Maintaining friendships when you are a mama can be a tricky business. Often already juggling a hectic home life, work and children, while also trying to carve out a bit of time with Daddy-o, can leave little room for your girlfriends.

The way I see it, there are a few friendship fizzling high risk situations:

1) You become a mama: Many report that their friendships with single/childless girlfriends suffer. Mama feels they don’t understand why she doesn’t want to ditch the kid to go dancing every weekend. This has not actually been my experience. My single friends have shown extreme interest and understanding when it comes to my kids. And I am equally keen to hear their Sex in the City lifestyle stories.

2) You have a child with a disability: Hate to say it, but mamas of kids with disabilities get ditched. I’ll explain why it happens in the autism world: you have a friend who brings her 3-year-old over for weekly playdates. Her kid can’t talk, has meltdowns for “no reason”, maybe he’s a bit aggressive, doesn’t relate to the other kids there and his behaviour is disruptive. The mama host thinks “Hmmm…this playdate would go much more smoothly if that kid with the problems doesn’t come”. The playdate invitations stop.

3) You constantly bail on plans: When you regularly drop out of social plans at the last minute, eventually your friends will stop inviting you. I generally don’t accept invitations in the first place because of my bailing stats. But, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate receiving a low pressure “turn up if you can swing it” invitation. It makes me feel that I have not been forgotten, and also that there is some understanding about my situation.

4) You become a Mama of Many: Right around the birth of your fourth child, families you normally socialize with suddenly stop inviting you over. Who can blame them – your family takes up their whole house.

How have your friendships survived? What are the biggest friendship hurdles you’ve encountered in your mama life? Are you still close with the friends you had pre-kids, or did you shake it up socially when you hit the mama scene?

Mothers can have bad days – kids misbehave, work gets on top of you, the house is a dump, your husband is being useless, etc. Mothers often tell me that when they are having a bad day, they think of me and they instantly feel better. The chaos in my life provides them with some comfort in those manic mama moments.

But I have to let you in on a little secret: it’s not that bad. In fact, it’s pretty darn good. Sure, I don’t get a lot of sleep and nights out on the town are few and far between, but that’s what I signed up for when I had six kids.

Between my babies, business and blogging, there are quite a few balls in the air. So the question is often asked about how I manage it all. I could go on and on, but since this is a blog and not a book, I’m keeping it short with just a few little things that are firmly entrenched in my brain that help me get through my busy days.

Keep everything in perspective
When things are hectic at Mabel’s Labels and stress is creeping into our lives, my business partners and I look at each other and remind ourselves of this: We are making labels; we are not saving lives. This is not to downplay how seriously we take our business. If a customer has not received labels on time, that is a dire Mabel 911 situation. Should we let it keep us up at night? Probably not. We’re better off engaging in more proactive responses such as finding out what went wrong and changing our system. Fix the mistake, move on and remember: no one died.

Don’t take your kids so seriously
My kids are kids, not projects. Don’t obsess over whether your kids are academically gifted, going to get MVP or be chosen for the competitive dance team. When my kids grow up, they will be like most others – they’ll get a job. They may become teachers, bricklayers, doctors, bus drivers, parents, whatever. Hopefully they’ll have a fulfilling personal life. I want them to be happy and the best people they can be. Stop taking them so seriously and worrying about what they’ll be later, instead of what they are now.

Don’t take yourself so seriously
You’re a parent, not a miracle worker. You’ll make mistakes and feel crappy about it. So learn from it and move right along. Dwelling is pointless. Sometimes as you try to balance all your roles, you’ll notice everything becoming unaligned – several balls you are juggling come crashing down at once. On those days, order pizza, give the kids bowls of cereal for dinner, let them watch too much TV or go to bed without brushing their teeth. I think they will be OK if they don’t have veggies with dinner two nights in a row. No one is going to turn you into the bad mother police for letting the kids eat hotdogs off their laps on the family room couch. While they’re doing that, for goodness’ sake, go get yourself a well deserved glass of wine!

So this Mother’s Day, give yourself an invaluable Mother’s Day gift. A healthy dose of perspective will make you happier than a dozen roses or new pair of earrings ever will.

I was online the other night participating in a Twitter party. The topic of discussion was food – kiddo food, healthy snacks, on-the-go foods, etc.

Since I’m not a big foodie type, I didn’t think I’d have much to contribute to the conversation. My kids eat well, but I’m not a health nut and don’t spend hours in the kitchen creating beautiful meals for my family. In short, my kids have not had a Twinkie-free existence and occasionally they have had frozen meatballs for dinner – still frozen. Two nights in a row.

But as the chit-chat went on and people were exchanging stories about weird food their kids love and delicious food their kids hate, I discovered I did have some interesting things to say. I made some valuable contributions including:

- One kid of mine has a favourite snack that is horribly embarrassing to admit. In fact, when I tell people what it is, they throw up a little in their mouths. My kid loves hot dogs but in the form of a cold wiener straight from the fridge. Just gagged while writing that.

- Another kid loves avocado with a squeeze of lemon. I don’t think I had avocado until I was about 30-years-old. In my humble upbringing, we would have called avacados “fancy food”!

- My kids and all of their cousins have the same favourite fruit called “sour apple”. It is sliced apple in a bowl, drenched in lemon juice.

- The one food I can serve up that each kid will eat without complaint is pesto on pasta. Now, it’s interesting to note that they actually make the pesto. They plant the basil in the backyard and when pesto making day is upon us, they pick the basil and go shopping for the other ingredients. This begs the question – is there a connection between kids being involved in their food and liking their food?

A strange food fact about me also made its way into the conversation, leaving people shocked and horrified. What is this shocking food news? I’ve never had a milkshake. Ever. Not once in my 39 years of life.

So go on – what creepy, weird food does your kid like? Or, have you reached the age of 40 and never tried sushi or tasted kiwi fruit? The best thing that came out of this whole Twitter party food chat is all the milkshakes I’ve had promised to me in the last few days!

To say we are THRILLED to be the recipients of the RBC Momentum award would be an understatement.

Seven years ago we were working through the night in a dingy basement. In those early days, we paid our first web designer not in cash, but in exchange for a foosball table.

Now we are here and our thank yous are many:

First and foremost to Carolyn Lawrence and our friends at Women of Influence, to our esteemed panel of judges, and of course to RBC, the kind sponsors of the Momentum Award. We truly appreciate your support and hard work.

On a personal note, we also want to recognize some people who have been on this journey with us.

1) It seems appropriate to acknowledge our women folk – including a handful of mothers, grandmothers, mothers-in-law and a step-mother. And since the four Mabel partners are related, some of these women have overlapping roles! They have provided wisdom and support to us. Their lives have been remarkable and their love for us unwavering. Let this be the legacy we leave our daughters.

2) Our spouses – known affectionately as ‘the Mabel widowers’. Creating and growing this business would not have been possible without their encouragement and their willingness to watch every family function transform into a strategic planning meeting.

3) Our collective 12 children – who sometimes have to suffer through having mothers who, while having one eye firmly on the soccer field or ice rink, have another eye occasionally straying to her BlackBerry. Our children were our inspiration to start a business, and continue to inspire us in so many ways.

4) The Mabel team – our staff has worked in unconventional spaces with unconventional supervisors. They have suffered through tremendous and challenging growth and change, always remaining positive and keeping the company’s needs their top priority.

5) Our customers – clearly, we love them for buying labels and we quite literally would not be here without them! But in addition to that, our customers are loyal and many have been with us through the years, providing us with feedback, ideas and spreading the Mabel word among their contacts. They have become a part of the Mabelhood community and shaped that community through engaging with us on many different levels.

We four partners have had quite a ride, and throughout it all we have remained a strong sisterhood – four different women who have laughed together, struggled together, raised families together and worked, worked, worked.

We started a business because we chose to live as dynamic business owners, enthusiastic mothers and inspired women. Thank you to the esteemed panel of judges who, by selecting us, showed that you value that choice.

Mabel’s Labels congratulates Shirley Broback of Laughing Belly Productions on winning this year’s SavvyMom Mom Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
Shirley heads the family-operated event planning company behind the fabulous Vancouver Island Baby Fair. As past exhibitors at the fair, we have nothing but great things to say about it and how well deserved this award is for Shirley. Read more about this mompreneur extraordinaire here. Congratulations!

One week down, eight more to go.

This week four of the kiddos were enrolled in a little tennis camp in the neighbourhood for two hours a day. The plan was that in those two hours I would have enough time to clear out my e-mail inbox, update my Facebook status, spend a few moments on twitter, read a couple of blog posts and run an errand. The rest of my day would belong to the kiddos.

It rained this week and while I don’t mean to carry on and complain about the rain, tennis camp gets cancelled at the first detection of a dark cloud. It’s a far cry from soccer night where parents are forced to shiver on the sidelines while cheering on their little players during a torrential downpour.

So the kiddos and I spent a decent chunk of time together this week – indoors. As our family has increased in size, I’ve noticed some changes in our actual house. The volume has increased so dramatically I’m convinced someone secretly installed invisible microphones into the walls. There seems to be a noise switch hidden somewhere that can never be turned off. I’ve also noticed some structural changes in our house – the foundations seem to be shrinking and the walls are closing in.

During the week I also had a chance to closer observe the strange and confusing relationship my kids have with each other. They are best friends and playmates while simultaneously teasing, bickering and generally annoying the crap out of each other. How do they manage all that love and torment at the same time without getting hurt or offended? Don’t these people know how to hold a grudge? Engaged couples should observe them for a lesson on how to be angry and then just let go of it. My guys don’t even seem to remember that they are in a conflict situation before they move onto the next activity together.

This summer will provide plenty of opportunity to observe the strange and unusual behaviour of my kiddos – I’m on maternity leave and other than a few half day camps, the kids are hanging with me. Since my house is kid-centric, “their” backyard is suited up with a pool, trampoline, swing set, sand pit, and even backs onto a park. No need to camp up when home feels like summer camp.

While I have already had moments thinking it’s going to be one long summer for mama, I’ll just keep my wits about me and have some fun surviving rainy days, bickering siblings and my ever shrinking house.

I was recently sitting around with my business partners chatting about our Mabel journey. We realized that over the last few years, the Mabel lifestyle has at times been a bit crazy. We have certainly found ourselves in some pretty wacky situations. So entertaining was the discussion, it’s worth sharing a few moments.

The Early Days:

- We were working out of a tiny basement making labels until 3:00am then going home to start the day with our kiddos at 6:00am. Oh, and three of the four of us were pregnant. You can understand why whenever we heard our friends complaining about being tired we’d quietly roll our eyes. Doing that first trimester fatigue on three hours sleep…..well, not our best days.

- We did everything ourselves, including licking the envelopes. Ellis and Cynthia licked so many one night, they almost vomited. We had flashbacks to George Costanza’s fiancé’s untimely death on Seinfeld, the direct result of envelope licking. We quite easily could have been a sit com, but the star roles were very unglamourous!

- One terrible night a printer broke. We went into action and quickly problem solved the situation – my mom was called in immediately. You see, she is a retired primary school teacher with very nice handwriting. She hand wrote the address on every order that evening.

- We once folded 5000 brochures by hand because we couldn’t afford the $100 folding fee.

- We paid our first web designer with a foosball table in lieu of cash.

Other Crazy Stuff:

- While at a Baby Show, Mumby fixed Sarah’s (savvymom.ca) BlackBerry with a bunch of Sticky Labels samples. When I saw Sarah six months later, she proudly showed me her BlackBerry – still being held together by Mabel’s Labels. We’ve seen some good customer hacks in our time but this takes the cake.

- After doing a recent Pirate themed Baby Show (yes, weird, we know), for days Mumby’s facebook status updates only said things like “a-hoy”, “errrr” and “eye matey”.

- I once became a ‘camping expert’ in less than a day after getting a request for such an expert to appear on Breakfast Television. I’ve never googled so much about any one topic before in my life.

- Mumby has been known to chit-chat with the editors from Penthouse while trying desperately attempting to come up with a PR angle.

- Mumby has been seen walking around Chicago with Oprah labels, just in case she ran into Oprah.

- Cynthia and I once drove for six hours for a four minute TV spot, only to then turn around and drive home.

- We once sent a box of brochures off to a camp then found out that a camel arrived instead of our brochures. Yes, a camel. We still have no idea who intercepted the package, but this is the stuff Mabel legends are made of. The camp even forwarded us the picture of the camel, which arrived with a Mabel magnet attached to it! Full story here: http://www.mabel.ca/wordpress/?p=252.

And just when we thought we’d done it all and seen it all, last week Ellis and I somehow ended up modelling in a mama fashion show. Uh, you remember that I’m five weeks out of my sixth c-section, right? Well clearly I forgot that fact when I agreed to strut my mama stuff. Three words: pass the Spanx!

So from the dark and dreary corners of a basement to the catwalk, I can only imagine the weird and wonderful places Mabel will take us in the next few years!

If you commented on the Name Game blog entry, keep watch on Caitlin’s “Mabel Files” (www.blog.mabel.ca) where she will soon be posting the winner of the Camp Pack. Caitlin takes care of all the official stuff and I get to have the blogging fun. Heck, I’m on maternity leave so it seems fair that I run the contest and someone else worries about monitoring entries, wouldn’t you say?

Although I’m on mat leave, I have not fallen off the face of the earth entirely – still blogging, checking facebook, on twitter, etc. To simply disappear from social networks and ignore good online discussion is not something this chatty mama is cut out for. Cocooning for an extended period of time off-line with my kiddos wouldn’t really work for me. And last I checked, my inbox didn’t get the memo that I’m on maternity leave.

In the last few days I’ve had both a radio and magazine interview. We like Mabel to get some airtime so an interview request is not the time to pull maternity leave rank – save that for when you want to guiltlessly forward annoying sales messages to your colleagues.

All things considered, my maternity leave rocks – I do what I like and ditch what I don’t. Not a bad gig really. But everyone has a different idea of what works for them.

I know one woman who was enjoying a long and successful legal and academic career when she gave birth for the first time at 43-years-old. When I was at Law School I would occasionally come across her articles which were nearly impossible to read – she spoke an entirely different language and it certainly didn’t involve words like “lactation” and “play date”. The transition from working world to mama world was too great a leap for her – she only lasted two weeks before heading back into the traditional workforce.

I know other mamas in similar situations who take great pleasure in retiring their blackberries for the full maternity leave then reluctantly blow the dust off them when it’s time to head back.

There is no right answer to what consitutes the perfect maternity leave. I’m officially heading back to Mabel life in September. After having six kids under foot all summer, the return to work will likely be a nice break from my maternity leave!

photo #1 – yes, checking my blackberry from my hospital bed

photo #2 – on the Enterprise Toronto panel last week. Finian at three weeks old was the youngest entrepreneur in attendance. Can you see the little guy on my lap?

Last week I had the pleasure of welcoming National Parenting Columnist for the CBC, Karen Horsman into my home where she interviewed me on the topic of striking the work/life balance. When we were arranging the date, I thought it was cute when she asked if there would be suitable background noise, appropriate for the segment. I let her know that noise is our speciality and we can serve it up anyway she likes it. Along with background noise, we can do headache creating noise, noise that makes the walls shake, playing in the pool noise, noise in the form of shrills, thrills, cries and laughter. Heck, we can make the kind of noise that gets neighbours calling City Council and Children’s Services. Some families fancy themselves as musicians or athletes. Nope, not us – we’re just the loud family.

I am now on day seven of the twenty days that daddy-o and the two big kids are in far off lands visiting my in-laws.

Over the last week I have repeatedly heard “how are you enjoying the break?” and “does it feel like a holiday?” Truth is, it kind of does. I have four fewer sporting events to get to each week, less bickering to mediate and the laundry demands are quite sensible. However, I still have three kids at home who are aged one, three and five. It can hardly be considered a ‘break’ or holiday destination of any kind….not much sitting on the beach or cocktail hour happening around here.

Now, we all get that motherhood is a thankless job and all that, but I’ve come to realize that a strange transformation happens when daddy-o takes over some of the parenting and family duties that mama usually handles. Instantly that parenting role is worthy of praise and suddenly folks start offering up a bit of support to the primary caregiver.

Whenever I am away on business, the troops rally around daddy-o. Children get invited for sleep-overs and play-dates, and dinner invitations come pouring in. I can guarantee that if roles were reversed and it was daddy-o home with three small children for 20 days, it would end with a ticker-tape parade through the centre of town in his honour. I would have people swarming me telling me how “lucky” I am that he is such a good father.

What do I get for my 20 days with three small children? I’m not really sure but it would be great if those troops arrived sometime soon.

A similar example is observed every August at the Mabel office. There is one Mabel mama who usually ends up putting in 16 hours days for several consecutive weeks. Her husband is a teacher so manages all things kid and household during that hectic summer season. We always marvel at the outrageous number of comments floating around about how amazing he is. I’m quite sure by the end of this summer he will be inducted into some fatherhood hall of fame. But why is he a Saint for doing for a few weeks what countless women do ALL the time?

So the double standard is clear:
- Daddy-o does the job and he gets assistance and accolades
- Mama does the job and no one really cares or notices

Whatever the reasons and answers, all I can say is that it’s a darn good thing we’re not in the business of being mamas for the glory. I’d guess it’s the great pay, hours, holidays and benefit packages that attract most of us to it.