Jenine and Nat’s primaryschool aged kid pretty much runs the Kiwi foo camp now.

I sort of make a point of being out about motherhood at work, especially because my work’s so corporate, and especially because a colleague who left on maternity leave not long after I had Julia never came back to work after that. There was certainly no real expectation that I would come back, either; let alone that I would come back energized, kicking ass and taking names, which is what I actually did. I pumped at work and was defiantly out about that as well.

The childcare issue has eased off dramatically as the kids have reached 7 and 4 and have developed geek interests of their own. Claire does martial arts and math circle, and Jules is perfectly happy to visit science museums and Maker Faire. It helps to be in SF, and it helps way more to have a tight community of geeky parents with compatibly-aged kids.

That said I am frequently, frequently reading blogs or LiveJournal while the children play around my feet…

I will say that there was a sad moment when our middle-schooler son came home saying “Mom, they called me a geek at school!” to which we replied, “Honey, your mom’s a geek, your dad’s a geek, your sister’s a geek, you’re pretty much doomed”, and then talked about what “geek” meant to us.

Nowadays he embraces the title, using it, as I do, to mean “person who’s really interested in technology/geeky things”. He’s severely ill and at home, and the Internet is his lifeline to the broader world and to friendships. His (now-former, thank God) therapist used to go on and on and on about the importance of restricting Internet time, and never really registered our statements that Internet time *was* the family social life, that we considered it a valuable part of our children’s social lives, and that we didn’t consider introversion a bad thing.

I love taking my kids (4 and 6) to cons, except that then I can’t go to panels because the kids would have too much trouble sitting through them. I heard Norwescon once had childcare but no longer does – some insurance issue? Unfortunate. So I leave them home with my spouse when I can.

Also the awesome thing is that, while running a con, fewer people bring petty complaints to you when you have a baby strapped to your chest!

here’s us again, during the hackfest at DrupalSouth
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4297457542

but you asked – is parenting the same? I have noticed some equality differences, though there’s little to be done about it. Most of my fellow geeks who have had babies have continued to go to user groups, hackfests, and various beer-related geek events. These I can’t do so much. I gotta get home by 7pm at the latest because i’m the food source. Likewise while pregnant i just didn’t have the stamina for things like Perl Mongers which finish past 8pm.

I wanted to attend the post webstock tweetup a couple weeks ago, but 8pm – 9pm was much too late for someone who needs to get up at 3am to feed a newborn. My male geek friends didn’t have this limitation on their geeking while their children were newborn.

Exceptions for one geek friend who has a child allergic to breastmilk – so either parent can feed the same stuff.

Boobs – one thing still holding back equality in parenting.