All posts tagged: career

10 Must Have’s for Pumping while Traveling

Published by nicole

Trying something new today! Tonight on the blog is guest editor, Taryn Kutches, co-founder of Parker Design, sharing her tips on pumping while traveling. A must read if you’re a new mom returning to work from maternity, travel for work or just want to get away for the weekend. I know a lot of you just entering that stage of returning to work, so I thought this might be helpful. I for one felt the struggle the first year of nursing with my son, so it turned out pumping became a regular part of my life, as it is for many of you. These tips will be life-savers, trust me! So here’s Taryn!: Are you nervous about keeping up nursing while you are away from your little one for a few days? Don’t worry, I’ve been there too. I was determined to nurse my little girl for a year. After weeks of struggles in the beginning, we finally got the hang of it and we ended up making it to our goal, but boy did I ever under estimate …

What’s It like To Be A Full Time Mom Who’s Trying To Re-Invent Her Own Career Path

Published by nicole

There’s no shortage of examples of what I’m about to say. I’ve written and interviewed a number of women who fit the description in my title. They’ve been a source of inspiration for me. But today I’m going to share my own personal side of the story (a small rant) and how I’ve been trying to carve out a new career for myself while being a full-time mom. Many people might start with a few assumptions about being a blogger. But people in the business know the truth. First off, it’s a business. And like any business trying to get off the ground, it’s tough. I think I can relate to other entrepreneurs because I feel the pressures of selling something you believe in to a crowd or not even a crowd of people who don’t get it. You face a lot of negativity especially in the beginning because your hopes are so high. Add to the fact that you’ve got another full time job (24 hour one in fact), being a mom and home maker. …

Leaning On Each Other – My Interview with author Shay Chan Hodges

Published by nicole

Lets talk about motherhood and work. When I was still pregnant with O, I dropped out of the work force. My family encouraged me to. They told me that it would be better for the baby to have his mother take care of him, especially in the early years. All my training in child psychology confirmed this. It would be economically challenging but luckily we wouldn’t be without health insurance and I had help from family. So I didn’t really think twice about it. However the story doesn’t end there. I soon learned that staying at home would be harder for me than I thought. I was the type of person that needed and wanted to work, and if I didn’t, I knew that staying at home alone with a child would ultimately drive me crazy.  So after my husband returned from New York, I began to think about how to go about getting back to work, and be able to be a full-time mother to my son. Although it was tough when my husband lived apart from us in New …

The Final Tell All: My interview with Amber Padilla

Published by nicole

So some of you requested that I do a ‘part 3’ to my already 2-part long post Getting off the tech pedestal…for a brush and canvas. So I thought I’d share a few of the things that I had to edit out of my posts originally, and paint (pun intended) an even more dynamic picture of my friend Amber Padilla (who recently started a Facebook page called Candymistakes by the way, so you can follow her progress as an illustrator/comic book artist). Her story is one I really don’t mind losing sleep over writing. Humble beginnings For those of you who already read my first 2 posts, you would have known that she was one of the few people out of her high school to make it to college.  And for Amber, like many college students in this country, the financial struggle and burden of pursuing higher education hit her hard. When I asked her what her biggest struggle in life or her career was, she said it was financials. “I remember having to learn how to really make a dollar stretch. I …

A family reunited?: What happened after my husband returned

Published by nicole

About 2 months ago, my husband returned from his year of fellowship in Manhattan. A year that almost tore apart this family. At least, that was how we felt at the time. I had written a post prior to his return about our 1 year long-distance marriage and what I had learned from it. Now it all but seems like a distant…nightmare. When I wrote that post, I probably left a lot of readers hanging, largely because I was unsure as to how things would turn out after he returned. We could all only imagine and hope that things would be better and that we would work together as a couple to re-strengthen our marriage. Well, I wanted to briefly share and update you on how things have been. Close friends can probably already tell that things have been going well. But I wanted to share more deeply the impact that it has had on us and for me individually. My husband’s return changed more things than one. I should also mention that he had the …