Moms Online : How real is it?

Gather and Momcentral Consulting got together on some research recently, looking into the relationships between moms, isolation, and online activity.  Pretty interesting statistics!

Just a few …

  • 40% of Moms report they do not have a “best friend” or someone with whom they can share everything
  • 4 out of 5 Moms feel that they don’t have enough friends in their lives
  • Over 60% of Moms reported making a new friend online in the past year
  • Less than 50% of Moms surveyed live near any family

Read the rest of the article here. 

Have you made a new friend online in the last year?  I certainly have.  And we all know my battle with online vs offline time and the guilt thereof.  I’m working on making my time online of a bit higher quality for starters! 

I do think online relationships are tremendously valuable, but shouldn’t be at the expense of offline ones.  I’ve got a few very close friends that are now ‘real life’ friends also that I originally met online.  Friends I would likely have never found otherwise.  Happy connecting!

Thanks to Manisha over @ActInFrench for the heads up! 

What's in what you buy?

Momsrising.com just turned me on to a new website, and I think it’s a great one.  They have a searchable database of over 5000 products, like handbags, carseats, pet products, toys and more … giving you details on what chemicals were found in them and a general safety rating.  I think it’s always good to know!

Healthystuff.org > Resarching toxic chemicals in everyday products. 

To quote their newsletter and give you a few samples …

          Women’s Handbags

HealthyStuff.org tested over 100 handbags and found lead in over 75% of the bags they analyzed. We worked hard to get lead out of children’s toys—- but both of my kids still enjoy playing dress up with my old purses. Find Out More.

Car Seats and Booster Seats
We all know boosters and car seats save lives, and using them is a MUST. But over half (58%) of car seats tested by Healthy Stuff contain hazardous chemicals, including PVC, BFRs and heavy metals. Car Seats can be made without these chemicals - the Baby Trend Flex-Loc; the Graco Nautilus 3-in-1 Car Seat; and the Graco Turbo Booster all passed the test with flying colors. You can research your child’s carseat or booster in the Healthy Stuff database .

Cars and Minivans
Chemical levels found in cars can be 5-10 times higher than in homes or offices. For moms, dads, and kids who log hours in carpool duty every week, this can be a major source of toxic chemical exposure. HealthyStuff.org tested nearly 700 new and used vehicles for dangerous chemicals. The U.S. made Pontiac G5 and Chevy Cobalt rated best among 2009 vehicles. Look up your vehicle here.

Pet Products
Since there are no government standards for hazardous chemicals in pet products, it is not surprising that alarming levels of toxic chemicals were found in beds, chew toys, collars and leashes. One quarter of all pet products tested had detectable levels of lead. Check out how your pooch’s favorite plaything tested.

 

Check it out!

I am a bag lady

I sometimes write articles for Hip Slope Mama, and think you might enjoy this month’s entry about my bag-lady roots.

Here’s a snippet …

I am a bag lady, and proud of it. It’s an honorable profession in my family, made so by my 92-year-old grandmother whose bag I first dug treasures out of during church. By my definition, bag ladies are always ready to go, have a good pinch of wanderlust, and love people. They don’t require much in the way of possessions, but focus on being ready to roll when the opportunity arises.

It’s hard to stay in touch with my true bag-lady roots when just leaving the house in the morning requires a lunch bag, toy, and pillow for the strollered one, a backpack, snack, and shoelace help for the elder son, and keys/phone/breakfast/running gear for me.

Check out the rest of the article here.

Question of the Week : What do you love about being a mom?

What do you love about being a mom? There was a lot of Twittering about Oprah’s Secrets of Motherhood show and then Mrs. G over at the Women’s Colony had a reaction to it and it’s gotten me thinking a bit. I do a lot of complaining, and was reminded gently by my SIL last week, after a particularly frustrated rant about my current living conditions (roommates. are. hard.), that perhaps I should look at what I was thankful for? Sigh. She was right.

My kids drive me nuts. Especially during spring break when I thought I was going to get away for 3 days by myself (yes, I know, a dream in itself) and find out that it’s not going to happen right now. I need to, yes, count my blessings.

SO, in the spirit of spring and new beginnings and all that’s sunny and warm and fuzzy, what do you love about being a mom?

> Click HERE to answer!

Deadline : midnight on April 18th

Prize : SaneMoms t-shirt or tank top

Food for thought ...

The Aboubakar family of Darfur province, Sudan, in front of their tent in the Breidjing Refugee Camp, in eastern Chad, with a week’s worth of food. © 2005 Peter Menzel from ‘Hungry Planet: What the World Eats’I saw excerpts from Hungry Planet: What the World Eats a couple of years ago, and was stunned.  It shows what several dozen families around the world consume in a week, and how much it costs them.  The amounts range from over $500 dollars to $1.53.  It’s eye-opening, perspective-shifting, and disturbing to me as an American.  NPR had a segment on it awhile ago with a good sampling, see it here.  It also made me realize how ubiquitous american products really are, like Coke and so on, and how it’s affected other culture’s diets.

Food is a big focus for me right now, as I’m becoming more aware of where it comes from, what’s in it, how it’s been processed, and all that kind of thing.

Sane Breastfeeding

This post over at DaMomma really caught my eye yesterday.  I’m a very-pro breast feeding mama (though I’m not at the moment :) and her provocative title “Breast is best and other total lies” set me on the defensive right off the bat. 

The heart of her post …

There is no doubt breastfeeding is one of the greatest gifts that a mother can give her child.

But it isn’t the greatest. It isn’t best.

The best thing a baby can have is happy, satisfied, secure parents. A mother who feels inadequate in the face of her child starts to resent her child. A mother who feels forced, every two hours, to engage in an act she finds excruciating, or degrading or just plain distasteful is going to associate those feelings with her baby. For those women and their babies, breastfeeding is bad.

Read the rest of it here. 

I was nodding my head in agreement by the time she was done. Nice to see such a sane perspective on it all!

 

The Stay-at-Home Mom Survival Guide

The Stay-at-Home Mom Survival Guide by Melissa Stanton.

This book looks really good! It caught my eye via an interview with the author here on Literary Mama.

“If there’s one thing I hope women will learn from this book, it’s that it’s OK to sometimes not love being a stay-at-home mom. It doesn’t mean we don’t love our children. It doesn’t mean we’d make a different choice if we had a do-over. It definitely doesn’t mean we’re bad mothers. Few people like their job every minute of the day. The same goes for the job of being a stay-at-home mom.”

You can buy/see it here on amazon.

 

A final thought

I know I can relate to this post about the price of motherhood … and to many other posts on this blog.  It’s therapy just to read it and know I’m not alone in how I feel sometimes! 

I’m not having the best day to end the year on, but hoping I can get my mind straightened out.  One little bit of not saying what I really wanted to do (sleep in) and agreeing to do something else (go running early) turned into frustration, trouble, and expense for a friend of mine.  I feel a bit guilty, but need to let it go and end the year knowing that speaking my mind more often needs to be on my resolution list!

 

Happy 2009 to y’all!

Holiday Shopping Guide

~ * ~ Holiday Gift Guide ~ * ~

Some of my favorite Mom-run businesses with great products … take a look!

Alexandra Jordan
Designer leather handbags in a wide range of styles, colors, and textures.

Blessings Unlimited
Exclusive and beautiful home décor and gift items with a Christian message.

emagine Green
Green products to inspire you to make a difference, today.

Wildtree
Herbs, spices, mixes: natural, delicious, and easy ways to enhance your food.

Homemade Gourmet
Helping create great-tasting, home cooked food, fast!

Scentsy
Wickless, flameless, smokeless: the hottest new thing in candles

Thirty-one
Bags, candles, accessories … lots of great fabrics!

Secret Agent Josephine
Super duper online papergoods, paintings and lumpy pillow shop

Comfortably Crazy
Vintage-feel aprons with delicious details and cheerful colors.

Borderline Bonkers
Simple, elegant, and delicious paintings, from a mom who loves to create.

Cberrybaby
Fashion meets innovation, and doesn’t break the bank. Great girl gear!

Gypsy Feather
“Petit collections d’objets”…and other treasures

Bethany Actually Crafts
Crocheted Objects, Handmade Cards, Painted Pottery, Gumball Magnets, and more

Carole Axium Designs
Fun Jewelery for Real Women

Beads in the Belfry
Eclectic, whimsical, modern, fun jewelry on Etsy

AllyZaba
We make baby blankets. Cute, quality, hand-made blankets.

Knotty Baby Wear
Tights, leg-warmers, knits, accessories, and more for knotty and nice little ones

 

It only takes a second ...

Please tell ten friends to tell ten today!

The Breast Cancer site is having trouble getting enough people to click on their site daily to meet their quota of donating at least one free mammogram a day to an underprivileged woman. It takes less than a minute to go to their site and click on ‘donating a mammogram’ for free (pink window in the middle). 

This doesn’t cost you a thing. Their corporate sponsors/advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate mammogram in exchange for advertising. 

Here’s the web site! Pass it along to people you know. 

http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/

It couldn’t be easier :)

We all have days like this ...

On one of my favorite mom-blogs (the hilarious and sarcastic Whoopee (aka Antonia) in the UK) her last couple posts have been in the spring-rain-and-no-money-and-an-18-month-old-are-driving-me-crazy vein, and I couldn’t agree more as my husband has just left on another month-long stint of working in another state.  Her comments section on this post is a goldmine of ideas on how to entertain small kids, how to meet other moms, and lots Me Too and This Won’t Last Forever, which was just what I needed to read tonight :).  Hope you’re all having a great week, and looking forward to more What are you passionate about? entries!

Making every moment count ...

A couple things have come to my attention in the last 24 hours that really hit home on the “Enjoy Every Moment” bandwagon, the very same wagon that I spend most of my time chasing down the road.  I saw this first one ages ago on YouTube, and cried just as much as I did today watching an excerpt of Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture.  Short, bittersweet, and inspiring.  Check it out!

The other find was in a column I love written by Catherine Newman for Wondertime, and it’s here in all it’s thoughtfulness, delightedness, and reflection on what it means to be 5.  It’s a gem!


Ever wish you'd never had kids?

Interesting article titled “Women who aren’t cut out for motherhood” by Lucy Beresford for The Times (UK edition). 

It’s a rarely discussed topic, and the following paragraph particularly caught my eye …

“We know that motherhood changes lives. We know all about the lack of sleep, the reduced social life, the loss of libido. What is underacknowledged is how vulnerable psychologically the new mother is to the loss of her old self. With all the freedoms that can come from a fabulous career, or financial independence, the new mum may be underprepared for the psychological impact of being totally responsible for someone else.”

Read the rest of the story here. 

Thanks to Callipygian Briefs for the link.

Women and Money by Suze Ormand

I’ve never read any of Suze Ormand’s books, but heard good things about them.  Being financially savvy is something many of us are not (myself included) so it can’t hurt!  Her new book Women and Money is available for free download as a .pdf until 8pm tomorrow (EST) on Oprah’s website.  Check it out and let us know what you think!  I’ve got it queued up to read :).