How I (Try to) Make it Work

     I don't read blogs as much as I used to back in the days of Google Reader (RIP) but lately I have been following this Moms Make it Work series on Julia's blog.  My family is entering a point of transition as my husband reaches the end of his undergraduate education and we decide where and how to take our next steps. I like reading thoughts from moms in all different life stages, from those who work full time to those who stay at home and the growing number of moms who, like me, straddle those two worlds. I've also gotten a lot of questions from friends and acquaintances about how work and childcare and chores are managed in our household, so I thought I'd do my own little "moms make it work" post about how I try to balance everything. (The answer is usually, "not very well.")

Barre buddies!

   A Typical Day
    Our days vary greatly depending on Graham's class schedule and my teaching schedule but we try to keep Gus's routine as consistent as possible. He tends to wake up at about 6:30 (though lately he's been sleeping until 7:00 am--glorious!) and I'll get him up, dressed, to the potty (on a good day) and downstairs where I try to get him to eat some breakfast as I make coffee. Graham leaves for school around 7:30 and, because we only have one car in our family, I'll often drive him the three miles to campus so Gus and I can have the car for running errands. Gus and I are home together until 3:00 pm, with the exception of Tuesdays when I teach three hours in the morning and Gus goes to a babysitter. I do my studio admin work like answering emails, updating student accounts, paying bills and planning lessons while Gus naps and usually squeeze in an extra hour of work or writing while he watches an episode of Sesame Street before or after his nap. At 3:00 pm Graham comes home and I usually head down to the studio to start "real" work. Graham stays home with Gus, making him dinner, giving him his bath and putting him down for bed around 7:00 pm. I'm grateful for a husband who doesn't mind our 50/50 childcare split because so far I've been able to work without paying for too much childcare! Every now and then, Gus has to come with me to the studio to clean or teach private lessons. He usually does well but I am not good at having a "mom brain" and "teacher brain" on at the same time, so I prefer him to stay home when I'm teaching.

Teaching Hours
     The last couple of years, I maintained a schedule where I was consistently teaching several hours of physically demanding classes Monday - Thursday, plus a couple of hours on Fridays or Saturdays, after taking care of a baby/toddler all day. Some people can handle that type of schedule but it was really wearing on my brain and body and a big strain for our family. This year I made the decision to combine a couple of ballet classes, so I'm at my studio for a total of about 20 teaching hours and four or five rehearsal hours each week, mostly on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings. Tuesdays I finish teaching before noon and have the evening off to take yoga or even stay home and have dinner at a normal time! Thursdays, I've been teaching a couple of Pilates and barre classes in another town but will soon be devoting those evenings to ministry with a Christian ballet company near Seneca Lake. I'm so excited for the opportunity to dance and perform a little bit again in a ministry capacity!
     I get home from work anywhere between 8:00 pm and 9:30 pm. Usually, I make myself a late dinner and spend an hour or two before bed catching up with my husband or reading. I know some WAHMs who are able to squeeze in some working hours at night but my brain just doesn't function productively at night so I try to stay off the computer and away from my "at-home" work unless there's something really pressing to be done.
Housework?
I take care of most of the day-to-day chores in our household (at least the indoor ones) but I'm pretty terrible at it.  Graham says it's because I'm "only meticulous about ballet." Keeping the counters clean and free of clutter, the dirty dishes at a manageable number, and the laundry done is about the extent of my capabilities on a good day but I'm getting much better! A de-cluttered house and reasonably tidy kitchen are essential to my peace of mind.

Would I do it differently?
This is something I'm trying to figure out. In some ways, I have the best of both worlds. I used to think I'd really like being a stay-at-home-mom but the reality of it is so different and I know I'll always need another outlet (or ten). I do really appreciate that I get to earn a living, mostly outside the home, while simultaneously getting to spend my days with my son.
         Sometimes I'm frustrated with trying to be both a full-time working mom 100% responsible for her family's income and a full-time stay-at-home-mom. We've talked a little bit about it and we think our ideal situation would be for Graham to work full time and for me to just teach/dance/perform part-time in the evenings without the added stress of running a business. That said, I'm incredibly thankful to get to own a business in a field I love where I am right now. It just may not be forever--we're taking that one step, one year at a time.

How does your family "make it work"? I'd love to hear about it! 

      

Swan Lake Recap and Summer Plans

What a whirlwind week. Yesterday a cast of just a few dozen kids and teens performed a mature classical ballet with beauty and maturity. Even more than their dancing, I'm proud of their patience, diligence and send of humor during the rehearsal process. Both Swan Lake and the performances by my jazz, tap and pre-school students went smoothly. The kids had fun and the audience loved it  

This was my third year producing and directing a student performance so I felt pretty prepared by Tuesday's final studio rehearsal. Too prepared.  On Wednesday I realized we didn't have nearly enough backstage volunteers to handle the 20 - 30 performers under age 10 in the cast and sent a frantic email to almost everyone I know locally asking for help. On Thursday--the day of our first rehearsal in the auditorium--I found out that our videographer wouldn't be able to record the show after all and that the print shop I'd counted on for programs was closed for the week. Thankfully, a very dear friend and fellow dance school director stepped in to take care of both of those tasks and volunteered to take photos of the performance.

A whole other set of potential problems was waiting for me at the auditorium. The stage hadn't been cleared or cleaned since the school's play a few weeks before so I spent the hour before dancers arrived moving set pieces and props around. Shout out to the high school student who helped me move a heavy sap-covered log after I interrupted his piano practice with my cries for help! Despite that minor inconvenience, the backdrop still on stage from the play ended up being a nice addition to Swan Lake so it all worked out nicely.

Once we got the theater set-up the stage rehearsals were mostly easy sailing. I had a crew of fantastic backstage volunteers who helped the kids get lined up and in order so I could focus on other things and actually watch my dancers. Not every piece was technically perfect but no one left the stage in tears or stood frozen like a deer in the headlights!

Now that the dance season is over, I'm looking forward to a few months of focusing on other aspects of my life: swims and walks with my son, lots of time working in the garden, and taking as many dance classes as I can. One of my biggest priorities this summer will be to spend some time working on the book I'm editing about dancers and body image. I also plan to submit my first MFA program application by the end of July (more on that later).

Before I do any of that,  I should probably clean my house. A distracted mom and two year-old can make some big messes.

Moments of Joy

       Sometimes, I let the moments of joy in my dance studio pass by.  I can get so focused on helping my students improve their technique that I forget to encourage them to enjoy their dance class experience. I'm still working on finding that balance between insisting upon discipline and respect and letting them be kids having fun with movement.

       My closest ballet friend and I met in ballet class when we were 10 and 11 years old, respectively. We were a pair of serious and dedicated ballerinas who only let our guards down (and acted like the kids we were) with one another. Our parents actually had to remind us to let loose and have fun every now and then. To that, my friend would usually say, "I don't do ballet because it's fun. I do it because it's hard." 

     For most of my life, that's how I've operated. I choose the activities that are challenging. I make goals and plan my life around accomplishing them. 

        Because I had that kind of mindset as a kid, it's difficult for me to remember as an adult that most of the kids I'm teaching take dance because it's fun. Most of them do not have their sights set on joining a ballet company. Many might not even plan to dance beyond May or next year or high school. While I still want to provide the training foundation that a student who does want to dance professionally should have, I am trying to be more focused on my students' joy and less focused on the perfection of their technique. 

      This past week, I had one of those great dance teacher/studio owner days. I entered the studio stressed out about a last-minute scheduling change we had to make due to some building repairs in my studio. I was worried parents would be confused or upset by some cancellations and schedule adjustments. I was soon reminded how blessed I am to have a studio full of understanding and supportive parents and kids. Everyone was gracious about the changes and excited about the building repair. I really have the best families at my school. 

     Inside the studio, all of my students were happy and cheerful. I noticed the tremendous progress they were making technically and the joy this progress seemed to give them. It was just a fun night. 

       As we work toward our end-of-year show and I make plans for the future of my school, I'm trying to remember those moments of joy; the moments that make me happy I'm a dance teacher. 

Studio Ownership, Two Years In

Hello, friends.

It's been a while. I've decided it's time to revive this blog as it's the only blogging outlet where I've felt fully and entirely myself. I've also never had the overwhelming urge to scour it from the Internet, like I have my 5657 bazillion other blogs. Much has happened in these two years. Notably:

1. We moved from one small apartment to another a quarter mile away and finally to a big beautiful old farmhouse about 3 miles from Graham's college in the middle of nowhere. I'm talking cows and fields of corn and a forest surrounding us. Real country.

2. We had a blue-eyed baby boy last summer who's changed everything about my existence.

     Two years ago I wrote about my ambitious plans for a little dance studio and performing arts center in the little town that had recently become my home. That little studio is about to enter its third year in operation. It's not quite evolved the way I'd expected--does anything?--but I'm pleased with what we've done so far, even if my expectations continue to far exceed reality.
     Owning and operating a studio is nothing like I imagined it would be: it's far more exhausting, emotionally draining, frustrating, invigorating and rewarding. Its far more emotionally, personally and creatively challenging than I envisioned and has caused me to grow in many positive ways. I'm still more comfortable on stage than teaching in a classroom and I still struggle with making the "Big Decisions" of business ownership like what classes to run, what to charge, and how to manage staff. As a ballet dancer, I was very accustomed to being told what to do and how to do it all the time; always having some authority figure to turn to and obey. I still feel a little bit like a little kid playing dress up in his dad's clothes--all clumsy and awkward and unconvincing in my seriousness.
          I love the community where we live, but it's, frankly, not an ideal place for the kind of business I'd like to run. As a newcomer in a tight-knit community, it's been difficult to find a place for myself personally as well as a place for my business in the life of the town. Despite these challenges, I feel blessed that my students and their parents are nothing but wonderful and supportive and understanding--a true rarity in this business. I don't think I'd want to own a studio anywhere else.

      The first year of my studio's life I just tried my best to hold on and survive the year. Along with launching the business and teaching the majority of classes, I was also pregnant  (my son was born a few weeks after the end of that dance season), teaching at other studios, and still adjusting to life far away from most of my friends and family. I thought I could do it all alone. It placed huge amounts of strain on my personal relationships and emotional health. The second year was my experimentation year as we tried a few different types of classes, ways of running things, and I hired extra staff so I could spend a little more time home with my new son. Some of these experiments succeeded and others did not and I took the failures personally.

    I'm feeling optimistic about this third year, confident for the first time in my abilities as a business owner and teacher. I'm making lesson plans and class playlists, choreographing combinations and eagerly reorganizing the physical space of my studio (as time and money allow). It'll also be my last full year supporting my husband through college--then it's on to graduate school for him and possible an MFA program for me, but that's another post for another day.