In the Beginning
It all started a few weeks after the birth of my second daughter. I was kneeling on the floor in a pair of my husband’s sweatpants (mine being covered in the spit-up that projectiled out of our little bambino at a rate faster than the particle accelerator), up to my elbows in an explosion of pooh that that seemed incomprehensibly large for such an small, helpless looking creature. As I pondered how to keep her brown bottom off my white carpet while groping to get my hands on a container of wet-wipes that had miraculously self-transported just out of my reach, my darling husband came thundering through the living room. Salvation! Although it was clear he was intent on chasing down our three-year-old, who was shrieking gleefully while streaking naked through the house, I was confident that my dire straits outranked his current parenting project.
I opened my mouth to beg for assistance, but he was moving at warp speed. As he disappeared down the hallway, he paused long enough to flash a wry grin my direction and yell over his shoulder, “How’s that Columbia MBA working out for you?”
Now, I like to consider myself an intelligent, well-educated, fairly articulate person, but for the first time in as long as I can remember, I had no response. Well, OK, that’s not exactly true. A few responses came to mind, but let’s just say they were of the R-rated variety.
We both ended up having a good chuckle about the incident over a glass of wine that night, but the whole situation got me thinking. He had a good point. Was my Ivy League diploma destined to become nothing more than a $70,000 wall-hanging? Sure, I had chosen to remove myself from the salaried job market to stay home with our daughters, but did that mean that the years I had spent cramming marketing and accounting and economics into my head were in vain? It didn’t seem right.
So here I sit, armed with a list of the 52 things that my Columbia MBA taught me about parenting, and the things it didn’t.
Tune in next week for Tip Number One.
