We spend our lives reinventing ourselves. As a baby, you first learn your name. When you’re a child you identify yourself as “Daughter”, “Sister”, “Student” and “Friend”. As a young adult your beliefs and your occupations lead the way in helping you develop a sense of self – “Christian”, “Graphic Designer”, “Republican”, “Volunteer”. Getting married gives you the biggest identity change yet – “Wife”. It’s such a radical shift that most women change their name, the name you were born with that first defined you. With this new phase, come expectations from yourself and your spouse as to how you will develop into this role. It was a very difficult time for me. I struggled with how to incorporate the elements from my parents’ marriage that I wanted to emulate with the contrast of my reality as well as what I imagined my husband expected from me. I finally got a good grasp of that piece of my life when the next identity change happened – becoming a mother. And talk about a transformation! (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘family’
A Mom’s Identity Crisis
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010Words of Wisdom from a Mom of Multiples
Monday, August 23rd, 2010Today I found this great post at Multiplemama. I laughed out loud so I just had to share it. Thank you, Andie for your wonderful talent to share the humor of motherhood. She is such a great Mom Blogger.
You can buy all the books like What to Expect when you’re Expecting, Sleep Training for Dummies, and How to have a Zen Baby. But when it comes down to it and that little baby is in your arms you learn a few things your mother and all those books never even mentioned. Most especially your mother because she had her career as a grandmother at stake.
1) Your abdominal muscles are not going to forgive you anytime soon.
Recovery time after being stretched like a Gumby doll is going to be at least twice as long as the time it took to grow that baby. And exponentially longer if you had more than one in there at a time. But, they most likely will not ever look the same.
2) Breast feeding can give you stretch marks on your boobs. Which by the way are not going to ever be half as perky as they were before. But no matter because they are now more commonly thought of as a snack bar, and all cuteness is pretty much out of the question. (more…)
5 Parenting Pointers about Kids and Movie Ratings
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010
Last weekend I was surfing through some of the free movie channels that my satellite company was trying to woo me with. I stumbled onto the 2008 movie The Love Guru and watched for about 10 minutes only to find my jaw pasted to the floor in mortified disbelief. This MPAA rated PG-13 movie was nowhere near appropriate for a 13 year old. It had extreme sexual innuendo, profanity, and a boy who says “I want to be a guru so girls will like me and then I will like myself”. Really? In addition to finding themselves a shade of crimson, most adults I know would find such content highly inappropriate for impressionable teens and younger siblings who are often grandfathered in to a movie. I’m not going to write about what I saw, because my mother will be reading this blog and I don’t want to offend her or, for that matter, you, dear reader! (Later, I’ll give you a website recommendation that you can use if you choose to read about Love Guru on your own.)
What if your child was invited to see this movie and you assumed it would be acceptable just because of the PG 13 rating? How do you know that the movies your children are viewing are appropriate to your value system as opposed to the fiscally motivated values of Hollywood Producer or a robotic MPAA rating panel?
Here are 5 suggestions to help parents stay a step ahead of Hollywood and kids who say “all my friends are seeing the movie… why can’t I?” (more…)
How to Make Hair Bows
Monday, August 16th, 2010
You ask for instructions and inspiration. Here it is. If you have ever wanted to learn how to make hair bows for your daughters hair this is the articles for you. Visit Make Your Own Hair Bows at Mom-Stuff.com.
Help Your Child with Brain Development
Wednesday, August 11th, 2010
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It is Deborah’s belief that every child has great potential that can be developed when we have an understanding of how children’s brains develop. Deborah has devoted her life to providing programs and materials that create this awareness for parents and educators. Deborah has taught kindergarten, and pre-school. She has also created an innovative community based program called, Family Network. This service provided information and resources to parents and educators by pulling the entire community together in support of the needs of families. She has been the coordinator of a family literacy program that provided high school completion and English as a second language, early childhood education and parent education, for in-need families. This included creating a jail parent program, a home tutoring program, and an at-risk teens parenting program. She taught in the early childhood associate degree program for several years and most recently has, as the early childhood specialist for the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, provided numerous presentations on brain development.
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Mom-Stuff Back to School Pages
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010
08/07/10
News and Up-dates
Back to School Featured Articles and Resources at mom-stuff.com.
Getting the Best Value when Back to School Shopping
Getting To and From School Safely
8 Great Tips To Organize Kids’ Rooms
Make your own Large Felt Flower Barrette, Spunky Headbands, or Rockin Bobbie Pins to match your new school clothes.
Promote your mom-stuff affiliate. You can use any of these articles and links. Always use public links (these are free links) when promoting your mom-stuff affiliate. If you have not signed up for your free affiliate with mom-stuff do it now. We can all use an extra income stream in today’s economy. It is really easy, just pick your mom-stuff banner linked to your mom-stuff ID, post it on your site. Our system does all of the tracking and you make 50% commissions on all of your friends who join. Then they join and make money from their friends. It is a win/win system. We are keeping the membership fees low so everyone can afford this opportunity. It is less then .30 a day. Mom-Stuff is all about moms helping supporting and educating each other. Please email any article you want to share on Mom-Stuff.com. If you feel that we do not have a category that your information will fit, no worries, we will create one.
Infant Bows
Wednesday, August 4th, 2010Make Your Own Infant Bows
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To make hair bows for infants all you need is some narrow ribbon and Kero Syrup. Yes the kind you make candy with. Using a 9 inch piece of ribbon tie a bow. Pull it tight and cut the ends at an angle. Put it on your little girl with a small amount of Kero syrup. To remove bow use a wet cloth. As you reuse the syrup it will stiffen the bow and keep it in shape. (more…)
What To Do With All of the Zucchini?
Monday, July 26th, 2010I grow up with this problem every fall. We would take bags to every neighbor.
Becky’s Carrot Zucchini Pineapple Muffins
My friend Becky is about as close to a “super mom” as you can get. A demanding full-time job, 3 kids, and manages to find the energy for fun adventures, running half marathons, lots of home-cooked goodness, and having a sense of humor about it all. If she wasn’t such an awesome person, I might just hate her a littleHere’s what she says about these carrot-zucchini muffins: “We make them in mini muffin tins. Oliver (baby) loves them and the other two will eat them if they are starving, so I save them for the ride home from school. They travel well and are reasonably good for you. Nate (toddler) is a huge fan of cooking with me and he loves this because he gets to do the cuisinart and the mixer. He also likes putting the cupcake papers into the baking pans. Even though he helps me make these, it doesn’t stop him from looking at the muffins later and saying – what is this green stuff mommy? Oh well!”
I gave them a test run recently and the kids I was with (ages 2-4) ate them right up. “Do these have vegetables in them?” asks the four year old, suspiciously. Aren’t you amazed at the impressive power of observation that kids have when it comes to spotting that sliver of green or tiny speck of pepper? But despite the suspicion of vegetables lurking, the lure of these muffins was just too strong. Tiny nibble…. ”Mmmmm these are THE BEST!”. Big bite…. “More please!”
This makes a large batch (~2 dozen standard-sized muffins), so unless you have 3 hungry kids, you might cut it in half, freeze some, or best yet share with a friend. For little hands (or messy cooks), you can scoop the batter into a large zip lock bag, snip the corner and “pipe” into the muffin tins about 2/3 full. (more…)
Getting the Most from Your School Clothes Budget
Tuesday, July 20th, 2010Last week while I was visiting my daughter she ask me to help go through her daughters clothes to prepare for school shopping. Going school clothes shopping was always a big deal to my daughter. She is a lot more excited than my granddaughter who is just starting kindergarten and has never experienced this tradition. The exercise proceeded like this. Mom sorted the clothes in daughter’s closet, daughter tried on clothes that were acceptable for school clothes, and grandma hung the acceptable clothes back on hangers. The last step was to match up clothes that could be worn together. After the tedious task was complete, Mom, my daughter had a very saddened look on her face because her daughter didn’t need very many clothes to start school. She looked like a little girl who had just lost her ice cream scoop from her ice cream cone. This years school shopping was not going to be as much fun as she had hoped it would be, but the great news, it will also not be as expensive.
This really got me thinking about how this event had come too mean so much to my daughter. Every year when it was time to get ready for school I would make an adventure out of the task. As I was pondering my past experiences I realized that I had raised my kids during the recession in the early nineties and I thought there were some things I had learned that could help mothers today. My husband and I lost half of our income and were forced to learn how to stretch our money. The kids and I would take inventory of what we had that would work and make a list of what we needed. Then we would plan a day for the quest. We were on a mission. I believe it was this attitude that made this experience so much fun for my children.
Here is your mission if you choose to accept it.
GET THE MOST FROM YOUR SCHOOL CLOTHES BUDGET.
For step by step instructions click here.
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