Have you been Mommy Track’d?
May 16 2007

Are you on the mommy track?  If so, you should check out Mommy Track’d: The working mother’s guide to managed chaos.  Their mission is to provide a helpful and entertaining resource for all the time-crunched moms managing the daily tug of war between work and family.  I know we can all use some entertainment to get us through the day sometimes!  If you are a multi-tasker like I tend to be (or sometimes have no choice but to be) this site is for you. 

My 4 1/2 year old son has been sick the last couple of days so I’m trying to get as much done while he takes a nap and watches the TV shows he never gets to see during the day such as Go Diego Go, Handy Manny, Little Einsteins, and the Backyardigans.  Yesterday he felt pretty bad so he mostly wanted me to sit with him while he watched the shows.  So I, too, got my Playhouse Disney and Nick Jr. fix!  He is much better today and has been bouncing off of the walls most of the time.  He’s taking a nap right now so I have a chance to work on this blog post without being interrupted every 30 seconds.  Earlier today he told me his head hurt when he talks so I told him not to talk.  He laughed and then said ‘not really, I’m kidding.’ For him ‘not talking’ is equivalent to ‘not breathing.’ 😀

I recently signed up for Mommy Track’d’s email newsletter and am looking forward to getting some entertaining ideas on what to do when one of our kids is home sick in the future.  It’s free to sign up for the email newsletter, you get valuable information, and if you are so overextended that you can’t even read straight you can unsubscribe easily and re-subscribe when it works for you.  At any rate, you should at least check out thier Hot Topics page and browse through their Message Boards.

The reason for the birth of Mommy Track’d : “While there are countless general parenting resources available today, we think working moms need a place to call their own. These juggling, struggling women have careers, families and friends. Some might even say they have a version of “it all.” What they didn’t have until now is an informative, fun website that speaks just to them. Now they do.”  Oh so true!  As they say, ‘it takes a village’ and us moms (whether working for pay or not – all moms work hard!) should always try to support each other so we can help make the world a better place!

Happy Mother’s Day!
May 13 2007

Happy Mother’s Day from Babble Soft!  Our Mother’s Day special is still available through the end of May 2007.   I hope every mother is being treated like royalty this weekend.  On Saturday I took my son to his swim class, we went to a birthday party, I took a nap, then went to the mall (by myself!), and then my husband planned a date night for us.  It was nice going to the mall and having time to think about the things I wanted to buy, instead of having to make decisions in 5 seconds because one of the kids wants to be carried or is about to run off somewhere. 🙂  I went to Victoria’s Secret and bought some of my usual items (some on sale), bought some sunglasses from the $10/first pair, $5/second pair sunglass kiosk, and got some things for the kids at The Disney Store.  The Disney Store had beach towels (Nemo and Micky Mouse) for $9.99 each , and flip flops for $4 a pair!  I was feeling so good about my accomplishments, that I didn’t realize what time it was.  I had arrived at the mall around 5:00 pm and thought I had plenty of time…until my husband called to ask where I was.  I said “I’ll be home by 6:00 pm” and he said “it is 6:00 pm!”  I was surprised because I thought it was only 5:30 pm.  The girl at the Disney Store checkout laughed with me and helped me get out the door in a hurry!

After dinner at a nice local restaurant called Shoreline Grill, my husband got out his Blackberry and looked for jazz clubs.   We don’t get out much so we aren’t up to speed on the downtown club scene.  The place we went to is called The Elephant Room and it had a nice ambiance.  We got there around 9:00 pm, they said the band, Gnappy, would start at 9:30 pm, but they didn’t start until around 9:50 pm.  We had to leave at 10:00 so our baby sitters could go home.  We liked what we heard the 10 or so minutes we were there!  Maybe next time.

Today, we went with some friends for a nice brunch at Chez Zee.  They had balloon animals and face painting for the kids.  We came home and my husband took the kids across the street to play with the grand kids of one of our neighbors, and I was able to call my mom and have a nice mother’s day chat with her.  Both kids are napping now so I thought I’d take the opportunity to blog a little.

Happy Mother’s Day everyone!

Aruni

Motorola Q Smartphone
May 8 2007

Not only is the Motorola Q phone running Microsoft’s WM 5.0 compatible with Baby Manager Mobile, it also has a few other nice features.  It’s sleek, it fits nicely in dad’s pants pocket, a purse, or a diaper bag, and I believe it also serves as a good “here look at this” distraction toy for those ‘rare’ occasions that your baby might be fussy.  Although I’m sure parents have given it to their baby to use as a teether, I don’t think Motorola recommends that particular use.  You can also use it to try to keep up with your hectic life once baby arrives by having your schedule and emails at your fingertips.  You can easily text message your spouse with “I need help…where are you??” statements throughout the day with one hand while holding baby up and away from a diaper disaster.

For those interested in the new MotoQ 9H phone running WM 6.0 (unveiled at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona in February 2007) due out later this year with apparently even neater baby distracting features, we are working like crazy to make sure Baby Manager Mobile is compatible.  Every time Microsoft releases a new OS, us little mobile application developers invariably have to make some ‘tweaks’ to make sure our app works as designed.  We can never figure out why they keep making changes….maybe to see how many hoops we can jump through! 😀

Motherhood doesn’t have to get in the way of a high tech career
Apr 30 2007

On April 27, 2007 the Austin Business Journal printed an article written by Aruni, co-founder of Babble Soft.  If you have a subscription to the ABJ, you can read a version of the article here.  If not, following is the complete version:

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As a Tech Mompreneur running Babble Soft™, a company geared toward new parents, I get to combine my love for my kids with my love for running a business.  Every mom loves talking about their kids, and I get to do that every day!  And I don’t have to worry about whether people think I’m too “into” my family and not enough “into” my career.  Unfortunately, many women have to be careful of how often they discuss their kids at work and how often they take off time to spend with them.

Before having kids, I felt like I had something to prove and was on a mission to make a difference in this world.  I was the founding President/CEO of Isochron® (a Web and wireless company creating solutions for the bottling industry).  We raised $15 million in equity financing, grew the company to 35 people, and closed accounts with large, reputable companies like Coca-Cola.  Isochron survived the dot-com crash and was sold in 2002. After leaving in 2001, I taught entrepreneurship at the UT McCombs School of Business, consulted, and wrote.  I thought I knew what tired meant at this stage in my career, but didn’t truly know the meaning of the word until after my son was born in August 2002.

We left the hospital happy that we had a healthy baby, but emotionally and physically drained.  Our son decided he didn’t want to come out, so we induced six days after his due date and I ended up having an emergency C-section. 

When my husband went back to work, I started to panic, asking myself, “How will I remember everything I need to do now that my normal brain function is compromised by lack of sleep?”  I kept wondering out loud, “When did I last feed him?  And on what side?  How many times had I already pumped and how much had I pumped that day? When will this horrible pain (from the breast infection I’d contracted) go away?” Because I’m a “need-to-know” person, coming up with a system for tracking our son’s care became crucial to my coping with the topsy-turvy world of new parenthood.

We were pleasantly surprised to find that we weren’t the only ones using pen and paper to track the progress of their babies. We sympathized with friends and acquaintances over their frustrations about keeping months of notes on their newborns organized.  So we thought, “Why don’t we create something?” And, out of this need to know, Babble Soft and Baby Manager™ were born.  Now, I still want make a difference, but my desire to prove something to someone else has been tempered with my desire to be a great mother.

In 2005, Baby Manager was ready for our newborn daughter to be the first test case. Having a way to easily record her activities on a PDA was liberating.  Being able to take it everywhere, and having the information at my fingertips to reassure me my daughter was progressing normally, made the whole experience of taking care of a newborn much easier than the first time. Things went so well that I donated to the Mother’s Milk Bank at Austin (MMBA), a nonprofit organization that collects, pasteurizes, and dispenses donor milk for premature and sick infants.

During this time, we spoke with pediatricians and other birth specialists and realized that parents of premature babies would be particularly well-served by Baby Manager so we added features to better meet those parents’ needs.  We launched the new Web and mobile application in March 2007.

For me, starting Babble Soft has felt like a crusade to help new parents. Some people have questioned the need for Baby Manager, wondering if it was too much to know the time of every feeding and every diaper change, but for those with sick, premature, or multiple babies it’s a lifesaver.  And for those like me who “need to know,” it can bring a little sanity into an often very chaotic time.  I believe that informed parents are often more secure parents, and my goal is to continue creating products to help parents feel more secure.

So do moms and technology mix?  Yes, they do — now more than ever!  Women tend to have more education, make higher incomes, and have easier access to technology than their mothers did.  There are websites and community sites popping up everywhere, catering to this new type of mom who wants to stay connected to the world while spending more time with her kids.  I helped co-found the Tech Moms group within the Association for Women in Technology – Austin organization the year after my son was born to give moms who work in the technology field a forum for sharing their experiences.

Moms are using technology to run home-based businesses and to contribute on a part-time or full-time basis to other companies.  The availability of technology enables mothers to continue using their years of institutional education and work experience and stay connected to both the adult world and their kids.

Obviously, there’s no degree on how to raise your child correctly.  There’s a lot of learning on the fly. But it’s a great time to be a mom, whether today’s technology is a critical part of your professional career, your career as a parent, or – for people like me – both.

DadLabs – Building Better Dads
Apr 19 2007

Baby Proofing Your Marriage
Apr 15 2007

I just finished reading a new book called Baby Proofing your Marriage. I also recently met one of the authors, Stacie Cockrell.  She is a fellow MBA grad from The University of Texas at Austin and happens to be married to a venture capitalist that interestingly my husband and I had met briefly almost 10 years ago!  What a small world…or at least small town (Austin, TX).

This is a really great book! Funny, entertaining, and quick/easy to read.  It’s been a top seller at Amazon.com soon after its release in January 2007.

Several of the situations described in the book brought back memories of when my husband and I had some of the same “heated discussions” when our kids were babies. I’m now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and I think this book is a must-read for those still in the “trenches.”

The men will particularly appreciate Chapter 4, The “Sex Life” of New Parents: Coitus Non-Existus.

So if you are in Baby World or know anyone who is, this book will provide something interesting to talk about … and could save at least one trip to the marriage counselor. 🙂