Blog Posts by Mommy Tracked

Anyone who's a fan of Real Simple magazine knows it's full of helpful tips to make life for harried families more organized and easier. Having a third child at age 42 when you have an 8- and 11-year-old would hardly seem the way to accomplish that, but that's exactly what Kristin van Ogtrop, editor of Real Simple, did. It was something she and her husband had talked about for about for a decade before finally deciding to go for it.

Three children or not, van Ogtrop knows there are countless mothers just like her: "Women who want to succeed at work, and do what's best for their children, and who - when those two goals seem to be most at odds - find a way to flip the advantage," she writes in her just published book, " Just Let Me Lie Down: Necessary Terms for the Half-insane Working Mom" (Little Brown, April 2010), a humorous look at motherhood, work and the ever-illusive balancing act.

Before joining Real Simple in 2003, van Ogtrop, 45, worked at Vogue, Premiere, Travel & Leisure and

by Amy Eschliman and Leigh Oshirak, authors of Balance is a Crock, Sleep is for the Weak

As I sailed into my 10th month of pregnancy I was ready for life with a baby AND a job (or so I thought). Working motherhood wasn't going to be easy, but I'd never backed down from a challenge before so I wasn't about to start. I was certain that by applying my organizational skills to my life post-baby I would be good to go. You know if A, then B, then C. Check, Check, Check. Plan, stick to plan, create a routine etc. Little did I know that motherhood makes a mockery out of control freaks like me.

So saying I had one "aha moment" would be a huge lie. I had many moments that, much like the continuous sound of a leaky faucet, drove me to the edge of sanity. There was the epic schedule screw up at daycare that left me with only 3 days a week of coverage when I worked 5. There was the daily grind of dropping off at daycare at 8am and racing out at 5pm only to skid up ten minutes before it

by Vicki Larson

When I was younger, I wanted to be many things - a ballerina, until I suffered the humiliation of being the only one in the pre-performance picture who'd forgotten to spray-paint her black ballet slippers silver; an artist, until my parents refused to let me travel the subways to get to the prestigious art high school in Manhattan where I'd been accepted (and I have held it against them ever since); an ecologist, until a year and a half into the environmental science program I realized I'd never be able to save the world and, because I had recently experienced a breakup, it might not even deserve to be saved; and a writer, or so I convinced my parents as I insisted that traveling with friends cross-country one summer instead of working would be a better use of my time, fodder for the Great American Novel I was destined to write.

One thing I never dreamed of as a "career" was motherhood, but having kids was one of those understood things; I would have a great

by Meredith O'Brien (Moms in Pop Culture & Politics)

*Warning: This contains spoilers from the season four premiere of Army Wives.*

When she had her own radio show on the Army post called, "Have At It," former Boston cop Pamela Moran fielded on-air calls from fellow Army wives about their lives, problems and dreams. During one radio show, Pamela listened impatiently as a caller said she was tired of her career coming in second behind her husband's, behind the Army. To this, Pamela responded with this:

"You're an Army wife. I'm an Army wife. That means that you're always going to play second fiddle career-wise while your spouse is in the military. That is just a fact of life. And yeah, a marriage is a partnership, but in the Army your husband is always going to be the senior partner . . . You married a soldier. And a soldier gets called at a moment's notice to go off to war and defend our country and we just accept it, move on and quit complaining."

Even during season

by Risa Green (Tales from the Mommy Track)

Somehow, I am no longer the fun one.

This did not happen overnight. It must have been gradual, because I only recently even became aware that it had happened. But it has. Where I used to be Mommy, the Doer of All Fun Things, I have now morphed into Mom, the One Who Drives to All Fun Things. And somehow, my husband, who used to be Daddy, That Other Parent, has now become Daddy, the Awesomest Guy In the World Who Coaches All of Our Sports Teams and Buys Us Donuts at Nine AM. Hmmm.

It kind of sucks, not being the fun one anymore. When my kids were in preschool, we would spend the afternoons together playing at the park, going to Mommy and Me classes, baking brownies or Rice Krispie treats, and making art projects together. But now that my kids are older and have stuff to do after school, I feel like I've become nothing more than a glorified chauffeur, chef, and personal assistant, all rolled into one. While my kids are toiling away at

Read more Funny Papers on Mommy Tracked

---
Funny Papers is an exclusive, weekly cartoon in glorious color about the serious silliness (and occasional stickiness and stinkiness) of modern motherhood.

Betsy Streeter, mother of two, is a veteran cartoonist and creator of " Brainwaves ," a single-panel feature about the absurdity of everyday life. Her pen and ink musings can be found in syndication at gocomics.com and in dailies, weeklies, monthlies, quarterlies, and in quite a few psychology textbooks (go figure). She's also published two Brainwaves books. Between cartoons, Betsy teaches drawing and cartooning to kids, watches sci fi movies and listens to every genre of music.

by Abby Margolis Newman (Saving the World One Teen at a Time on Mommy Tracked)

Our oldest son is a high school sophomore, so we are still two years away from the college application process, but from what I'm hearing, there is ample reason to start freaking out now.

Anyone who has read anything about the insanely competitive nature of the college admissions in the 21st century will tell you that we would never, in a million years, be admitted today into the colleges from which we graduated decades ago. In fact, a valedictorian with a 4.5 GPA and 2400 SAT's no longer has a surefire ticket into America's most selective colleges.

Ready for some depressing information? My husband has been doing alumni interviewing in the Bay Area of potential applicants for Brown University, from which he graduated in 1987. For the incoming class of 2013, Brown received over 27,000 applications and accepted 2,500 kids (about 9%), for a matriculating class of around 1,350.

Here's the

by Leslie Morgan Steiner (Two Cents on Working Motherhood)

Adolescent girl-on-girl bullying in America has dominated the news headlines following the tragic suicide of Phoebe Prince, an Irish student new to South Hadley High School in Massachusetts. After briefly dating a popular football player, Prince endured months of hallway and Internet slurs from a cabal of seven other girls before hanging herself in mid-January. Debates rage about teacher, student and societal culpability, with at least one anti-bullying consultant, Barbara Coloroso, blaming administrators at South Hadley High School. Other experts are shining an intense spotlight on the myth (or reality) of mean-girl female violence.

These public discussions, coupled with another dominant news headline about girls - the indisputable fact that girls academically outperform boys at the secondary and collegiate levels -- highlight the unique, complex pressures on girls in America today.

A politically incorrect