Thanks for visiting my new Babble blog. I’m really excited to be here. I’m a daily Babble reader, and I’ve contributed several essays to the site, including one on “overparenting,” and another on why I like having a large family.
And I do indeed have a pretty big brood, especially by today’s standards. Allow me to introduce you to the many people who inhabit my domestic planet.
I’m mama to 14-month-old Charlotte, who is blonde, blue-eyed and a real Chatty Cathy these days.
And then there there is 10-year-old Elliot, my sweetheart of a boy’s boy, who loves dirt, sticks, rocks, fire, and knives.
After Elliot comes my 13-going-on-17-year-old daughter Jane, who is destined to run Vogue one of these days.
And then there is my first baby, 17-year-old Henry, who is a hippie dreamer child with a dry wit that can make me laugh until I cry.
Yes, I do indeed have four children. And we may not be done yet. We’ll see.
My three eldest children live half the time with me and half the time with their wonderful father, who lives nearby and to whom I was married for more than a decade. Getting divorced with children was very difficult. But our family is well past it now, and I am happily remarried to Jon, super dad, stepdad, blogger extraordinaire and all around great guy.
Jon and I were married in September, 2006, soon after buying the giant, old Victorian house that we all inhabit together. The house needs a lot of work, and we’re slowly restoring it, but honestly, that’s a project that will take years.
We also have three dogs. Fiat is a Jack Russell mix with doggy ADHD. Mabel is a surly black pug. And Leo is our nearly perfect 8 month old Great Pyrenees puppy. Our cats are Mingus and Moses.
As you likely guessed from the title of this blog, I’m a working mother. I work 40-plus hours each week in new media business development for a big media company. I also do quite a bit of freelancing for magazines and websites, and I’m the author of the book “Attachment Parenting.” I’ve also contributed to several literary nonfiction anthologies, including this one, this one and this one.
My husband does more than 50% of the parenting in our household. He takes the baby to work with him each day at the small family accounting firm where he works, and my incredible, recently retired mother-in-law meets him there each day to help with our daughter and our three year old niece, who also comes to the office with my sister-in-law, who works with the family firm as well. It’s a pretty wonderful childcare solution, and I’m grateful.
I’m also very close to my extended family, who help me juggle it all. Just today, my 17-year-old son was home sick and needed to get to the pediatrician, and I had meetings all day, so my sister took him to the doctor for me (and it turns out he has a staph infection. AAAGGGH). My children spend a lot of time with their cousins, my 14 nieces and nephews, whom I adore.
I hail from Bell Buckle, TN, and attended The Webb School and the University of Tennessee, where I studied politics, in which I remain intensely interested. In fact, I plan to run for office one of these days.In the interim, I also have a political blog. I’m a law school dropout.
My life is unbelievably full, which is why my house is often really messy, and I don’t get enough exercise. I mean, there really is only so much I can get done in a week. Sometimes I think about trying to cut back in one area or another, but then I can’t figure out where to do it. Plus, we don’t have one of those “parental abandonment laws” in my state, like they do in Nebraska (I kid! I kid!)
I love power pop, horses, Gerber daisies, Tudor history and good beer. I used to never watch TV, but in the last year or two, I’ve become a little addicted. Paul Rudd and Ben Kweller are my biggest celebrity crushes. Guilty pleasures: true crime and the National Enquirer (for which my father used to freelance). I have a bit of “a Crackberry problem,” as my family delicately puts it.
So there you have The Life of Katie in a nutshell. I look forward to joining you here at the old Babble blog each day to talk about life as a working mama, and I hope you will share your own thoughts in the comments below. Thanks for stopping by.
-Katie
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The test worked. Did the comment?
Totally approve of Henry’s Ramones shirt.