TheMommyBlog

Thursday, July 29, 2010 QOTD

If I wake up with a needle in my eyeball, I’m gonna be pissed.
—Logan, as I dropped my needlepoint in bed

Tuesday, July 27, 2010 Family

TrueAnthem and The Villa Group gave us a preview of the social media video player featuring four other mom bloggers and me on our trip to see their Cabo San Lucas properties: Andrea Fellman of Savvy Sassy Moms, Laurie Cooper a.k.a. Clueless Mama of Guessing All the Way, Heather Spohr of The Spohrs Are Multiplying, and Colleen Lanin of TravelMamas.

• See! Bat rays leaping out of the water!
• See! Newlywed men doing “sexy dances” for their ladies on a pitching boat!
• See! Each of us after a huge breakfast and tour before amazing spa treatments!
• See! Me powered by tequila and rapping to Moulin Rouge’s “Voulez Vous Coucher Avec Moi” with Heather of (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) (and fellow Momversation.com panelist)!

No, really. And let us all thank them for having the voice-over blot out the singing.

What’s impressive about how they handled our visit was that they showed us the place and let us run with it, with lots of free time. Then they interviewed us and we said whatever came to mind. NO SCRIPTING. We were in heaven.

Heather (and Colleen of The Travel Mama) already wrote in detail about the trip. I will too, soon as the kids are at Dad’s and the construction outside my window dies down. Riiiiight.

For now, check out the video over there in the sidebar.———>

Pics and pics and more pics posted to my Flickr photostream!

Monday, July 26, 2010 Family

Seriously, people. I have tucked in three children several times a piece, each of their lovies after wrapping them in the appropriate blankets, the dishwasher, the washing machine, every light fixture in the house (but not the front door; that’s locked all the time otherwise it just swings open like a barn door if it’s not bolted), two computers, five remotes, and finally, over the phone, my Guy.

Isn’t the strangest thing, standing in a full yet completely silent house, so tired you can’t remember what it was you wanted to do when everyone was finally in bed?

Never mind, I’ll remember in the middle of the night. It’s probably my phone needing charging, and it will wake me with its plaintive little beeps.

*Yawn* Who’s going to tuck me in?

Thursday, July 22, 2010 Family

OF COURSE I want my kids to be safe on cell phones, especially since we’ve gone to an all-cell phone family. For the first time, we don’t have a house phone. That just blows my mind.

See, I’m used to the kind of family phone everyone had to fight over so your parents set elaborate rules about how many calls you can make and how long each can last. Eventually you learn to sneak calls by making it look like you’re not actually ON the centrally-located kitchen phone because you’ve stretched that 25-foot cord out the kitchen door, around the corner of the dining room, and then around the corner of your bedroom where you’ve found a gap in the door that lets you close it without pinching the phone cord too much. And then your sibling finds out when he trip-wires the cord on his way to get a bowl of cereal and takes revenge by disconnecting the cord from the phone base, letting the yellow, stretched-out, curly cord spring back and whip around the corners until it WHAPS against your closed bedroom door where you’re having a whispered conversation because you think you’ve pulled off the bluff of the century.

And then you’ve got like twenty twists to reverse in the cord because it’s all out of shape and there’s always that one that won’t untwist unless you run it all the way to the ends of the cord and when you wake up the next day it’s BACK, with three or four cousins. And believe it or not, your parents never replace that cord. It will persevere throughout your childhood, going from springy and not quite reaching your knees, to a long, worn-out looping thing that has to be tossed over the top of the phone to keep it from dragging on the floor where you will trip on it eleventeen times a day.

So. Cell phones.

My kids use them. And I want to know HOW they are using them because they are portable little buggers and you never know where they are until you call them and your shoe starts ringing. Well. Here’s a story that ought to get your attention, and get you thinking about how to keep your family safe while using a cell.

Forbes Personal Tech: Keeping Kids Safe on Cell Phones
By Claire Courtney

SAN FRANCISCO—Colorado mother Sharon Hamilton thought she had a close eye on her son’s technology use. The 15-year-old turned in his cellphone every night at 10 p.m. One evening, Hamilton became suspicious when he frantically deleted text messages before giving over his phone. Her worst fears were soon confirmed.

When she turned on his phone, a text message from an unrecognizable, out-of-state number appeared. “Good night Babe,” it read.

REET! REET! REET!

“I am a watchful Mom,” she said, ” and this bypassed my watch.”

Her son told her that the text came from a 30-year-old female friend he met while playing “World of Warcraft,” a popular online multiplayer videogame. Hamilton, unconvinced of the innocence of this friendship, investigated the woman further. She ended up paying a company to discover that her son had spent three months communicating with an adult male. Read more…

Don’t EVEN get me started on texting.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010 Family

I loved this opening line. (My site wasn’t featured, but it was funny to see my face on the screen shots of two of them!)

Mom Speak: Answers Moms Need to Know
By Kerry A. Dolan

I dipped my toe into the mom blogosphere and nearly drowned.

I’m one of those busy moms with a full-time job and not much time to read mommy blogs. So when I took a peek at the latest collection of parenting blogs, I was blown away by the variety of information they contain. Turns out that even friends who aren’t parents are sneaking a look at some of these blogs. Collectively they’re growing real muscle: Family and parenting Web sites got close to 62 million unique visitors in March this year, according to comScore Media Metrix. Read more…