living situation: I live with my husband of four years and our daughters – Christina (3), Rebecca (1 year, 9 months), and Allison (5 months). (These are, of course, their online secret identities, but the names are close enough.) We bought a house five years ago before we married, and wound up with one much bigger than we’d planned. Luckily, it turns out we were able to fill it pretty quickly.

occupation: In addition to being a manager, wife, and mom, I am a full-time attorney, doing primarily transactional and non-adversarial work.

how do you structure your time and space? I do this in pretty much the same way working fathers have for many years. I returned to work quickly (six to seven weeks) after my children were born, and I have a nine to five job with a commute. Though lawyers often work long hours, I leave at five and manage the work by bringing much of it home to do after my girls are in bed. 

My girls all go to the same day care near our house, in a small town. We’ve never had a single problem with the center, and the kids love it. Our oldest is getting a preschool curriculum there now. My husband works slightly earlier hours than me, and is able to pick them up and bring them home each day.

I’m not cut out to be a stay-at-home-mom. I need to be on the go. One of the things our marriage depends on is a certain equality – we both work to support the family, and we both parent. Though those roles are different at different times, we take them relatively equally (except that he doesn’t have to carry a breast pump wherever he goes, which is totally not fair).

using the metaphor of seasons to describe the phases of women’s lives,

-what are the particular challenges and highlights of your current season? The biggest challenge is that I’m very tired all the time. When there’s too much to do, sleep is sacrificed. I’d compare it to the holiday season — it’s run run run, all the time. There is so much to do and so little time, and I’m always working on a clock and a to-do list. However, it’s also just full of fun, and happiness, and sparkles, and candy, and hugs. Every time I come home feeling like I’ve been hit by a bus and thinking about all I have to accomplish that night, I get tackled and swarmed by two toddlers who just want to love on me, and I hear baby giggles. My husband pulls dinner (which I made the night before) out of the oven, and all is right with the world. 

-What season(s) preceded this one? Our previous season began when my husband and I, after six years together, finally grew up and put things in order. I moved to be near him in 2004, we bought a house and got engaged in 2005, got married in 2006, and then were pregnant within 2 months. 

-What season(s) might your future hold? I’m hoping more of the same, though with a bit more sleep.  I wouldn’t mind the pace slowing as the girls get more independent and need my help less. I’ll be glad to fill any extra time with sleep and things I want to do for myself, and I’m looking forward to knowing my girls as people instead of babies. I think I’ll get to see a little more of the old, pre-kid me, and I’m looking forward, ironically enough, to sharing that person with the kids.

favorite family activity/activities: I love Friday nights, when we make chicken fingers and watch movies to celebrate the start of the weekend. My husband and I drink a couple of beers, the girls rocket around the room and beg for “dark sauce” (teriyaki) for their chicken, and then everyone collapses. I can’t wait until they’re old enough to help pick a movie that we can all enjoy. (Well, I did enjoy “The Princess and the Frog”… the first ten times!) 

I also love giving the girls bubble baths. We have a huge garden tub, and have never owned a baby tub. I just bring them in with me, taking turns. We use high-end bath products, and I condition their hair and let them use sparkle lotion. My girls ALWAYS smell great! 

favorite solo activities: more bubble baths, but alone; blogging; reading sci-fi and fantasy novels; the lore and novels of the World of Warcraft, a game my husband loves; keeping up with old friends on Facebook; dreaming of hobbies I wish I had. 

sources of inspiration: I’ve been searching for a Everything Role Model for a while now – a woman with a professional career who worked while her children were babies, has a stable marriage and three or more kids, and who still looks good and manages to sleep once in a while. I can’t find her. 

So instead I get inspired by my mom, who does a million things and looks great while doing them; my father, who taught me about work ethic; my husband, who can take anything in stride, even being mobbed by toddlers; my boss, who is what we call a Zen Master; and my paralegal, who never stops smiling and has enthusiasm for everything. I just need to surround myself with positive people, and positive things will keep happening.  

best MakeShift moment: When my youngest was a month old, she had a case of the sniffles and a cough, which turned into a respiratory arrest in the emergency room. She spent six days on a respirator in the pediatric intensive care unit at the children’s hospital and four more days in a regular room being weaned off oxygen. (Her official diagnosis was non-RSV bronchiolitis — basically, a bad baby virus).  

I had two toddlers at home 40 minutes from the hospital, a very sick new baby, the responsibility of pumping to keep up the milk supply until she could nurse again, terrible cold weather, plans to work from home on maternity leave, and the holidays to contend with. This could have really sucked. 

Instead, it wasn’t so bad. After the arrest, I was just so on top of the world that Allison was alive and going to be okay that nothing else seemed to matter. So that Alison wouldn’t have to be alone, my  husband and I trucked the older girls to and from the hospital in their pajamas while we switched out shifts. The situation was rough on them, so we did whatever it took to keep them happy, including letting them wear tutus everywhere.

I spent almost every night in a chair at Allison’s bedside (including New Years’ Eve), pumping every two hours and holding her hand every time the hospital staff had to do something to her. My work assistant brought me boxes of files for review so I’d have a productive way to spend time (and earn money) while I just played the waiting game. My husband and I changed out clothes and phone chargers and toiletries and hardly saw one another for a week and a half, except in the parking lot of the hospital. 

And it was really okay. We just camped out and powered on through, and Allison came home alert, healthy, and a pound and a half heavier than when she’d gone in. (If you did nothing but sleep for a week and have food pumped into you, wouldn’t you gain weight too?) 

[check out www.highheeledmom.com for more  of lindsey’s musings on motherhood and life.]

-what are the particular challenges and highlights of your current season? I would say this is spring, characterized by lots of new growth and wait-and-see. The girls test me on everything to learn boundaries and question me on everything to soak in knowledge. It can be stressful and consuming but beautiful things often spring from the stress. To continue the analogy, I worry about my parenting as I do about my spring garden. Is my method of tending appropriate? Am I giving too much or too little? I worry about warping their little selves with the wrong care. The beauty is seeing the daily growth and the emergence of each personality.

-What season(s) preceded this one? A care-free summer! I only thought I knew what being busy meant or having obligations was about.

-What season(s) might your future hold? Autumn. It is becoming autumn more and more. Autumn reminds me of huddling in the bleachers together when it starts getting cool, but not so cold that you can’t go out. As the girls get older, I see more involvement as a family unit. Life is getting busier and more active. I see work slowing down and that family, huddling in the bleachers together, out and about and supporting each other.

favorite family activities: Rock N Romp; playing and grilling in the yard; cruising the lake at Gran & Pops; bumming on the beach at Gigi & Papi’s

favorite solo activities: dancing; sitting in a small setting watching live music; sitting in silence

sources of inspiration: The families I encounter on a daily basis in Court. From children with broken spirits to the brokennes caused by simple broken promises, each story touches me. Parents who try and give everything, but its not enough, make me push harder. Kids who just want to be loved, make someone proud, and know where they will sleep, remind me to hug my girls a little tighter and praise them more often. Those kids who have turned to a delinquent path remind me that my girls need discipline and my direction to help guide them down youth’s path. Many nights I lay in bed so “inspired” that I am too full to sleep. Those are the nights I don’t mind if one of my girls gets out of bed.

best MakeShift moment: My life is a series of MakeShift moments. One moment when I felt that I was a real mom and was going to accept things was when my child drew in red marker on the walls of her new, newly painted room. It is a pretty good rendition of a creepy princess outline. Instead of getting on to her or trying to clean it, I framed around it. There it sits just down and to the left of her light switch: a red-marker-fourteen-inch-tall-princess-drawing with an open modeling frame now showcasing it. On another occasion “someone” colored it in with blue toothpaste. I was upset that I might have to erase the drawing to clean the toothpaste. I realized then that I had become a different person — a proud Mama.

Find Autumn on the web: