By Laura T. Coffey, TODAYshow.com contributor

Work-life balance? With kids?

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

If you work outside the home and you’re anything like me, you too may have fleeting thoughts of “Ha!” and “Oh brother!” and “What-EVER!” whenever you see reassuring articles about attaining work-life balance as a parent. I say that, and I’ve even written an article or two like that myself. (Although, in my defense, I did try to make those articles uber-practical ... but still!)

The longer I try my hand at this whole parenting gig, the more clearly I see that any illusion of control I have is just that: An illusion. It may be possible to wrest a few things under control some of the time with some hard-core planning and scheduling, but for the most part it’s just a matter of taming chaos on a day-to-day, take-it-as-it-comes basis.

My best friend Dawn Browne -- a mom who has two fabulous kids and a high-pressure job -- summed it up perfectly, I think:

“There is no such thing as balance with children -- only days with blood and/or tears, and days without (including your own),” she said. “Conservatively plan for no bloodless or tearless days for the first five years.”

Here’s another one of my favorite gems from Dawn:

“There’s a fine line between ‘working better under pressure’ and mental illness.”

Indeed!

Bearing all that in mind, here is a list of 10 things no one bothered to tell you about work-life balance before you became a parent. Read on -- if you dare!

1. You will always, always, ALWAYS be tired and always will feel as though you could lie down and sleep for 15 hours straight.

2. Sleep deprivation will lead to a brain-crushing haze that will cause your sharp mind to fade for a minimum of one calendar year, and possibly even longer -– but you’ll have to fake it and pretend nothing is wrong around other people at work.

3. Sleep deprivation also will create in you a strange and inexplicable spelling disorder that will cause you to use the wrong “to,” “your” and “its,” despite your most careful intentions. You’ll also start to spell some words phonetically -- and wildly incorrectly -- all because you’re trying to do too many things at once in much too much of a hurry.

4. While it’s always been mega-challenging on all sorts of levels, work outside the home will become the biggest, most gargantuan, most Herculean effort you ever tackled. You will feel like you completed the Ironman in Kona, Hawaii at the end of most otherwise ordinary work weeks. (Not that I have ANY idea what completing the Ironman in Kona feels like, mind you -- but I watched a documentary about it recently and identified with it in the most uncanny way.)

The desperate situations of Haitian orphans — and the travails of U.S. parents trying to adopt them — have been covered extensively on msnbc.com and TODAYshow.com in the wake of Haiti’s devastating earthquake. Here are updates on two Haitian children we’ve profiled: Charly Schumacher, 11, and Lovely Benedict, 2.

Charly’s story
Charly is now safe in his new home in Wilmington, Ohio, with his adoptive parents, Jan and Paul Schumacher. The Schumachers had been trying to adopt Charly since 2005, when he was 6. Charly had lived with them for a year when he came to the United States at age 5 for treatment after being burned in a kerosene-lamp fire. He returned to Haiti when his medical visa expired.

“That was a nightmare sending him back,” Jan Schumacher recalled. “He was screaming and clinging and didn’t want to leave with the Haitian stewardess.”

Since that time, Jan Schumacher has visited Charly at his orphanage in Haiti and has struggled with red tape and obstacles to his adoption. When the earthquake hit, she panicked; she had no idea whether he was alive or dead. It turns out that Charly survived but was injured in the earthquake, so he was cleared to travel to the U.S. for necessary medical treatment.

Jan Schumacher traveled to Miami to pick Charly up. After yet more delays, she sent this update via e-mail:

“I was finally able to clear the FBI and get Charly out of ... Florida on Thursday a.m., Jan. 28. What a prickly time it was down there, I got to see Charly for about an hour a day and beg for them to keep checking on my status. I had to give them copies of all of our adoption papers, financial disclosure info, get several notarized and get fingerprinted, which is what we waited on all week.

“But we're home now!!!!! Charly is standing here bugging me as I write this ... it is so nice! ;)”

Lovely’s story
As of this writing, the story of little Lovely has no such happy ending. Her adoptive parents, Janelle and Bryan Benedict of Torrance, Calif., had completed the entire adoption process before the earthquake struck. They had just been waiting on the Haitian government to issue a passport for Lovely, who is developmentally delayed because of the effects of malnutrition and parasites.

“I’ve gone and spent a week with her (in Haiti) three times,” Janelle Benedict said. “She is just the sweetest little thing. She’s beautiful. She cuddles. And when you play music she likes to dance, which is so cute. ...

“She’s 2, but she’s just recently started crawling and barely started standing and taking a few steps. ... She only weighs 15 pounds because of malnutrition. But I think she will grow quickly once she gets home and gets proper food and medical attention.”

Since the earthquake, the Benedicts have been struggling frantically to bring Lovely home. They came close late last week, when officials almost put Lovely on a flight to Salt Lake City with other orphans. Janelle Benedict sent this update:

“We went to Salt Lake City to meet Lovely coming home on a plane that had taken humanitarian aid to Haiti. After the pilot refused to leave with the children and a big stand-off at the airport and negotiations directly with (Haiti’s) Prime Minister, 50 or so children were able to leave to Miami, but not to Utah. However, because USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) or the Port-au-Prince Embassy made a mistake with our updated fingerprints, Lovely and 13 other children were not allowed to board.

“Now, the process nearly starts over for her. She still is waiting for humanitarian parole, and then (we) hope the Prime Minister will sign her file. All the while, things are becoming very political and our team fears that they may close the door to children leaving to join the families at any moment. It’s all unbearable. We continue to wait.”

The Benedicts’ efforts to bring Lovely to the United States are chronicled in a BBC video. To watch the video, click here.

Related links:

Painful limbo for parents adopting Haitian kids

Reunited: Desperate dad goes to Haiti to rescue kids

Americans rush to adopt orphaned Haitian children

Home at last: 7 Haitian orphans arrive in U.S.

Haiti judge questions jailed Americans

Tantrums, whining, not listening, bedtime battles, power struggles. It’s enough to drive parents crazy. So why do kids misbehave? And is spanking an effective way to deal with it?

A grown woman lost her balance and fell onto Picasso's "The Actor" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last week. Have you ever endured a similarly embarrassing moment, either as a clumsy adult yourself or as a parent touring a museum with small, antsy children?

After a recent visit to the park with my 8-month-old and 5- and 7-year-olds, I could clearly see one mom was tortured chasing her two sons around. She even fumed, "It's so stressful coming here." So it made me wonder, what do other moms think? Share your thoughts.

Who said parenting was stressful?! According to a new study in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, people with children have significantly lower blood pressure than those without. It seems that throughout the hectic schedules, constant worrying and lunch-packing, parents are able to find a certain calm and fulfillment in raising their kids. Not surprisingly, this effect is found more in mothers than fathers.

"Women were driving the effect," says co-author Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a psychologist at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. "Women with children had the lowest blood pressure, and women without had the highest."

A single mom was faced with a dilemma: Should she let her 2-year-old son see his terminally ill father and risk her son coming to love him, only to lose him again? Read the full story and share your thoughts.

The CFO of the American home has had enough. She works hard at a job where she earns 20 percent less, on average, than her male counterpart. She juggles family, fitness, friends and her relationship — all without skipping a beat. But learning that companies now mark up products branded to women and mothers. Well, that is just one pill this CFO isn’t willing to swallow.

According to a study by Consumer Reports, women are paying more for comparable products that offer female branding. Samples from the study compared the price of products like shampoo and pain relievers and all were almost identical, aside from their marketing. Each product was targeted to either a female or male consumer, and revealed that brands marketed to females were consistently more expensive.

Here is how it all broke down:

Shaving Cream
Men's Barbasol $1.69
Girl's Pure Silk $2.49

Deodorant
Men's Degree Deodorant 2.7 oz $3.59
Degree for Woman 2.6 $3.59

Pain Reliever
Excedrin regular brand $5.99 ( 20 pills)
Excedrin Menstrual Complete $6.49 (20 pills)

Eye Cream
Men's Neutrogena Eye Reliever Cream $9.99
Woman's Continuous Hydration Cream $14.99

Body Wash
Nivea body wash, Cool $5.49 (16.9 oz)
Nivea Touch of Happiness $7.49(16.9 oz)

Razor Blades
Schick Quattro for men (4-pack) $10.49
Schick Quattro for Women (4-pack) $10.99

Unfortunately for marketers, women hold the power in the marketplace and we're resourceful enough to even out the bottom line.

Earlier bedtimes make for happier, less depressed kids, according to a new study in the journal Sleep. For many children, bedtimes set by parents were almost as important as the total number of hours slept.

Sarah Palin and her daughter Bristol, 19, are shown in matching jeans, carrying their babies in this week's issue of In Touch. With a cover headline of "We're Glad We Chose Life," the two women are interviewed in their Wasilla, Alaska home about their parenting styles and how Bristol's unplanned pregnancy brought the two of them closer together. While Bristol refers to her son Tripp as the "love of my life," she also addresses the emotional and physical hardships of single-parenting:

[Sarah Palin] lets Bristol learn and make mistakes on her own, and it's understood that Bristol will support Tripp financially as much as possible — which means buying her own diapers and formula.

"There's no mistaking that Tripp is her baby, and she is in charge," Sarah explains. "this whole experience has made her grow up so quickly , but she has taken total responsibility and never gripes about it."

"I couldn't ask for a better baby," [Bristol] insists. "But the reality is I'm 19 years old and I have a 1-year-old. I wish I could be in my 20s with a baby and not be in my 20s. Just having him so young — I have to work, and I have to provide for him, because I'm a single mom."

What do you think? Share your thoughts.

Celebrity tot Suri Cruise has been leading the trend of young girls sporting high heels in public. Is it a harmless way for kids to dress up or an inappropriate habit for youngsters? Share your thoughts.

A new Norwegian study is causing controversy after claiming that breast-fed babies are only slightly healthier than bottle-fed babies — and that it has nothing to do with milk. Instead, says professor Sven Carlsen of Norwegian University of Science and Technology, a child’s health is predetermined in the mother’s womb and based on hormone levels. In the following blog post, Dr. Tanya Altmann responds to the study's findings:

By Dr. Tanya Altmann, author of “Mommy Calls: Dr. Tanya Answers Parents Top 101 Questions About Babies and Toddlers”

While this study is interesting in that it stresses the importance of prenatal influences on a baby’s future health, it flows against the tide of countless studies that show the benefits of breast-feeding. We know that proper nutrition, including prenatal vitamins, is important for a healthy baby. This study claims that a mom’s hormone levels during pregnancy play an important role (and possibly the most important role) in a baby’s future health. I think this does provide new insight for future studies on what makes for an optimal environment inside the womb and am curious about further information on whether lifestyle changes can influence this perfect hormone balance, or is it simply genetic?

We've all been there. Someone else's child is acting up, being unsafe or acting inappropriately and we're faced with the dilemma? Do we say something or just bite our tongues?

How can one make some money just by carpooling their kids to school? Some savvy stay-at-home moms have found a new way to earn extra cash – by turning their cars into mobile advertising media. Is it a smart opportunity or an intrusive form of advertising?

Find out how the business works and why some moms are earning easy money just for going through their usual routine.

A new list of the most popular baby names of the past decade reveals that many parents are influenced by pop-culture trends, naming their children after singers, TV and film characters, and even dead celebrities like Heath Ledger.

How seriously should we take children’s doodles? According to the AP, a Mass. school sent an 8-year-old boy home and ordered him to undergo a psychological evaluation after the child – when asked to make a Christmas drawing – drew a stick figure of Jesus on a cross. The child’s teacher asked the class to “sketch something that reminded them of the holiday,” and the boy seemed to choose a more religious image than say, oh, Santa?

The father said in the days before the incident the family had gone to the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette in Attleboro, where there are crucifixion statues."That was fresh on his mind," he said. "And that was a good thing that he saw."

The child’s father is currently waiting for an apology from the school, which he thinks overreacted. (The school, however, refutes the claim and insists the image circulated to the media is not the one they confiscated).

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

By Anna Fader of MommyPoppins.com

As parents we are often looking for ways to make the holidays a little less about getting and a little more about giving. One way to do this is to host a toy swap. It's a great opportunity to teach the lesson of giving, make the holidays greener, help children in need, and clean out your closets a bit — all through a fun event that brings your community together.

I recently teamed up with another blogger to host two toy swaps in our neighborhood. Although we did this on a large scale, publicizing the events through our blogs and the local media, hosting a swap is easy and can be done as simply as gathering a few families. Here are some tips for organizing your own holiday toy swap:

Choose a location
A small swap can be done in a home or you can ask a local church or other community organization to let you use a room. Other than a room, all you need is some tables to put toys out on. Simple. We partnered with a great playspace, Kidville, to host our swaps. They generously provided the location, activities, and allowed participants to play in their gym, making the events an even bigger draw.

Invite your friends or community
You can make your swap as small or as big as you like. It could be just you and your friends, or your school, or you can publicize it to the larger community. The bigger it is, the more variety of toys there will be to swap — and more to donate.

Who says babies can’t join in on the digital revolution?

Twoddler, a newly remodeled Fisher Price Activity Center, is an electronic playset that comes complete with noisemakers, dials, buttons and photo slots connected to a personal Twitter account. When kids perform a specific activity -- like say, touching a photo of mommy -- they automatically update their status with something along the lines of “@baby_monkey misses mommy and wants to know where dinner be at.”

It’s slightly ridiculous (who needs instant updates of a toddler’s mobility?) but it also seems like the exact thing your baby-obsessed grandparents might just follow. Or maybe, it could even help you get an edge in a competitive playgroup (“oh, your kid mastered Beethoven’s No.9? My six-month-old is already Twittering…”)

Related video: Twoddler wins INCA Award

From Laura T. Coffey, TODAYshow.com contributor

I've never been a real food snob, but living in the Pacific Northwest for many years has rubbed off on me in this undeniable way: I now have a deep and abiding love for good coffee and good beer.

It's funny because I don't drink very much of either beverage. (I couldn't even if I wanted to, for reasons that will soon become apparent.) But the time I do spend drinking good coffee or good beer is an EVENT. Something to be savored. Something to be planned around, even. This is serious business!

Or it had been, at least. Until I had a kid.

It literally took months for me to awaken enough from my sleep-deprived stupor to realize the new pattern that was afflicting me, not just every now and then, but every single day. Each morning I would pour myself a cup of coffee and doctor it up in just the right way, with a little bit of sugar and milk. Then I'd begin tending to my infant son. (As the months wore on, he transformed into a toddler son.) Rush-rush-rush, hustle-bustle-hustle-bustle ... and then I'd finally remember my neglected cup of coffee and take a sip.

"Oh no!" I would think. "It's cold." (Not just lukewarm, by the way. COLD.)

Good coffee ain't cheap, so I'd nuke my cup and soldier on. And then it would get cold – again!

That's when I'd reach a crossroads: Do I nuke it a second time?

I'm frugal, and I already feel guilty enough about the money we spend on coffee, so you can guess what I've been doing. And I'm here to report that thrice-nuked coffee is DISGUSTING, no matter how good the pot was when it was fresh. The milk in it even starts to curdle into solid little doohickeys that float along the top. (Why does THAT have to happen??)

I also can tell you that coffee sitting in a pot for seven-plus hours doesn't taste that great by the time naptime finally rolls around, either – no matter how much you've been waiting to savor it.

I often encounter a photo-negative of the exact same problem in the evenings with beer – not every day of the week, as happens with the coffee, but often enough to notice a pattern. In a spirit of generosity, my husband will crack open a frosty Sierra Nevada for himself and grab one for me too. That open beer bottle will sit there, forlorn and increasingly dripping with condensation, from approximately 6:45 until 9:15 p.m. when I can finally sit down. That's when the beer and I come face to face with one another – and again, I reach a crossroads.

"Hey Michael," I'll say to my husband. "If I put this back in the fridge, will you drink it when it turns cold again?"

"Why would I want to drink an open beer?" he'll say. "I'll just get a new one."

"But this is a perfectly good beer. It just needs to turn cold again."

"Why don't you drink it?"

"I don't think I'll last that long. I think I'll be sleeping by the time it finally turns cold."

And so it comes to pass that on many a weekday morning, I find a bottle of cold Sierra Nevada sitting open on a refrigerator shelf, losing precious fizziness and zip. I'll feel so cut to the heart by this sight that I'll cover the top of the bottle with plastic wrap or tin foil and vow to drink it that night at approximately 9:15 p.m.

It's so nice to have treats like this to look forward to at the end of a long day, isn't it, moms? :-)

Leo Tolstoy wrote, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." If happy families actually are alike, what is it that they're doing right? Have you personally found ways to achieve real family happiness and steer clear of chronic problems and negativity?