Five years is a long time when you are measuring your life in carpool trips.

Five years is how many years it has been since I quit my "real job." I left my full-time, workaday life to try the ultimate juggling act - raising my children while running a business.

As the flipping of the calendar reminded me the other day that I am celebrating this achievement, I trolled through my old West Seattle Herald columns. In the process, I found this column from 2001.

"A few months ago, when my husband dropped off our three- and five-year-old girls at their daycare, our older daughter Emma became very sad. She told my husband she needed something to help her remember her daddy during the day. He grabbed what was available - a business card - and gave it to her. Now we have a tradition. Every day, when I or my husband leave Emma and Lilly at the daycare, two things happen. First, they ask us for a business card, so they will have something to "help remember" us. Then, they stand side by side on a chair in front of the window and both slowly wave their little hands until the car is out of sight. God, I hate bringing my girls to daycare...."

When I chose to keep working through three years of a childhood, I felt it was right for me. Then I worked four-days-a-week for two years, and that felt right. With this third (and last!) pregnancy, I never doubted what I would choose. And I know it will be rewarding, intense, challenging, and different. Now, I just need to find a way to stop introducing myself at parties by talking about my job. Instead, I need to proudly say that I'm a mom.

In the end, the choice is yours. And only you know what is best for you. As for me, I think I know what's best for me -- and for my little girls.

And I know what's not best for them. It's not three hours a day with their Mom. It's not dragging them out of their little beds at 7 a.m., whether they are tired or not. It's not getting calls from daycare that they are sick and need to come home. It's not hearing that they learned an incredible new skill or talent -- that someone else taught them. It's not rushing home to make dinner, lay out their outfits, do the laundry, and generally snap at them and hurry them through their young lives.

And it's not giving them business cards to help them "remember me."

Five years ago I wrote about my old decision, and my intention to "have it all" by working at home. I know many people can't afford to do it. Maybe you need both incomes, or maybe you're a single mom. But I know some people have considered it. So, allow me to give some advice.

It's all about the dollar. The greatest stress for me since I decided to work from home has been making money. Thank goodness, as I go into this sixth year of business, it actually looks like it may work. I have struggled to run my public relations business, trying to market the business, take people to lunch, and find new clients cold, but at the same time I have run a Camp Fire group, helped with a youth chorus, and volunteered in classes. It's tough to do both - very tough. It means a lot of writing at 10 p.m., and a lot of cutting corners, and trying not to worry about debt too much. But I have found a certain sense of peace at last. I have many years to get my finances together. I only have these years with my kids. It's been worth it.

We need time off. I have struggled with feelings of being overwhelmed plenty of times. There are lots of moments when I simply feel like I can't sell another case of candy and make a client's deadline. I need time for me, and I need it now. Men out there, know this: it is hard being a working mom who is gone full-time at her job. In my book, it is even harder being a stay-at-home mom. And you know what? I think the hardest thing you can do is be home with your kids and have a business. You have a foot in both worlds, but continuously feel like you could do better in both worlds. Is your wife raising the kids and making money? Give her a night off.

Plenty of folks don't get it. I have met a lot of people who don't imagine I can run this business with children. I guess I convince them otherwise in the long-run, since I am always working. I have also met plenty of people who don't imagine I can be a good mom since my cell phone is always ringing during play dates. I have also met professional women, including my own mother, who don't really get the choice I made, and continue to view it with disappointment. But the most important thing is that I get it. Do the others really matter?

It's worth it. My biggest fear when I made this decision was how it would feel to no longer have value or the sense of self you get from a big job. I still have it, but it now comes in different ways. It comes from being active in my community, or finding friends who have made a similar life change. It comes from seeing my kids and being thoroughly involved in their lives. In the end, I believe my sense of worth comes when I imagine my children looking back at their childhoods some day and having many, many memories of me in their lives. That future outweighs the loss of money, and the loss of power.

So if you have thought of making this same decision, I urge you to give it a try. There are plenty of folks out there to help you, playgroups, walking groups, associations. And if you are thinking of hiring a small businesswoman to do your work and hear an occasional kid in the background, ask yourself this: why should it matter? Is the work good on its merits? And how is the kid in the background any different than a colleague who wants to go to coffee or gossip, or all of the other hobbies and interests that fill your colleague's life? Why do we judge the stay-at-home mom differently?

So happy anniversary to me. It has been a crazy, wild, intense, and worthwhile five years. I haven't regretted it, which is not to say it's been easy.

I've even managed to give away some business cards to actual clients. My children don't need them anymore.

Lauri Hennessey's award-winning, family-oriented "Children and More" has run in the West Seattle Herald/White Center News for the last seven years. She runs her own public relations business and can be reached at Lauri@hennesseypr.com