Hi everyone. Welcome self-professed new blogger James to the blog as my final guest poster. One more exam and I’m done with finals week. I’ll be back with something fun tonight.
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My life is split into two parts. BD and PD. BD being “Before Danny.” Danny is my son, and Monica is my wife. He came into our life two years ago and changed my life in so many ways. Before Danny my life was pretty simple, go to work, spend time with my wife, and get in as much fishing as possible. When he was born, he changed everything! I knew that with his birth I might not be able to fish as much, but what I didn’t know was that this 7 pound, 3 ounce, 19 ½, inch bundle of joy would completely change my work life and my family’s future.

Shortly after welcoming him into the world we were bombarded with requests for news, pictures and videos of Danny. Seeking to quell the mob that demanded to see our new family member we logged onto the Internet and started posting pictures here and there and sending scattered emails that were sometimes filtered out by Spam-screeners. We soon became very frustrated by the need to act as technical support for Danny’s various online profiles and photo sites. Plus, we were constantly worried at how safe these sites really were. So, one of my closest friends and I created our own website for Danny. It was supposed to be just a one-time thing for Danny – next thing you know we were doing it for many other new parents and had built an online network, BabySpot, for new babies.

All of a sudden my simple, but pleasant life that entailed work, my wife and family, and fishing was turned upside down! I now had my own company on my hands and work-life balance became an utter challenge. My wife and I both work full time and now we have two babies on our hands – the love of both our lives, Danny, and our new company. We struggled initially balancing it all, but were blessed that our families have helped out. My mom lives a few minutes from us and so she takes care of Danny for us during the day. And, while I work a lot now, my schedule is more flexible where I can spend time with him in between meetings.

My little mister, Danny, completely changed my life – he definitely made it much more hectic – but he also gave it so much more meaning. My life now is about Danny, my wife and family, my company, and fishing whenever I can sneak it in! I can’t wait till Danny is older so that I can take him fishing.

Although that might be awhile, as my beautiful wife is 7 months pregnant and our little cutie pie, Danny, is giving us a fun time with his terrible two’s! I’m sure each of you out there has your own stories of how hard it is to manage newborns, work, and family. How did you manage? As we expect our 2^nd son, my wife and I are really nervous for Danny as he will have to go to daycare for half the day. As new parents we feel like we are starting school again ourselves! Remember those butterflies in your stomach that you probably got when it was your first day of school? YUP those! Did you go through this?

Would love to hear how you balance it all! Let me know by leaving a comment of how you have been able to balance it all. Now, I have to run, Danny wants to play with Thomas the Train!

Hello there. Sarah reporting for duty, Goon Squad Sarah.

Christina asked if anyone wanted to guest post and of course I jumped at the chance. I met Christina at BlogHer two years ago and I’ve been a fan ever since.

So, as usual when I offer to guest post I have no clue what I am going to write about. Fortunately, something came up.

When you have three year old twins something always comes up.

In this case it came up on the way to the grocery store this morning.

The kids and I have been in Florida for almost a week. We got into the minivan, this morning and the low fuel light was on.

Because I have not yet adjusted to being a mother (when do you think that will be anyway? When they are four? Five? Eighteen?) I yelled something along the lines of “Dammit! We’re almost out of gas. Your father pisses me off!”

Then I remembered I was supposed to be the responsible adult in the car and I told the kids that we needed to stop at the gas station on the way to the grocery store.

To which Ian replied:

Dammit. Daddy pisses us off.

Oops.

Nice job, Mom. Excellent parenting move. Now my husband will come home and Ian will say it again and it will look like we’ve been conspiring against him.

On second thought, did you notice how he changed the sentence from “Daddy pisses me off” to “Daddy pisses us off”? That is good grammar. What do you call it? Pronoun agreement?

I’m not such a bad parent after all. I teach people how to speak English. How about that?

In your face Ferber!