It's 2am and I'm wide awake. The television is on. I'm watching my TiVo recorded Oprah Show episode, catching up on Facebook news, doing laundry, and editing our new packaging design. The rest of the house is quiet, which is so nice!
I have always been a late nighter my whole life. I never remember having a set bedtime, I averaged 3 hours of sleep in college, and I bought too many things on late night infomercials (remember the thigh master and the potato rotato peeler?).
Now that I'm a mom, I cherish these hours! 10pm-2am is the sweet slot of time where it's MINE. I read what I want (besides board books), I eat what I please (instead of Cheerios off the floor), and I can sit in silence (just sitting is nice!). I also get some of the best work done during these hours because I can finish one task without being interrupted. Even if I'm a bit tired in the morning, it's all worth it because the time is so sweet.
The hilarious thing is that I'm not the only one who feels this way!! I now call this time slot "PARENT Power HOURS". Being a mom-owned business, I do a lot of business with other parents. I joined Twitter a few weeks ago (www.twitter.com/babbaco) and since it's LIVE, I realized all the other parents are up tweeting at this late night time. When I email our mom-owned retailer partners at 1am, they reply to the email within 2 minutes. It's now common to end meetings with "Let's follow up on this...probably at 11pm later today, right? (chuckle) After the kids go down and we have some quiet."
This is what I do love about technology. It allows us parents to balance. We can spend more time with our families during the day, yet still connect with the world that would have been 'sleeping'. This is just a THANK YOU from a working mom to Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, those who claim to have invented the internet, and the other Insomniac parents out there who love their "power hours".