Well, it’s time for me and my daughter to move to a bigger apartment. The next couple of weeks should be–interesting.

The good news is we’re moving from a tiny one-bedroom to a roomy two-bedroom with a cute backyard (with our own cacti). My daughter doesn’t know she’s really a Georgia peach. She just adores cactus. I’ll be happy because a natural backyard will have lots of bird life. There’s a honeysuckle plant (which will attract hummingbirds), and a neighbor has a feeder with quail and other visitors.

The bad news is that I’ll have to be without an Internet connection for 3 days! Gasp! That’s an eternity. I’ll be frequenting the local coffee shops with free wi-fi, but it’ll be a pain. Then again, moving is a pain anyway.

I’m considering getting a wireless provider so I can use the Internet anywhere I go with my laptop. It would come in handy for working while I’m watching my daughter play at a park or whatever. If you have this type of service, what do you recommend?

Every child is different, no matter how child care centers try to spin it. My daughter simply doesn’t like daycare in the large center environment, or at least not the one we tried. After going for 3 days, she got a terrible cold. But even before the cold hit, by the 3rd day she was crying when talking about school.

After recovering from the cold, we tried again. As soon as she saw the teacher she burst into tears. “I don’t want to take a nap!” she yelled at the teacher. We went for two more days anyway, no more than 3 hours each time, and she was miserable.

My inquisitive, happy, energetic toddler was a crying mess. At home she told me, “Don’t leave me! Mommy stay with me. I don’t want to take a nap!”

On the other hand, her best friend just started there and simply loves it.

They’re all different.

Now I’m looking into a smaller daycare situation, or one where the main teacher stays in the room 95% of the time at least. This place had 13 two-year-olds in the classroom, so it was chaos. Oh, and did I mention that we came down with the stomach flu after taking her back for just 2 days? Yuck!

Back to the drawing board.

What daycare situations have worked for you, especially if you kept your children at home for several years before attempting child care?

Daycare is work, let me tell you!

After just three part-time days a couple of weeks ago, my daughter got a knock-out cold. Not wanting to stress her out (being in a new place while sick), and not wanting to expose her to more germs while her immune system was compromised, and not wanting to get others sick, I kept her home.

Week one came and went. The doctor said she had a sinus infection. So I’m stuck home another week with not only a busy, play-with-me-all-the-time toddler, but a sick one too. On top of that, I got the lovely cold the second week. It knocked me out for the count too. Lovely.

On the bright side, I did land a temporary gig that will allow me to focus on getting a permanent “day job” without worrying about money for a minute. If you’re a freelancer looking for a part-time or temporary thing, try promotions work. The gigs are usually pretty easy, and if you go through the main company (rather than where they outsource), they can pay pretty well. I’m working on a promotion with AMP Agency.

So things are looking up. And I have enough energy to blog again, now that my cold is on its way out.

Oh, and I finally upgraded to WordPress 2.5. Not bad. I got my visual editor back, and I get to play with a new toy. I love new programs. They keep me on my toes.

Do you blog well when you’ve got a cold? Have you upgraded to 2.5 yet?

Tags: daycare, homeschool, home business, wahm

Photo credit: Renee Yarter

Well, I finally jumped into the deep end. I enrolled my daughter, just three months shy of three, in a daycare center. She only went the past two days, but it’s such a difficult thing to do.

My daughter’s been home with me pretty much every day since she was born, and this separation is tough on us.

So why am I doing it?

I mentioned it’s time for me to get a day job so I can amass some money to properly fund my freelance business. And there’s almost no way to look for a job with a busy toddler at home. Her previous sitters, close family, aren’t able to watch her as much as they’d like, so here we are.

So far it’s okay. She tells me she likes school, and she clearly likes playing with all the kids.

But tonight she woke up from a bad dream, saying something about, “I want to go outside to see Mommy. I want to go outside. Where’s Mommy?” Almost broke my heart. The first day I dropped her off at the playground when everyone was out playing, and then I picked her up later when they were outside. So she firmly believes that Mommy is outside, and that if she just goes outside she’ll see me. So far it’s been true. Today I picked her up on their second playground outing.

Both days the teachers said she really wanted to go outside and kept asking to go. They assumed it was for playing purposes. I wondered. Now I know.

Luckily I only have her enrolled part-time, but I

may have to ease her into it a little more slowly. She’s okay, and isn’t crying much, but when she heads out to the playground you can tell that she’s looking for me and getting visibily upset when she doesn’t see me (I was peeking through a window to see how she was doing).

Long story shorter: Daycare is going to be rather hard for us to deal with. I feel horrible for abandoning my baby, but I also need to provide a secure home for her. Maybe when I get back on my feet we can go back to homeschooling, but for now daycare is a necessary part of our lives.

What about you? How has daycare affected you, your business, and your child(ren)?

Before my daughter was born, I decided we would not watch T.V. at all. I heard all about the studies that said T.V. was bad for kids, that there’s no real interaction, that it may affect their ability to pay attention, and other scare tactics.

For us, television has been a sanity saver. There are times when I can’t be my daughter’s only source of entertainment, and we both need a break from each other. My daughter gets to visit places she’ll never see otherwise, she gets to see all kinds of people, and she’s introduced to lots of different concepts. For instance, she’s never seen snow in real life. The other day I pointed out that there was snow on the mountains, and she said, “I can ski on that snow!” I don’t ski. I don’t talk about skiing. She learned that on television.

I tape record educational shows for us to watch together, and we interact with them together sometimes. Our huge favorite is The Backyardigans. While there isn’t a teaching curriculum, she (and I) love to sing and dance together. When she was younger we watched Teletubbies.

Why do I mention this here? Lately I’ve found some shows on PBS that are wonderful programs that teach reading and writing. My educational favorite is Super Why. My daughter watches them read words, sound out letters and letter blends, write letters, and sing the alphabet. I find her telling me, “S. Sssssssss,” or “Tuh Tuh. T!” I love how she’s getting introduced to phonics. She answers their word questions, sings the alphabet with them, and pays close attention when they’re spelling out words.

While I’m still working at home without daycare, television is also a way for me to get a few minutes to concentrate on work.

So if you’re looking for another way to teach your toddler reading and writing, or if you’re a work-at-home parent, maybe rethink the whole television ban idea. Television might not be so bad after all, when used wisely.

Do you need a reason to improve your grammar and writing? If you have children, or plan to soon, you have at least one great reason.

My daughter will be 3 years old in about 3 months. Though I know that genetics plays a role in her incredible language ability, I also credit her skills to my parenting style.

One thing I do is talk to her constantly, in regular language. I use prepositions, adjectives, adverbs, contractions, etc. I make it a point to tell her what things are, how they work, and I use a lot of words to explain. I also give her definitions.

My point is that my daughter uses almost perfectly correct grammar when she speaks. Sometimes she’ll say “me” instead of “I”, and of course she’s no English expert, but it’s amazing to watch her learn English everyday. If I didn’t know how to speak properly, and if I didn’t take the time to actually talk to her, she wouldn’t be able to communicate as coherently as she does.

Hand in hand with grammar is writing. I made sure to introduce and point out the alphabet to my daughter early, and we often discuss letters and words. When we’re playing with crayons, I often wrote letters for her, so it’s no surprise that she likes to make letters as best she can (she’s pretty good at writing an A, H, V, and U.)

Another excellent tool is right in front of you. I’ve allowed my daughter to watch me type, and I let her type letters too. This helped her learn not only her alphabet, but also punctuation marks and numbers. She often tells me, “Let me type my name, Mommy.” Right now she just types whatever letters strike her fancy, but she has fun pretending she’s writing words.

All of these everyday activities will help my daughter become a good writer, speaker, and reader.

So if you need to brush up on your basic rules of grammar, or if you never thought it was important to speak to babies and toddlers, give it a second thought. It really does matter.

Just this morning my daughter told me, “I hear a train. That’s strange. Hey! Train. Strange. Train. Strange!” I made sure to tell her that that’s called rhyming. I’ll let you know in a few years when she’s written her first book.

Note: Look for more stories about my daughter’s amazing talents. I’ll be talking about her more and more, or I might just have to start another blog that’s not about writing.

One of the perks of owning a home-based business is that you set your own hours. You can work late at night, early in the morning, or during “regular” hours. It’s up to you!

But when are you most productive? It probably depends on the task you have to complete, and also on your lifestyle.

For me, mornings are best for dealing with clients and for marketing. I work with clients all over the country, so I need to be able to contact people who live on the east coast. If I wait too late, they’re usually gone for the day. I’m most productive in the morning hours once I’ve woken up, eaten, and cleaned up.

My writing is best done late at night. I’m no good during the middle of the afternoon. That’s when I get overcome with sleepiness. So I’m kind of a night owl, and I get my second wind after 9 p.m. This might be because my daughter is blissfully asleep then, and I can’t write well when she’s up running around.

Blogging activities (replying to comments, dropping Entrecards, writing posts) are another story. When my daughter’s at home I can usually take care of most blogging tasks, but sometimes I wait until the wee hours of the night/morning.

What are your most productive times for the jobs you do at home?

(Photo by Andrew Beierle)

In the beginning, Crayon Writer was intended to market my freelance writing business. It still is. But it’s become a bit more, and I now consider this blog to be a business itself.

Interested in joining this venture? There are several ways.

First, I’m adding a Satisfied Readers blogroll for people and companies who’d like to pay me for my “crayon writing.” Some call it a donation, but I figure that you should only donate if you think my words are worth paying for.

Or perhaps you feel strongly, like I do, that society benefits from mothers staying with their children as long as possible, and you’d like to support that cause.

Either way, if you send at least $10.00 using the convenient “Donation” button (found in the sidebar), your link will be added to the “Satisfied Readers” blogroll. Just so the list doesn’t get too long, I will have to remove links sometimes (first in, first out), but your link will be active for at least 24 hours (probably longer). I will only link to sites that are PG, though, so if it’s offensive to me I won’t post the link (no refunds for donations, though).

Email me the following information when you’ve donated $10:

1. Tell me what anchor text you want for your link
2. Tell me the URL for the link

Want to have a lengthier, more visually appealing advertisement on Crayon Writer?

You can buy advertising space or a review. The full details are on the Advertise page, complete with convenient buttons for you to make immediate purchases. Reviews are just $50, while 125×125 ads are just $40 per month. Click here to reserve your space or buy a review now.

Finally, take a look at some of the products in the sidebar. I have an affiliate partnership with the products I recommend, so if you’re in the market for them please buy them by clicking on them at Crayon Writer.

That’s it! Crayon Writer is officially open for business. If you’re ever in need of great writing for your business or blog, click on the tab for Copywriting Services. My freelance business is still accepting new clients too.

November was my month for marketing my freelance writing business. 

I did a bit of cold emailing (as time permitted, considering I have a very busy toddler), and I have a few warm leads as a result.

I also started a new blog, Marana Unwrapped, both because it’s an interesting topic and it’s a more specific niche. (I consider Crayon Writer to be a more personal blog that also has some universal appeal.) Hopefully the exposure in my community will help me gain more clients, and the niche should attract advertisers also.

So December is my month of looking for freelance gigs, while I also continue looking for another day job.

What’s a freelance gig? Projects I find not by marketing myself, but by perusing freelance sites. Right now I only use Craigslist. With access to cities across the country (and the world, if I choose), I should be able to find some nice side work.

If you’re a single parent or sole breadwinner, how did you get started with your freelance business, and how do you keep on keepin’ on?

I haven’t talked about my life as a WAHM lately. So here’s an update.

I’m worn out!

My lovely daughter is now almost two-and-a-half, and deep in the throes of the “terrible twos.” She’s not as bad as most, I must admit.

But my days are long. Almost everything has to be negotiated because she’s pretty headstrong about–well– everything. Simple things turn into long, drawn-out ordeals that leave us both exhausted and upset.

The past few days she’s been home with me all day (no babysitting), and I’ve started a new cold email campaign, I’m looking for another “day job” (in case the cold emails don’t work), I’m trying to win the MyBlogLog Problogger contest (join my community), and I’m working on a couple of little projects.

Whew!

I could really use a cappucino right about now.

One of the lucky things about my latest computer crash is that I’ve been using my old clunky desktop (with Windows 98!) So now that my laptop’s been repaired, my daughter can play on one of them while I’m working too. That helps, since now she’s tired of many TV shows. I bought her a Disney-themed toddler game, and she really enjoys it.

She loves to say she’s “working,” or that she’s “busy,” just like she hears Mommy say all of the time.

But, like another blogger said, I’m hoping to stay the course. If I can take it.