired. And angry.

My question is, what would YOU do?
What opportunities do YOU see?
Where would YOU go?

What Kind of Mom Doesn't Read?

My house walls are wallpapered in bookshelves filled to capacity. There are frequent evenings in my house where the whole family climbs into mommy’s bed with a stack of books and some plans for snuggling.

We are readers.

Having been a professional communicator for a very long time - and also a plain ol’ logical person - I know from both experience and observation that there’s almost no way to succeed in life without feeding your brain. It’s as simple as good input=good output. If you feed your brain good “food” then you’re a much more informed, capable, valuable employee, parent and person – and if you feed your brain poor quality “food” then you can’t push out good quality effort for your work, your children or your world.

I had thought that most of the world had the same general view – it was certainly what I saw around me. Almost every single mom I knew pushed their kids to read as they regarded reading as one of the key components of a sucessful future. Moms were all about reading, I thought. We volunteered for the Scholastic program, spent years chanting "Goodnight Moon" by heart, we paraded the kids to the library and sounded out words with them. We also read ourselves - we fed our careers, hearts, souls and minds and we kept perenial stacks of books on our nightstands.

So a tepid discussion of reading from a group of moms was a bit of a shock.

Months ago Momversation presented a video from their panel of supposedly "typical moms" who almost universally stated that they just don’t read “anymore” (they were supposed to talk about 5 books that changed their lives).

Thankfully, there were a couple moms who were quite confident in stating that they still read - but the overall tone and premise was mommies don't read.

Motherhood has just been so ultimately demanding and all-consuming for the Momversation panel of  supposedly "typical moms" that reading has just fallen by the wayside as a result.

That video has bothered me ever since. Aside from the dismissive tone toward reading there were also disturbing competitive mommy undertones in that video; from the one-upmanship in the choice of trendy, new, highly marketed books that some of the participants called their “all time favourite” books to the underlying implication that busy, good mommies are so utterly consumed with being a busy, good mommy that they just don’t have a single speck of time for something so self-indulgent and worthless as reading a book.

But. But. But - there’s certainly time to write in their blogs. And make video entries and responses. And travel for numerous guest appearances on TV. And travel to write richly compensated blog advertorials. And write their own books.

The logic fallacy in that last paragraph was pretty mind-boggling. Time to write – but no time to read.

I look around me and I see reading moms everywhere - yet a panel of supposedly "typical moms" says otherwise. I look around me and I see a society of readers and life-long learners, yet the celebrity bloggers say otherwise.

Why wasn't there a single working mom who rolled her eyes and said tiredly "I have to read for work every night" - which is a much more common conversation among the moms I know than a lament about being "too busy to read". What ever happened to all the moms who valued their post-secondary educations so highly? Where are the moms who are teaching themselves new skills? What about all the moms I know who are filling in the holes in their education with some Ayn Rand, Dante and Aeschylus? Where are the legions of moms I know who are feverishly keeping up with their industry so they have a career to return to?

I find it unbelievable (but sadly more and more common every day) that women are expected to suspend our own intelligence, experience and sense of logic so we can believe that Moms as an entire group (we are all the same, after all) are universally giving up on reading once we give birth - because the mommy celebrities say we're much too busy.

We're expected to believe that being a mom means you don't read - or if we do manage to force ourselves to read we're not tackling anything more challenging than teen vampire fiction and People Magazine.

I don't know that kind of mom.

Hourly Photo Project

Today was the "Hourly Photo Project" (see Andrea's blog entry for more details and a list of participants).

The assignment was to take one photo each hour of our day. I took the extra challenge and tried for no retakes - and didn't completely succeed - there were a couple unsteady shots I re-took. My day went fast - but it's wasn't literally a blur.

I took the photos with my camera phone and whatever environmental lighting there was for each event. Here's what my day looked like (or rather, what my day  was looking at)...

6 a.m.

On my way to catch the bus to work. The sun isn't even up yet, and the roads are pretty deserted.

7 a.m.

Knitting on the bus. I'm working on a ruffle scarf for my daughter - with yarn she picked out Click "Verve 110" and Shetland's Classic Wool in "Rich Red Tweed". I'm knitting with a 8mm bamboo circular needle - much easier to use on the bus during the rush hour squeeze than long straight needles. After all, I might poke someone - completely by accident. Of course. ;-)

8 a.m.

Already at the office, getting a start on my day and surveying my cubicle "flair";

• the pink pom-pom creature by my monitor is a "Warm Fuzzy" gift from one of my kids, made in Kindergarten class
• jewel case pumpkin calendar - a department project/perk. It's a major accomplishment that it's on the correct month today, usually it takes me a few days to change over
• my stand-up Swingline stapler - sadly in blue not iconic red.
• Various incarnations of sticky notes, because you can never have too many sticky notes

9 a.m.

I'm on my way to a meeting, and I stopped to peer over the handrail at the atrium in the center of the building. Allll the way down...

10 a.m.

Coffee break time - paid for, not free - because I don't look like my pet.

11 a.m.

In a meeting with a colleague, who was wearing these cute sandals. I'm wearing boots - I've already surrendered to Fall.

12 noon

Time to head out for some lunch. And some colour... any colour...

1 p.m.

Drinking yet more coffee (in an environmentally un-friendly cup) and feeling a little Twitchy now.

2 p.m.

Still working. Move along. Nothing much to see here, folks.

3 p.m.

My Veer "Excuses and Alibis and Reasons Why" spiral-bound cubicle swag. There's a bunch of photos with captions explaining why I'm not in my cubicle. The caption for this "Where Am I?" photo: "Daycare called. Another 'Incident'".

4 p.m.

Heading home from work, through the trees, looking at the stained glass bridge up above the sidewalk.

5 p.m.

Driving home in the car with M, we made a quick stop to drop off a very sexy stage light for a client of M's. M loves LED stage lights. If M had his way this is what our house would look like every Christmas.

6 p.m.

We took the kids to Red Lobster as a treat.

The kids enjoyed ripping various sea creatures to pieces. It was a quick (and tasty) demise.

7 p.m.

Bathtime. With Captain Rex, of course.

8 p.m.

Bedtime for both kiddos.

9 p.m.

A London Fog (Earl Grey & Lavender black tea, vanilla syrup & steamed milk) for mom while the kids settle down for the night... and maybe a little more knitting.

10 p.m.

Catching up on some great new media content; Did You Know 4.0  I enjoyed the video and I think I'll be using it at work (like many other great instructional videos) - even if I was momentarily Rick Roll'd.

11 p.m.

I'm in my pajamas and my bathrobe. Night everyone!

Mom's Night Out

Mom's Night out...

Drinking Bellini Slurpees with my friend M (and her gorgeous embroidered suede jacket) and enjoying dinner while being spoiled by a flamboyant waiter.

Then we were off to a lecture by artist Judy Chicago.

Her drink had a beautiful pink mermaid in it and mine had sickly green a giraffe. Art imitates life. LOL!

The Sadder But Wiser Girl

Evidently the "Opt Out Revolution" is over: Recession Drives Women Back to the Work Force

To be honest I never really saw or felt that there was a huge "Opt Out Revolution" in the world around me. In my world the majority of moms are working moms.

I rarely saw the other side of the "Opt Out Revolution" - called "On Ramping" - widely discussed. It was almost as if in the era of "Opt Out Mommies" that re-entering the workforce was widely assumed to be easy, requiring little effort, completed very quickly and with little planning.

Riiight.

The reality I saw was that Moms re-entering the workforce all around me were having an absolutely hideous time. They couldn't find decent and affordable childcare, they were trying to figure out how to squeeze a career in between morning drop off and noon pick up. Moms all around me were facing work realities they had no idea existed.

Even worse - they were also being played - everywhere they looked there were plenty of bloggers and advertisers pushing the idea that moms could "work from home" and enjoy a huge income. It turned out that the "work from home" evangelists were either exceedingly rare pro-bloggers who ignored anyone who wasn't also working as an exceedingly rare pro-blogger - or they were salespeople selling some work-at-home "solution". Both groups often ignored the fact that a huge portion of women dominated careers are in industries that can't be delivered from home or with a toddler or two hovering in the background - like nursing or teaching. To hear some moms talk working from home was the new working mom paradigm - nobody did that silly, frantic working mom commute, daycare thing any more. 

Except that isn't true.

The reality around here - the only moms I know of who ended up with a decent income and the opportunity to sometimes work from home are myself, my co-worker and one other mom. None of us were working as the newest "miracle career" and working from home was only a portion of our work time. There were still some basic working realities for those of us who could sometimes work from home, our employers still demanded plenty of on site "face time" and telecommuting was a privilege that we had to demand from our employers and earn through a combination of seniority and a history of above average output for years in our careers. Teleworking was not an option for any mom we knew who was just returning to work after years of "Opting Out".

So much for the "new" paradigm of working from home for the vast majority of moms.

A lot of the "On Ramp" moms around me found that while they were "Opting Out" there was also a series of wholesale revolutions in the workplace - and they were expected to already have a working knowledge of those changes and to have their own coping mechanisms in place as soon as they returned;

• Layoffs and trimming (like in every recession cycle) created philosophical and technological revolutions across entire corporations
• transparency and privacy law changes that have swept across many organizations and changed everything, from reports to file storage, resource usage...
• technologies and procedures in areas like Nursing completely changed in a short span of a few years
• most Microsoft "houses" (and most businesses are) have rolled out - or will be rolling out huge technological changes like SharePoint and other software upgrades and changes - and employers aren't going to provide training for those returning to work. Either you know it, or you don't.
• we're in a recession - in a time of job and expense cuts, not expansion. New employees face even harsher competition among applicants than ever before - and any weaknesses in your resume could cost you the chance for even an interview - let alone the job

There's another reality that isn't widely discussed among moms - unless you have spent a lot of time with single, divorced or otherwise sadder but wiser girls;

It turns out that "Opting Out" has a proven financial and professional penalty built in:

"Studies have found that for every two years a woman is out of the labor force, her earnings fall by 10 percent, a penalty that lasts throughout her career." (NY Times) 

While the emotional benefits of "Opting Out" can sometimes make a compelling argument for many emotionally vunerable moms - the financial and professional and personal realities of "Opting Out" should never be ignored or minimized for any woman. It's a gigantic disservice to moms to completely ignore the realities of financial health and instead emphasize and concentrate on a short period of emotional gain.

I still remember sitting in a room filled with newly single divorcing women discussing their new financial realities. Most of them were returning to work after a significant "Opt Out" time period when they relied on their soon-to-be ex-husband's income - they were universally devastated by the financial realities that their choices and now their divorces forced on them.

They couldn't go back to work in previous careers - because exiting the workforce put them on the sidelines professionally - the work world had moved on without them. Missing years in the workforce had a huge, punitive impact on the lives of those women, and nobody told them it could happen. Nobody told them that the emotional benefit of exiting the workforce to stay at home with their kids would harm their careers. The entire group thought they could take turns at both working and mothering without any penalty. Many of the group members expressed that they wouldn't have made the same choices if they just knew what would happen, that there was a 50/50 chance of this happening to any woman - many said they felt cheated - the wished they had never "Opted Out".

The sadder but wiser girl, indeed.

What Will Your Kids Be (this week, anyway) & 3 Scarves

Based on your kid's interests lately, what would you say they would grow up to be?

My darling, dainty, Tinkerbell loving, pink-and-glitter-on-everything little girl wants to drive a big rig.

This week, anyway.

Our day home caregiver's husband is a long-haul truck driver. A couple weeks ago the caregiver's husband and grown son took the bigger kids to go visit his BIG truck.

She was HOOKED. Smitten. Clutching the steering wheel, chattering on the radio and waving out the window.

However that dashboard may be a wee bit of a problem - she probably should be able to see the road.

She even asked - I'm so not kidding - if I had any "tattoos" in the house. She wanted a tattoo - the wet transfer kind. I explained to her that real tattoos are made with needles and hurt. She didn't seem deterred.

Thankfully Miami Ink isn't on Treehouse TV.

My son normally states he wants to be an author. A children's author, a graphic novelist or "something like Percy Jackson" - as long as he's writing, he's happy.

But lately he's been all about trees.

He scaled every tree in my parent's commercial orchard this summer - and that's a LOT of trees.

He's building a treehouse in our back yard - by himself.

He spends almost all his time in the back yard hanging out in the trees, thinking, talking to friends and figuring out how to fasten the tree house to the tree without nails, "The nails hurt the tree, mom."

He's also perfecting his climbing skills by clinging to the door trim and climbing up the walls - or climbing up opposing walls in the hallway.

Peter Parker (Spiderman) was a writer, wasn't he?

Three Scarves

On the knitting front - I've been cranking out a lot of scarves this week. I knit when I'm stressed, and since I've resigned my current job and accepted another job offer - I'm just a wee bit stressed. It's change - and I'm not good with change - it's a good change, but still. Stress.

So, I'm knitting.

I'm going to be giving out a lot of scarves for Christmas. 

Finished this a "slubby" hand-dyed merino wool scarf in orange

...and this a gorgeous pure viscose moss stitch scarf in teal

...and this dollar store find! Grey mix slubby acrylic yarn

Now I'm working on another dollar store find scarf - a pink 2 strand (eyelash and chenille) yarn that will be combined with a pink organic cotton yarn (how's for a combination LOL). I'm also working on a purple kettle dyed merino wool scarf (it's sooo soft), some cotton dishcloths (always!) and thinking about tackling the goat yarn (that I first mentioned here).

I hope it'll be a cold winter.

How to wrap (not Rap) like Martha

I am the first person to admit that I am not domestic. I am, however, unnaturally fond of wrapping gifts in creative ways - which I believe is something that Martha Stewart has done, on occasion. ;-) 

The daughter of my darling friend Trish (@designfiend) is getting married next weekend. I keep insisting that @designfiend must have had her babies when she was a practically a baby herself. This is mainly due to the fact that I am in deep denial that my friends and I are of a certain age and approaching a time when we could technically be grandmothers. I just HAD my kids. We are not old. Spring chicks.

Maybe if I keep saying it enough it will be true.

So @designfiend's gorgeous daughter bravely invited not only M and I to her wedding, but my darling children, too. 

While shopping for itty bitty little girl formal dresses I found a gorgeous purple satin-and-tulle number (only $40!) for my little girl. My daughter is of the age when her design ideas center around anything resembling a ballerina's performance wardrobe; tutus, tiaras and tulle.

I also found an adorable satin evening purse for my daughter at a dollar store - not that I normally shop at dollar stores for evening wear, but it was a cheap opportunity I couldn't refuse.

My little girl is just thrilled with her outfit - so thrilled she has to be physically restrained from wearing it every day.

Shopping for diminutive suits is also a lot of fun. My little boy has insisted that he does NOT want a tuxedo (he wore one for a wedding two years ago, charming everyone, but evidently he found it a traumatic experience).

"I want to look like James Bond" he insisted - but with a bow tie. The tie pictured will not do - he really wants a bow tie.

So M and I are off this afternoon to scour the city for a little boy size bow tie.

I'm not sure where my son's preference for a bow tie came from, but couple that with his chess skills... and genetic predisposition toward glasses... and I think I may need to sign him up for karate lessons. Soon.

While shopping for our togs is fun, my favourite part of preparing to be a wedding guest is wrapping the gifts.

Our gifts for this bride have had a very domestic theme - for her bridal shower we gave her a big basket filled with towels, bathroom accessories and some facecloths I knitted.

The wedding gift is also some textiles and accessories - as well as a gift card.

---

How to wrap (not Rap) like Martha

Materials:

• 1 heavy, large circumference vase
• 6 long-handled wooden spoons
• more long-handled utensils (if desired)
• 4 tea towels in "flower" colour
• 4 pillow cases in "flower" colour
• 2 pillow cases in "leaves" colour
• 1 roll of basket wrap
• tissue paper
• ribbon
• scissors
• card spike (from florist)
• gift card

Line the vase with one of the "leaf" colour pillow cases.

Leave at least two corners of the pillow case draped over the vase edge for use later.

Fill the inside of the pillowcase lining the vase with crumpled up tissue paper.

Place the labels from the tea towels, wooden spoons and pillow cases in the center with the crumpled up tissue paper (for the bride and groom to refer to after opening the gift). Ensure that the labels and tissue paper are pushed to the bottom half of the vase.

Fold the second "leaf" colour pillow case.

Arrange the pillow case on the diagonal on a table in front of you. Fold the pillow case in an accordion fold from one corner to the opposite diagonal corner.

Tie ribbon around the center of the folded pillow case. Curl the ribbon ends.

Spread out the corners of the pillow case to resemble leaves.

Set "leaves" aside.

 Fold one of the tea towels or two of the pillow cases length-wise.

Fold one of the tea towels or two of the pillow cases length-wise again.

Place one of the wooden spoons off-center on the tea towel.

Fold the cloth to the side, over the spoon.

Continue to roll the cloth around the spoon until you get to the end of the cloth.

Experiment with the off-center placement of the spoon inside the roll until you get the ends of the rolled up "flower" on opposite sides (see picture). It is important that the ends not bunch together on one side of the "flower".

Tie off with ribbon, curl the ribbon ends.

Spread out the "petals" of the flower - the ends of the tea towel or pillow case - to make the flower.

Experiment with pulling the towel and spreading the flower open.

Fold some of the petals down over the ribbon tied around the flower.

Place the finished "flowers" in the vase wooden spoon handle down. Experiment with the placement of the flowers until you are happy with the layout.

Use the crumpled up tissue to stabilize the "stems" of the flowers by adding more tissue in the bottom of the vase, if necessary.

Insert the "leaves" into the bouquet, securing them with ribbon to the "stem" of one of the "flowers". Spread out the leaves.

Add additional curled ribbon to some of the "stems" of the "flowers" so the ribbon drapes out of the bouquet.

If there are additional utensils, insert the additional utensils - handle side down - into the "bouquet".

Wrap a square of gift basket wrap around the vase and secure with ribbon.

Insert the card and gift card (if desired) into the bouquet (also I recommend taping a ribbon to the back of the card and securing it to one of the flowers so the card doesn't get lost).

Admire your work!

Keeping a Sick Kid Busy (Dress Up Dolls)

How do you keep a sick kid busy?  Keeping sick kids occupied is my Waterloo - especially when my darling children "share" their colds with me. I prefer to keep them on the couch or in bed with a box of tissues, a "barf bowl" and an ear thermometer nearby. Sometimes they have to be immobile for tests (DS has to lie still for EEGs and EKGs) or at the hospital (the worst is after after a Ventolin neb treatment for Asthma, so jittery!).

I usually load them up with a snack, books, some music and some small toys - which keeps them occupied for at least 30 seconds.

So I pull out the craft supplies (can you hear me saying "Ta Da!" in my head?)

Warning: move your good craft, sewing, knitting and other supplies out of reach (way out of reach!) before your kids start hunting for supplies for their "projects". Once they've started hunting for materials - it's like trying to stop a herd of wildebeests. They'll grab anything that looks good, especially if it's expensive and you've already made plans for it and the sight of a gaping hole in that lovely trim or your chopped up bit of mohair yarn is enough to drive you completely around the bend...

Not that anything like that has happened to me.

One of our favourite sick kid activity: dress up dolls.

Draw a doll-shape on felt fabric & cut out. Hand your child some felt fabric, washable markers, a glue stick, safety scissors, stickers and paper patterns traced from the doll to make a "wardrobe".

The doll needed underwear. With pink polka-dots.

Use tassel trim for doll hair (see above) and attach it to the doll firmly. Tassel trim doll hair tangles less and has a curly, shiny look and it takes a lot less time to attach than wool hair. Use other trim types for hats, crowns and skirts (the crown above is really trim with spangles, so is the pink skirt below). I buy bags and bags of trim remnants from fabric stores - it works great and it's inexpensive.

Felt, heavier weight cardboard (cereal boxes, gift bags) and construction paper all work for dress-up doll sets, too. Pipe cleaners, stickers and paper doilies can also add some variety to their "wardrobe". Keep it all in a plastic container with a lid (the lid can be the work surface and stage) with the designer supplies - and you can recycle the "wardrobe" when the kids are bored with it.

Even your other kids can get in on the fashion designer action - or you can make them "dolls" more suitable for their taste; dress up the monster, dress the alien, outfit the horse, or one of my favourites, the "Pediatric Picasso" felt shapes for making abstract art work (very popular in kids hospitals).

The point isn't to make it perfect, it's about experimenting and keeping their minds off feeling sick.

Other great projects? Hand them a "puppet kit" - a box of pipe cleaners, clean old socks and stickers. For more patient kids origami or paper airplanes might keep them occupied. A flashlight in a darkened room is great for hand shadows... or my favourite as a kid - macrame friendship bracelets and even plant hangers (an I.V. pole is fantastic for hanging macrame or skeins of wool off of BTW).

Have fun and get well soon!