BAM Profile Series: Life as a working parent during the Pandemic

I’m a Principal at BAM, I’m an architect, and I focus on maintaining and creating new client relationships, as well as helping our internal team meeting their potential.  My wife and I are both working from home, we have three kids, an 8-year-old daughter in the 3rd grade and 5-year old twin boys in pre-school.  All three kids are starting little league next week, and they are all very active, particularly right now as the weather is getting nicer.

It was a little intimidating, but we realized we needed to get organized by setting up schedules and sharing responsibilities so that my wife and I could support each other when there was an important client meeting that required full attention.

Making it clear to children that when one of us is on a zoom call, we are off limits.  If the door is locked, it means we need quiet.  And that ultimately, if a child appears on screen, it’s not the end of the world, but children need to understand that it’s not ok to try to be on screen as an amusing activity.

I’m a Project Director at BAM focusing on building client relationships and bettering the construction process as well as mentoring those that I work with. I met my husband (a construction exec) over a huge value engineering argument (which I won!) and fast forward to 20 years later we have 3 kids and 2 dogs!

For my husband and I, it was establishing boundaries.  Working from home typically means that you can be interrupted to my teenager’s daily desires, but we had to all learn how to respect each other’s time.  Also, being the lunch lady all day was hard as the kids have different schedules and eat at all different times!  Oh how I wished for a walk on drive-thru some days!!!

To take a deep breath and to be flexible like I have never known before.  With kids and two working parents, there is always flexibility needed to run the house, but during the pandemic we all had to learn more flexibility and the ability to respond to the needs of our family in conjunction with our daily work tasks.

I am an Interior Design Project Manager at BAM focusing on the design process and collaboration with the team on projects. I am working from home full time, and my husband started going into the office every other week last fall. Our 1-year-old daughter is in daycare down the street from our apartment.

I had my daughter at the beginning of the pandemic and so I have actually only known parenting while working from home. It was a new way of working for me all around. The silver lining for my husband during my maternity leave was that by working from home, he was able to have more time with our daughter than he would have if he was commuting to the office.

I consider myself a planner by nature, but before becoming a parent, I was able to work as the day needed: staying at the office late, extended meetings, or heading out to a site early in the morning, etc. I now have another person’s day to consider, add the pandemic to that and there are a lot more logistics, and a bit of anxiety mixed in. My husband and I communicate much more throughout the day and tag team as things come up. He may have a busy week one week, and me the next. So the planning has been elevated, and now includes anticipated flexibility.

I am an Interior Design Project Manager at BAM with a focus on Healthcare design as well as developing relationships in the industry and mentoring my internal team. I am currently working from home full time with my husband (also full time working from home) and our 3-year-old son (attending virtual preschool).

Learning to balance all the hats I needed to wear every day. Because I’m not only a project manager. I’m also a wife and a mother. And during the pandemic, a family cook, barista, housekeeper, pre-school teacher, grocery pick up scheduler, and vegetable gardener (by choice) but at the same time, remembering that some days will be better, and some days won’t be. And that’s okay. Always remember to protect your peace.

One of my favorites ‘perks’ of working from home are the creative industry events our vendors have been coming up with and often they are inclusive of family. There have been so many events from pumpkin carving to cookie decorating that I was excited for not only myself but my son to enjoy with me. Its such an eye opener to really see so many people who you know from the work side, but then to see them transformed into parents and get this sneak peek into the personal side of their lives warms my heart. That’s not to say I didn’t thoroughly enjoy after hours remote events like zoom wine tasting without my son as well.