This week I was asked to try out a new social networking site called Rootsy.com.  As soon as I discovered that it was a genealogy tool and a way to track my family history, I was instantly intrigued.

My mother’s cousin, Bill Israel, has gone to great lengths to track her family’s history and has traced it back to the 1700s.  He has documented all his findings and they are astounding. Our family started with a patriarch named Solomon Israel, who came to America from Amsterdam and declared “I am named Solomon and I am Jewish” when he arrived.  However, in his younger days, Solomon was married in St. George Episcopal Church, Nassau or Hempstead, New York, giving rise to a rumor that he really wasn’t Jewish after all.  But Bill found his son, Michael Israel, moving to Albemarle County, Virginia in about 1758, when he obtained a land grant. Separately, he found a historical record of the first synagogue in Charlottesville, the nearest settlement to Michael’s home in Albemarle County. He found the name of the current rabbi of that congregation and wrote an email. He returned his email almost immediately, with a reference to a document that described the early history of Judaism in Albermarle County, confirming our Jewish roots.

It didn’t stop there.  Bill went on to document every family member and you have to see the family tree he has put together to believe it.  It is thorough and tells the story of my family’s history.  It is both colorful and overwhelming to be a part of something so grand.  He holds family reunions every two years to celebrate our clan and he updates the tree every time new children are born.

He instilled an interest in my family tree years ago and when my grandparents were alive, I asked as many questions about their lives as I could.  I wish I had asked them more.  Bill must have done a zillion hours of research to find all the information he has under his belt.

With every family reunion, we get a letter requesting any changes in our family history – births, deaths, and milestones.  With today’s technology, you can only imagine how much easier it is becoming to track genealogy and, naturally, along has come Rootsy.com, a platform to look back at family history and track what is happening today. It enables all family members to join in and share information about their families so that everyone can keep up with each other’s lives and so that younger generations can learn more about where they come from.  What’s nice about it is that it’s private, only for you and your family members, so you don’t have to broadcast your personal story all over your network.  You can share photos, videos, stories and shared events and not have to worry about them getting seen by your entire list of friends/family (like on Facebook).  Plus, you can share with the knowledge that the people that you are connected with genuinely care about you.  These are not superficial relationships.

All you have to do is login to the site and set up an account to start building your family tree.  I was amazed at how easy it is to do.  The tree starts with you and helps you build it out by adding relationships within one degree.  I started with my parents, husband, kids and I am moving onto other relations.  The site supports a variety of relationship types, including deceased family members, divorces and same-sex couples. The image below is a sample of what the tree looks like on the site, please note that it is not mine.

Once a family tree (or partial family tree is in place), the main activity on Rootsy becomes sharing among family members. There are currently four types of content that can be shared: photos, videos, stories and events. Content can range from special events like weddings, graduations, and family reunions to everyday moments that the family may find interesting.

I’m really looking forward to delving into the platform further and getting my family involved.  I did send several members an invitation, which I think they might have found confusing only because their inboxes are cluttered with invites and messages everyday.  I think that it might require a phone call to explain the significance of joining me on this site.  It is much more meaningful than being on Facebook or Twitter.  You’re sharing a life full of real experiences that relatives want to know about in a more focused spotlight.

Disclosure: I was not compensated for this review.  I wrote it because I am truly excited about this new social networking tool and wanted to share it with my readers.  If you use it, please let me know what you think.

I moved to NYC from Atlanta in my mid 20′s to pursue a life in the media.  I had visited the city many times as a teen-ager and college student and had known from my very first visit that this was the city for me.  I left behind my parents, and I am sure that my mother was broken-hearted when I left.  Still, she wanted me to spread my wings and never once tried to stop me (although she was guilty of delaying my departure several times – literally, she’d unpack my bags after they were packed).  Once I arrived in NYC, I knew I had found home. I immediately found work in television, and it was there I found my haven.  I went home to Atlanta often to visit my parents and see my many friends I had left behind, wonderful ones at that.

Then a few years later I met my husband.  He was English, having just arrived from London a few months prior.  I had spent time in London after University and had a penchant for English culture (and his heavenly accent), hence our love affair began.

In the beginning of our relationship, we went to England twice a year, or whenever we needed to.  My visits to Atlanta kept up but it definitely helped that my sisters moved closer to me, one in Brooklyn, one in Philadelphia.  We spent a lot of time venturing back and forth, particularly for Jewish holidays, and England became a second home for a while.  We thought about moving there after we got married but we decided to focus on our careers… and we liked our life here.

And then the children were born.  We started traveling with them right away.  My daughter was four months old when she first traveled to Atlanta, and one when she traveled to England (she learned to walk there).  My husband has a much larger family than mine, so it became increasingly obvious that the bulk of their family lived abroad early on.

And if you want to know the truth, I think about it all the time.  I know that we miss out on Jewish holidays, special events, birthday parties, graduation celebrations, Bat Mitzvahs, Bar Mitzvahs.  When the invitations come, it breaks my heart to decline. My husband has missed out on events of some of his first cousins, his best friends, and the bond is not as strong as it would be if we moved there.  The time we spend with our family in the UK is never enough.  My kids feel an immediate chemistry to their first cousins that is unlike anything we have here in the USA and it’s impossible to replicate the feeling back home.

Thankfully, we live in a town made up of other international families like mine (we qualify because of him, even though I am more international at heart than most Americans), and we’ve established amazing relationships with other families who have family spread out all over the place like us.  I’ve had to lean on them in times of emergencies, like when my father-in-law passed away and I had to leave my two children behind to rush to his funeral, which I would not have missed for the world.  I’m grateful when we spend holidays together and I am sure that if we are still here in a few years, they will be in the first row of my daughter’s Bat Mitzvah.

Some people say that living near family has its disadvantages.  Still, I long for it.  Eventually, my beloved mother will come live closer to me, which is what I now want more than anything.  As for my children’s cousins, and their beloved grandmother, aunts, uncles and the friends who grew up with my husband, who are scattered and live far, far away in Israel and England, it breaks that my heart that my children can’t see them more often. Skype helps, that’s for sure, and we often Skype Israel for my kids to see their first cousins and have been for the last ten years.  But the truth is that it is never enough.

How about you?  Do you live near or far from your family like us?

Source: AnnImig.com

In some overwhelmed moments, I still wish I could just be content with the privilege of affording to stay home raising my kids.  I wish that the business of mothering could fulfill me completely, because my five and seven-year-old boys’ baby days are bygone, and their childhoods feel fleeting. I already have to bribe my boys for hugs. Kisses are completely off-limits. Suddenly this year “Seven” will barely make eye contact with me in his classroom when I volunteer. I asked him if he’d prefer I stop coming, and he replied that while he still wanted me to volunteer at his school, he’d rather I’m not in his classroom. Gulp.

The truth of matter is, however, the isolation of being a full-time SAHM, combined with the neglect of my huge creative ambition from pre-motherhood, drove me to start my blog in 2008–subsequently launching a new career path. My husband travels for work, and I desperately needed an outlet for my 18 hour days parenting a preschooler and an infant, during five months of the longest, snowiest, coldest winter Wisconsin had seen in decades. I started writing furiously. I found an audience. I became obsessed. For the first two weeks after I started blogging I barely slept. Each comment brought an endorphin surge further fueling my elation over the array of other creative adults available online to collaborate and commiserate with at any hour.

Unbalanced might describe those first months—maybe my whole first year online. I’d sneak away at every available moment to write, read or comment on blogs, or even talk to blog friends on the phone. My writing ambitions felt all-consuming, on top of the all-consuming role of motherhood. When I wasn’t blogging, I submitted my writing everywhere I could find. I dreamed of writing a book. While some rejections were hard, seeing my work published and getting paid a few dollars made up for it. As opposed to my theater days when I had to audition in order to act, I found it thrilling that as a writer I could work whenever I chose and from my own home. One of the huge assets of blogging for me became the fact that I had this supportive audience to share my work with on my blog, regardless of my pieces getting accepted or rejected elsewhere.

When I started LTYM I didn’t know I was starting a new career. The requests to do the show came pouring in from other cities and bloggers, and I found Deb Rox–my mentor/business strategist who gave me the confidence and know-how to undertake a national effort. As I began to understand the scope of the project, I soon realized I had to make some decisions regarding my work/life balance. In a conversation with a career counselor I’d worked with for years, I determined that something had to go. You can do a lot of things sufficiently, but you can only do one or two things really well. If I planned on starting my own business, I had to do it really well.

For reasons financial and due to my overwhelming preference, fulltime daycare for my then four-year-old wasn’t an option. I wanted to spend his last year at home with him, and also wanted to remain available to help out at my older son’s school. So, in order to pursue LTYM in a meaningful way that would give it the best chance to succeed, I had to let my free-lance and book author dreams go for a while. Throughout this process came a letting go of my blog aspirations as well, in a sense. I knew I needed to keep the blog for LTYM and my for platform, but I gave up any notion of becoming a “big blogger.” I allowed myself to publish posts only once a week, and gave up much of my reading and commenting on other blogs.

As soon as I made my decision to take a hiatus from my professional writing pursuits, offers came in. I had to say no to opportunities I would’ve swooned over previously. I had to quit and scale-back wherever I could. I knew my commitment to LTYM was being tested—in fact, I expected it. But, after a couple years of giving myself to other people’s projects, it also felt great to put my project first.

All that said, I still struggle with balance. Currently I have more work than ever combined with less childcare than last year. When I encounter LTYM’s slower periods, my writer dreams come raging back and I struggle to find patience. I question my priorities constantly. I still spend wayyyyy too many hours in front of my laptop, and feel like a total hypocrite as I control my sons’ screen time to the minute. I do make sure to spend quality time playing board games or reading with my kids every day. I cook (ahem–prepare) three meals a day. My husband and I make at least a few minutes for each other every day that he’s home. But if you measured who I spend more time with, my laptop or my family? The laptop would win. Next year, with both boys in school full-time, it will be easier to distinguish working time from family time (from exercise time, from marital time from ME-time-DAMMIT).

My online life, LTYM, and writing has brought me so much happiness, satisfaction, and sense of possibility. As I strive for that elusive “balance” I know that even while someone or something gets short-shrift for a time, overall it’s unequivocally worth it. A friend of mine says a good mom is a happy mom. Because of my work that I love –that also allows me flexibility to be with my family–I’m now, for the most part and on most days, a very happy mom. Even if I’m a little unbalanced.

This summer climb aboard one of Manhattan’s magnificent seafaring vessels, the prohibition-era Shearwater Classic Schooner and the topsail schooner Clipper City , with the finest deck-hands a landlubber could hope to find, and see the gems of the Harbor for a first-mate family adventure.

The Clipper City sets sail from her dock in lower Manhattan’s North Cove Marina and South Street Seaport daily at 2:15 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. for 90 minutes. Ticket prices for children 12 and under are $17 and ticket prices for adults are $39, seniors 65 and up are $35.

The Shearwater Classic Schooner lowers her mast Monday through Saturday at 12:30 p.m. and 2: 45 p.m., and on Sunday at 2:00 p.m. around the Manhattan skyline. Ticket prices for children 12 and under are $25, adult tickets are $45, and seniors 65 and older are $38 for a thrilling 90 minute expedition. Ticket prices include one complimentary beverage.

 Disclosure: I was not compensated to write this post.

Traveling Mom

I just came back from my third SOLO trip away from home since the new year.  You read that right: SOLO.  Sans enfants.  No kids.  Just me.  You know what that means, don’t you?  Quality time for me, myself and I.  As much as I love traveling with my kids, both in NYC and away from home, a trip on my own is a novelty these days.  I no longer have business trips or expense accounts, so the odd conference or press trip is a real treat.   I also no longer have the guilt I used to feel when going away on business.  I actually just came back from the Traveling Mom Blogger Retreat in Orlando.  Imagine three days of learning, meeting fabulous women and getting to experience the magic of Walt Disney World.  Brilliant.  I’ll be writing more about that trip in the upcoming days on the Traveling Mom web site.  My first article went up today.

I’ll never forget that first time I had to go away from home for 3 days/2 nights.  It was to Washington, D.C. for BEA, Book Expo of America.  My two kids were ages 1-1/2 or 2 and 3, I think, and I had never been away.  I had been back at work for about six months.  My days in the office were well spent.  I got to work early, worked through lunch, and was home by dinnertime.  I was very respected at work and when it came time to choose who would attend BEA, I was chosen.  I was thrilled to be going to Washington, D.C. on my own.  While I was there, I would meet up with a dear cousin and her family, one of my best friends, get to know my colleagues better and I did love BEA.  It would give me an opportunity to see my old colleagues from the job I left when my kids were born and absorb myself in the publishing industry.  BEA truly is the big publishing event of the year.

And it was good.  I did have a good time.  But I worried and called home often.  I wasn’t sure how my husband would cope without me, nor did I think the kids could manage without me.  I got the occasional fearful call from my husband about not finding something, not knowing how to handle a particular situation with the kids.  Whether I imagined it or not, by the third day, I felt as though they needed me home and I left the conference slightly before scheduled to return home to NY.  I’ve always regretted that.  While my return was met with glee, I realized that they could have all waited a few more hours. My next job was with a company based in Chicago, and my arrangement was a work-at-home plan with monthly trips to Chicago.  I slowly began to relish my trips away from home, but the kids were still very young and there was so much planning involved before I would go away each month…and expensive babysitters.

Twice in my absence while I was at work when the kids were young, my son ended up in the hospital getting stitches for injuries that could have been unavoidable.  I hated being away having to worry that something could happen to my children.  Having a good babysitter is the best way to avoid disasters; that I have definitely learned over time.  I now can honestly say that I really enjoy my solo trips and I know how to leave everything at home ready to run smoothly in my absence.

Here are some of the benefits of traveling without the kids:

- Packing is easier.  There is so much work that goes into planning and packing a family up.  I don’t mind it. But packing for one is certainly easier than packing for four.  Plus, I don’t have to worry about getting stopped by security for bring snow globes on the plane, which my daughter inevitably packs in her carry-on every time we travel.

- Traveling alone nourishes the soul. I have time to read whole books on the plane rides.  When I’m traveling alone, I have time to think about myself while I’m away and possibly do things I might not be able to do with the kids in tow, like write, shop or work out.  I can even meet people at the bar for drinks.

-  Time takes on a new life for me.  With a break in the routine, there are suddenly no dishes to wash or floors to sweep, no mouths to feed, no chauffeuring to do, I am channeled back to a time that was more me-focused, and that’s just fine.  I can choose how to spend time as I see best for me.   Of course, that always includes daily check-in calls to the house and trips to the store to buy gifts for my children.  Please don’t think take this article as a statement that I love to get away from my kids, as I know one person reading this will.  It’s just not a bad thing to have a change of scenery. I can also take a nap whenever I like, or take a long bath with a cup of tea in hand.

-  You’ll appreciate coming home even more.  While I love to get away, see new things and meet new people, I also love missing my family, missing my life and coming back to reality.

-  When you travel without kids, you can eat wherever and whenever you like. I love ethnic food far more than American food.  While we do drag the kids where we want to eat back home, we do have the honor of watching our daughter squirm in her seat at the thought of eating something exotic or healthy.  When I travel, I have the opportunity of eating in high quality restaurants, eating gourmet food in civilized settings where my kids wouldn’t quite belong.

-  I also love being able to go out late at night, or go to a museum during the day, without having to worry about my children or anything being family-friendly. When we travel, we often come back to the room after dinner, and we have to turn off the lights and anything technical in the room so the kids can catch some z’s.

-  Peace and quiet: sometimes a break from sibling spats and meltdowns is just what the doctor ordered.  Coming back after a spell alone for a few days, I’m better equipped, and certainly more patient, to deal with it.

Of course, if you are planning a trip without the kids, and you haven’t done it before, either with or without your partner, the best thing to do is to ORGANIZE yourself before you leave.  Get a sitter you really trust, or leave them with friends or family members; leave a detailed itinerary for your kids; leave medical information; make sure the kids will be happy and are able to contact you if necessary; and check in on occasion, but not too much.  Chances are that, for the most part, they’ll be good hands and you don’t need to worry for no reason.  Happy parents make for happy kids, and this will be a good way to prove both sets are satisfied.

Disclosure: The majority of my trip to Orlando was covered by the folks at Traveling Mom and Disney. However, all opinions expressed above are my own.