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Or should I say - do you talk to your children about It, you know, the "Birds and The Bees"? My girls were only five and six years old and they haven’t been asking questions about sex just yet (phew), but they do ask questions about where babies come from, how they are born, how they get into the mommy’s tummy, and of course, how they come out.

I don’t know about you, but the first time my daughter asked questions I was completely caught off guard. I admit, this is coming from a mom who tells her girls that they have a “big” bum and a little “bum” (back and front if you don’t get my drift), and who is not entirely comfortable using words like “vagina” and “penis”. I know, I’m 44 – get over it. I’m trying, really.

So when my older daughter went off to a birthday party and my husband and I decided that our younger daughter was too tired to and so had to stay home. I appeased (okay, bribed, I admit it) her and avoided her having a tantrum about having to stay home because I’d let her watch a movie. We found a Netflix Watch Instantly movie called “The Adventures of Milo and Otis.” The description was benign, no people, farm animals featuring a dog and a cat who are friends, and a voiceover by Dudley Moore. So we watched the movie. All is fine until the footage shows a close-up of a dog and later, a cat, delivering their puppies and kittens. In and of itself, this was fine. What I wasn’t ready for were the questions that come up during my girls’ bath time about how human babies are born.

I am grateful, but I’m not always so lucky. I certainly don’t mean to sound whiny or ungrateful – just so you’re clear. My husband and I are truly blessed with four grandparents who are willing to take care of our children so that we can go on vacation without them. Oh, and let’s not forget taking care of our 90-pound, furry, four-legged teddy bear of a shedding dog. So yes, I’m grateful, we’re healthy, we have an awesome family, and we’re on vacation. We got a great deal post-Olympics to go to Whistler, Canada. We’ve been looking forward to this for the last couple of months and working on getting back into skiing shape.

We arrived yesterday after a five-hour drive from Seattle, taking the slow route through Vancouver (instead of around it – did I mention how great I am with maps?), to arrive in a drizzly, rainy Whistler. That’s okay, it wasn’t really raining and we expected to start skiing the next day anyway – today, that is.

I ran a company for ten years, got married, got a dog (already had two cats), had two kids, moved to a bigger house, got involved a bit with my girls’ school, joined the Board of Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO), tried to be a good daughter, mother, sister, and friend. According to my friends and family, I was over-committed.

I finally decided to close my company last summer, and wound it down for the remaining six months of last year. The first week that I didn’t go to the office every day was just plain weird. I sort of wandered around not knowing what to do with myself. I created a list of all the projects at home that I had been putting off, and all of the errands I never get to. I got stuff done and still felt like I was meandering through my day. It didn’t feel good; in fact, it felt stressful because I had lost my sense of purpose.

Married seven years and together for almost 10! Just another milestone to make me realize how quickly time passes. I had never heard of the seven year itch until a friend of mine told me about it. Why seven? Do we suddenly tire of our partners after seven years? Do people tend to enter their mid-life crisis at about the same time as seven years of marriage, so that they start to pine for their younger days?

Perhaps it’s akin to the seventh awning stretch in a baseball game. Maybe it’s not really an itch at all, but rather a time to stretch and reflect upon all the wonderful things that have happened, and a time to come up with a game plan for all of the exciting things we have to look forward to.

Week 2 and Strike 1 with Sheila as my girls’ nanny. During her second week of work Sheila told me that one of their cars died and that she would need to use one of our cars for work. Before I could blink, my husband and I were juggling our two cars, our separate commutes to work, and Sheila’s needs in taking care of our children. In retrospect, I can’t believe that we started talking about buying a third car so Sheila could take care of all six kids! Clearly, we had lost perspective.

One evening I mentioned to my husband that I had a funny feeling about Sheila, and that perhaps she was an alcoholic or something. He couldn’t believe that I could say something so horrible when I had no facts to base it on.  He was right, it was just a hunch. But somehow I knew something was not right, I just didn’t know what it was yet.  

Before we knew it, the families were merging. Her kids’ toys were at our house, ours at hers, and she was asking to borrow things like heating pads, and an ipod charger. Although her children were nice, this was becoming more complicated than what I had signed up for.

When Will I Ever Learn?

With no nanny, I was in a bind. The first week after the nanny (Danielle) left, my friends with kids, friends without kids, and moms I had just met all pitched in to help care for our girls during the work day. I’d leave work at lunch time to shuttle the girls from one “play date” to another, and my husband would cut out of work a bit early to pick them up. We found a substitute teacher who took care of the girls for a week. The following week, my mom made the 3-hour drive to help out.

Meanwhile, I continued to look for a permanent nanny. After a failure with Danielle, my confidence in hiring was shaken. I needed someone who could help to fill my shoes while I was at work, who shared our family’s values, and who would genuinely love our kids and not just view being a nanny as a job.

Zoe Foods was a small, family-owned company that I founded ten years ago. The last ten years have been a roller coaster ride – especially trying to balance the full-time work of an entrepreneur with that of a young family. My personal goal has never wavered. Inspired by my mom, I started Zoe Foods with a passion to make a difference. My blog, Mompreneur Musings, is about just that – making a difference, whether it’s at home with my family, at work, or within our greater community – and the challenges I face in trying to do so.

When I first wrote this post I was rushing to get it done so I could leave the office to meet my two girls at my cousin’s sons’ ice skating birthday party. My girls had been asking me for several days to promise to leave work to meet them at the party. But, I wouldn’t promise despite their persistence. I only said that I would try really hard.

At the time, my company was going through so many changes and the industry was changing, so I never know what was going to come up. As a small company, there was only one other person who could pick up my work, and I didn’t think it fair to dump my work on someone else so I can go to a party with my kids. Then I realized… my girls are not going to be 4 and 5 for very long, and before I know it they won’t need my help skating, nor even want me there. Missing a couple of hours of work really won’t make or break the company, so off I went!

I am a mom, wife, daughter, and friend, and last but not least, an entrepreneur. I never considered myself an entrepreneur; it’s just in my blood and has been handed down from the past couple generations. My first business was a lemonade stand. Who was to know that this roadside stand was the harbinger of things to come? Through high school and college, I continued to start other small businesses, then continued as an “intra-preneur” in the New York City rat race two weeks after graduating from college.

With a decade of business experience under my belt including sales, marketing, and consulting, I decided I was ready to go out on my own with the founding of Zoe Foods, a natural foods manufacturer. At its height, the company’s granolas were ranked in the top ten and the company was named as one of Fast Company’s Fast 50 for Innovation.

We had wonderful nannies for our girls over the last 5+ years. Three nannies in 5 years and one who stayed with us for three – not a bad batting average. And why not? I ran my own business and had plenty of experience in hiring people over the last eight years.

August 2007 – nanny nightmares begin. 10 different people over three months. My confidence in my ability to hire was shattered. Not only did our nanny troubles stress out my whole family, it was an omnipresent distraction. These three months seem vaguely humorous when looking back, but still beg the question as to whether or not I had my priorities straight, as you will see in the ensuing chapters.

Chapter 1: Danielle

Our first hire in August 2007 was Danielle. She wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but seemed nice enough. Her references were only okay. But my husband and I logically discussed the pros and cons of Danielle versus other candidates, and realizing that we were desperate, Danielle got the job.

My first mistake – I didn’t listen to my gut and hired Danielle anyway.