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"  When M.F. Chapman gave birth to her first daughter five years ago, she had the kind of career many moms dream about: As an educational consultant, she&amp;#039;d work either at a client&amp;#039;s office or from home and could pick and choose her projects, giving her lots of time to bond with her baby. Sounds blissful, right? M.F. thought so \u2014 until she tried to find child care that fit her ever-changing schedule.  &amp;quot;Some weeks I&amp;#039;d need child care for 40 hours, some weeks I&amp;#039;d need 10 hours, and some weeks I wouldn&amp;#039;t need any at all,&amp;quot; says the mom of two, who lives in the San Francisco Bay area. She couldn&amp;#039;t hire a nanny for such random time slots, and her search for a daycare facility with flexible hours turned up empty. &amp;quot;I called in my mom to help a lot, and I did plenty of work in the middle of the night when the baby was asleep,&amp;quot; M.F. says. After a few months of working until the wee hours, she knew something in her life had to change.  That&amp;#039;s when she had a thought that indeed changed everything. &amp;quot;I realized, I can&amp;#039;t be the only person with this problem!&amp;quot; M.F. says. She knew that lots of parents in Silicon Valley worked from home and needed help with child care. She also knew there were plenty of stay-at-home moms who would welcome a place where they could drop off their kids for an hour or two while they ran errands or polished up their r\u00E9sum\u00E9s in preparation for their return to the working world. She dreamed of a combination daycare facility and work space that would allow parents to leave their kids in loving hands whenever they wanted to \u2014 and she decided to create it herself. Using skills she&amp;#039;d sharpened working at places as diverse as Stanford University and an interior design firm, M.F. came up with a business plan. Then she and her husband used their savings to invest in her vision.  In January 2008, five months after her second daughter was born, M.F. opened Cubes &amp;amp;amp; Crayons, in Mountain View, CA, where children from 6 weeks to 5 years old play in a bright, open space, with lavender walls, piles of board books, climbing toys, and a staff of caretakers. In the next room, their parents tap away at laptops in a quiet, professional work space with office perks like free Wi-Fi, copy machines, and coffee. Members pay anywhere from $15 an hour for drop-in child care to $749 for 60 hours of child care and office space. &amp;quot;We also do $10-per-hour Fridays,&amp;quot; M.F. says. And just like that, M.F. solved her childcare dilemma, right? Not exactly. &amp;quot;Instead of getting all my work done in the morning, as I&amp;#039;d planned, and spending afternoons and evenings with my kids, I&amp;#039;d get sidetracked dealing with things like the pipes bursting or the Internet going down,&amp;quot; M.F. says. &amp;quot;Then I&amp;#039;d go home and work on everything else, like updating the website and researching new locations.&amp;quot; Once again, she was staying up all night \u2014 precisely what she&amp;#039;d hoped to avoid by creating Cubes &amp;amp;amp; Crayons.  But within six months, M.F. finally figured out how to achieve what she calls the &amp;quot;balance and flow&amp;quot; of happily managing both her family and her business, which is now in its third successful year and has 170 members. Here&amp;#039;s how she does it. 1. She taps in to the mom community. Soon after her business opened, M.F. noticed that her clients weren&amp;#039;t just coming in to work \u2014 they were making friends, sharing business tips, and throwing one another baby showers. She realized that this camaraderie was crucial for the parents, who&amp;#039;d often felt isolated working at home. Cultivating that community support gave her a sense of purpose, and now she fosters those friendships, organizing a moms&amp;#039; walking club and ordering in group lunches for her clients. &amp;quot;Sometimes it&amp;#039;s the simple things, like sharing stories about what we do, that are most important,&amp;quot; she says. Her community-building efforts yield true gratitude. &amp;quot;When moms tell me, &amp;#039;Thank you, I&amp;#039;m so glad someone opened a place like this!&amp;#039; it makes the hard work worth it.&amp;quot; 2. She learned to narrow her focus. In her pre-mommy life, M.F. eagerly took on everything from work projects to charity events to marathons. But once she started Cubes &amp;amp;amp; Crayons, she found that she couldn&amp;#039;t possibly do it all. &amp;quot;I actually agreed to run a benefit at the same time I was opening the business,&amp;quot; she says in a what was I thinking? tone of voice. She also got caught up in the advice of some well-meaning friends who encouraged her to take advantage of the burst of attention Cubes &amp;amp;amp; Crayons was getting and immediately open more locations. &amp;quot;I realized I had to stop listening to everyone,&amp;quot; M.F. says. &amp;quot;Saying no to people is very freeing. Your family is much happier, and the things you do say yes to get a lot more of your energy and attention.&amp;quot; 3. She keeps family time sacred. When M.F.&amp;#039;s daughters \u2014 Kaia, 5, and Siria, 2 \u2014 are at preschool or hanging out at Cubes &amp;amp;amp; Crayons, she has a laserlike focus on her work. &amp;quot;But after 3 o&amp;#039;clock, no one can get hold of me,&amp;quot; she explains. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s my time with my children, so I turn off my iPhone and don&amp;#039;t check my email.&amp;quot; She and her daughters spend those hours playing in the yard, making pizza \u2014 anything that doesn&amp;#039;t have to do with work. &amp;quot;When I let myself step away,&amp;quot; M.F. says, &amp;quot;I wind up getting much better ideas for both my work and my family.&amp;quot; 4. She builds downtime into her to-do list...  &amp;quot;I divide my lists into four quadrants,&amp;quot; M.F. explains. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s Cubes &amp;amp;amp; Crayons, my kids and family, the volunteer work I do mentoring schoolchildren and chairing fund-raisers for the Junior League, and me time. I make sure that all four are covered because when it all falls to one side, I get grouchy.&amp;quot; Included in the me-time section are rejuvenating activities like yoga and meeting her girlfriends for a monthly moms&amp;#039; night out. M.F.&amp;#039;s list has worked so well for her that she and her husband just launched another small business: a website, called kulido.com, to help other people organize their time.  5. ...and sometimes she throws her list away. One of the hardest lessons she&amp;#039;s learned? &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s okay if I don&amp;#039;t get everything on my to-do list done at the end of the week!&amp;quot; M.F. says that like most moms, she tends to give herself a tough time if she&amp;#039;s not constantly running around and taking care of someone else, but she realizes that sometimes you have to put aside your to-do list and try something unexpected \u2014 like go for a facial, or make &amp;quot;weed soup&amp;quot; with the girls in the backyard. &amp;quot;The last two years have been an amazing adventure,&amp;quot; M.F. says. And with plans to expand Cubes &amp;amp;amp; Crayons to other cities, M.F.&amp;#039;s business is about to take her in a whole new direction. But this time, she won&amp;#039;t let it take over her life. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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