About Us - Contributors of Chicago Moms Blog
The Chicago Moms blog is a collaborative
group of moms writing about their lives in Chicago, Ill., where moms
endure “El” construction on the way to work, navigate their way into
tight parking spots, push strollers through slushy sidewalks, and
occasionally indulge in a shopping spree on Michigan Avenue, if, that,
is, they can get sitters.
Contact Us by email: info(at)svmoms(dot)com
Our Legal Guru/Lawyer: Linsey Krolik
Our OH-SO-FABULOUS Graphic Designer (banner and buttons): Kris Loew
Our URL: http://www.chicagomomsblog.com
Chicago Moms Blog is a member of the Silicon Valley Moms Group. Other blogs in the group include Silicon Valley Moms Blog, DC Metro Moms Blog , New York City Moms Blog, Los Angeles Moms Blog, 50-Something Moms Blog and New Jersey Moms Blog. Soon to launch: MidWest Moms Blog, Pacific North West Moms Blog, Philadelphia Moms Blog and Rocky Mountain Moms Blog.
Come and meet the Chicago Moms Bloggers:
Alma moved to Chicago at 18 to attend the U of C and never left. She married her college sweetheart at 23 and the two lived in Hyde Park, Lincoln Park and Lakeview before finding the perfect neighborhood in Oak Park and starting a family. The two share their 100-year-old house with their two aging cats and two growing girls. Z was born in November 2004 and A joined her sister in July 2007.
Alma works for love and money as an associate creative director at big agency, specializing in the emerging field of shopper marketing.
Occasional pangs of working mommy-guilt are assuaged by husband Josh, who’s able to squeeze grocery shopping, cooking, laundry and a whole lot of childcare into his freelance writing schedule.
When she’s not working, blogging, sleeping, or wiping someone’s face or butt, you can probably find Alma bargain hunting, organizing a playgroup outing or looking up contractors on Angie’s List. If the day had more hours, she’d finish some long-neglected knitting projects and pull the weeds from her garden. Alma writes about her life and the issues that drive her batty at Marketing Mommy.
Angela Allyn is an artist and administrator who lives in Mildred the Magic House. She is married to photographer Matt Dinerstein
and is attempting to raise three artist children and has decided it was
easier to roll around art galleries dressed as primordial slime as she
did in her youth. She blogs at Domestic Blitz.
When her kids are at school and/or napping, Caitlin works as a freelance writer. Her work appears regularly in Chicago Parent and Mindful Metropolis magazines. She also writes about the family-friendly side of Chicago on Wee Windy City, part of the ChicagoNow site. Check in on her happy adventures with the little people in her life at her personal blog A Hen and Two Three Chicks.
Carrie
is a word-nerd mommy, a former full-time newspaper reporter, a lapsed
world traveler and a recent returnee to the Midwest. She grew up in a
dead Wisconsin auto town, came of age in Madison, Wisconsin, and Paris,
began her career in Beijing, and started her family in San Francisco.
These days you'll find her in Oak Park, just outside Chicago, toting
around baby Pebbles, trying to reason with preschooler Nutmeg, helping
husband Epu fix up their recently purchased Oak Park home, and trying
to get her bearings as a semi-suburban stay-at-home mother.
Carrie
may forget the kids' doctor appointments but always finds time to
marvel at their latest linguistic developments. She's shoehorning in a
little freelance writing and blogging, and longs for the day when she
can get back to writing that future Oprah Book Club novel and maybe
even a few poems, which her husband says are her forte. Perhaps this
day will come when Carrie's blog, My Funny, Funny Family,
becomes lucrative enough to pay for a cleaning lady who comes every
ding-dang day. Dare to dream, that's what Carrie says. Carrie also
writes about personal finance for Wise Bread.
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Catherine McNiel was born in Chicago, but spent her childhood enjoying the open air in rural Wisconsin and Minnesota. She moved back to ChicagoLand in 1995 and has been here ever since (except for a year or so when she was living in India and Switzerland). Her loves including reading, writing, books, blogs, deep thoughts, music, nature, culture, people, traveling, reading books (did I say that one already?), her wonderful California-born husband, and her very adorable sons. Before she took a full time job of chasing her sons, she worked as an International HR Manager for a local organization. Now, she manages to keep herself busy working part time, as well as teaching as an adjunct professor at a local University. Because she tends to ponder everything, she enjoys processing her thoughts and experiences at her personal blog, everyday life as lyric poetry and building local community at Dupage Mamas.
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Cheryl O'Donovan met her husband at a tire shop, had her kids in her late 30's and wonders if the chiropractor will accept beads and trinkets as payment. Cheryl forged a 22-year career in corporate communications and advertising before being offered a lucrative contract making paper airplanes. Her exuberant boys steal brooms to make light sabers. (They're Dooku, Mom's koo-koo). Her IT consulting husband graduated summa cum laude from Grouch Tech. And the dog flunked obedience school three times. Find her humor column, "Van Mom Strikes Again," every Thursday in Pioneer Press papers in Schaumburg, Hoffman Estates and Elk Grove Village, and occasionally in Arlington Heights, Buffalo Grove, and Palatine.
Cindy Fey lives in Wilmette with her TV ad-cutting husband and her two curly-haired pre-school age daughters. She has degrees from universities in three states starting in "I" which helps tremendously when the kids are hungry and the pasta water won't boil any damn faster. Cindy taught speech, TV, film and English for eight years at a Chicago all-boys high school, but nowadays her daughters are her teachers and she's the student. (B average with a few A+ days here and there.) You can read her tales of mothering and movies, grief and grace, books and blunders at her blog, We All Fall Down.
Cynthia spent her single girl life trading stocks. Who would have thought that going toe to toe with traders was the easy part? Those days are soooo over.
These days, when she is not chasing after her two toddlers, she does
blog design and illustration through her design site (NW Designs). You can also find her writing at The Chronicles of a SAHM.
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Elizabeth is a Chicago-based freelance writer, specializing in technology.Formerly
a road warrior in the IT industry, she exited a management career
seeking balance. These days, Elizabeth is homeschooling and living
frugal with her supporting/supportive Icelandic husband, happy son, and
stupid dog.
She's been threatening "Do that and I'll SO blog you!" to her friends and family since 2004.
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Farrah Brown is a military kid that actually considers Florida to be home. She came to Chicago to attend Wheaton College in 1995 and, as fate would have it, met and married a Chicago guy. Besides a brief stint on the east coast (Baltimore) for nursing school at Johns Hopkins University, she has been here ever since. And although she misses the beach and sweet tea, Chicago is starting to grow on her too.
Farrah works part time as a cardiac interventional nurse at a local hospital in the western suburbs to keep her nursing skills current and give her at least one day a week with adult conversation. She also runs her own small work-at-home business, BabyLove Slings, making and selling beautiful handmade ring-sling baby carriers. But the job she truly cherishes is the one of mommy to her two boys (born in 2006 and 2008) and beagle pup. Life certainly keeps her on her toes!
Besides her husband and sons and puppy, her other passions include babywearing, attachment parenting, the beach, and most recently Bravo TV! When not sewing, chasing boys or catching up on Project Runway, Farrah spends her "spare time" writing about the joys and pains of motherhood and babywearing at BabyLove Slings. Farrah also writes for her newest project, Dupage Mamas, a voice and resource for mamas in the western suburbs.
Janelle Marshall is a native Californian, but has been in Chicago for seven years. It's all due to the fact that she met her husband at Borders Book Store and fell in love with the man and the city. She's also mom to 2-year-old, Jada. Like every other mother, she's always trying to master the balancing act while also managing her occasional emotional roller coaster rides. She's got a master's degree in journalism and currently teaches undergraduate communication classes online. Her hubby is considered a branding guru and they are always building the next big idea to get them closer to a life of freedom.
When she's not blogging she's climbing three flights of stairs to her condo in Hyde Park with groceries in hand, reading and singing with Jada, cuddling with her hubby or feeding her need for constant organization. You can find her blogging on her personal site Mama Daisy.
Jeanie Chung lives in Chicago with her husband, daughter and two
elderly dogs. She is dipping her toe into the blogosphere, as it were,
by joining Chicago Moms Blog.
A recovering sportswriter, most recently for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1997-2002, Jeanie now writes for an education organization and tries to do the literary thing when she can. Her short stories have appeared in upstreet, Madison Review, Hunger Mountain and Timber Creek Review, and her author interviews have appeared in Writer's Chronicle and Rain Taxi online. She hates having her picture taken, but sometimes her leg and arm come out OK.xxx
Jen Khatchatrian shares her journey from material girl to environmental activist as The Eco Chic Organizer. She's living her dream writing her first book and contributing to Mindful Metropolis as their spa aficionado. Two years ago Jen created Chicago Green Families to
connect the green community, provide a way to put beliefs in action and
impact her community. Chicago Green Families partnered with the
Alliance for the Great Lakes and adopted two Chicago beaches that they
clean on a year round basis. She's been named a Chicago Green Hero,
featured on ABC's Live Green Series and interviewed on WLIT-FM. Jen
lives on the lake downtown with her two children.
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Karen Putz is a deaf mom to three deaf and hard of hearing kids. She's married to her college sweetheart who is also deaf. Karen grew up hard of hearing and became profoundly deaf after a fall while waterskiing on her bare feet. She has learned to turn her hearing aids off when the hubby grumbles about her housecleaning skills and close her eyes when the kids ask for money to go to the mall. Karen bounces back and forth from the western suburbs to Christie Lake in Michigan, where her parents reside. She drives a 20-year old boat and takes great delight in whipping the kids around the lake on inflated tubes.
Karen works in early intervention as a Deaf Mentor, providing support and information to families with deaf and hard of hearing children. She is a board member of Hands & Voices and runs the Illinois chapter. Karen tossed away her B.S. and M.A. counseling degrees in favor of her first love: writing. She can be found blogging away at Disaboom, Parenting Squad and her own two blogs: A Deaf Mom Shares Her World and Jobs, Careers and Callings.
Kim Moldofsky was born and bred in the Chicago area. She has been a factory worker
and a social worker; a dolphin trainer and a corporate trainer. Then
she took the plunge and became a potty trainer and stay-at-home mom to
her two little boys. Now that those boys are 9 and 11, her career is
finally out of the toilet.
Kim now works as a social media strategist helping companies understand and connect with online mom influencers. In addition to serving as a social media mom to companies like LeapFrog and ConAgra, she blogs about parenting, raising gifted children, and marketing to moms, along with fun stuff and occasional product reviews at Hormone-colored Days. Kim spent more than a year problogging at the BabyCenter’s top-ranked MOMformation blog and her wit and wisdom are sprinkled throughout the blogosphere. She can be reached at mom(at)moldofsky(dot)com.
In her past life, Lisa worked as a newspaper reporter for a dozen years. She focused on child and family issues long before she had one of her own, and the irony does not escape her. Sensing the steady death of printed text, she fled to South Africa with her husband and worked for non-profits that served kids. Three years ago, the birth of her son brought her back to the states, and to writing. Lisa currently freelances for Chicago Parent magazine and pitches to every other publication that hasn't gone bankrupt yet. Having grown up in Virginia, Lisa embraces all that the big city of Chicago has to offer, even if that includes wearing nine layers of clothing just to get the mail.
Lisa H. is a new mom who has no problem admitting what she doesn’t
know and sharing everything she figures out. She appreciates humor and
honesty, and luckily finds it every day as the lone female in the house
she shares with her talented husband, adorable son, and
attention-craving rescue dog. Recent transplants to Wilmette, they’re
missing the city life a little less each day.
When not learning about life as a mom, Lisa works full time in fundraising, enjoys reading and cooking, loves a good time, appreciates great food and inexpensive wine, plans to start exercising again soon, and tries to maintain a social life. Check in on her life as Lady Hannemaniac and her writings about her often nutty, always overbooked life at Hannemaniacs.
Miss Lori is a Wisconsin native with a passion for children and
performance. She captured everyone’s attention at the age of 4
strapping on a superhero cape and belting out Helen Reddy’s “I am Woman
Hear Me Roar”. By the age of nine she had taken flight and was
performing throughout Wisconsin, and eventually the country.
All grown up Miss Lori wear numerous capes in her life. She has a focus as an entertainer, teacher, and writer to unite families together through her artistic contributions. Miss Lori has activated her mission through her work as host of The PBS Kids Preschool Block from 2006-2009 and as an Ambassador for The American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry’s Healthy Smiles, Healthy Children Campaign.
Miss Lori also wears an Entrepreneur cape as the founder of her company Miss Lori’s CAMPUS. She guides MLC with her innovative ideas creating programming, entertainment, merchandise and media that ignite the imaginations of curiously motivated children and their families.
As part of Miss Lori's CAMPUS, Miss Lori's Producer cape helped her launch a CD titled "Music n' Movement TOGETHER!" which is a winner of the 2008 iParenting Greatest Products Media Award.
To build on the momentum of her CD and live tours, Miss Lori’s CAMPUS produced an interactive musical adventure DVD called, “Activate & Be Great!” , and an original mixed media theatrical production entitled “GROWING!”. In addition to her television work Miss Lori still performs live, regularly teaming up with WTTW-PBS Chicago and other organizations, creating informative and inspiring live events.
In 2009 Miss Lori took on a new cape, one that says Blogger. Her insightful thoughts about life and parenting are as real as her music. You can find her “Musing from her Minivan” on her own website, MissLori.TV, as well as SVMoms blog offshoot ChicagoMomsBlog. She is thrilled to now also be contributing her multicultural perspective to WeAreTheRealDeal.com as well! You can stay current with all of Miss Lori’s goings on by following her on Twitter and Facebook.
With all of the different capes that Miss Lori wears in her life her favorite is her Mommy cape, which she proudly straps on to care for her three beautiful children from whom she draws inspiration everyday. Miss Lori's mission and her focus are both about them and for them.
Children and families across the country have fallen in love with Miss Lori's superhero like energy, passion and commitment to the development of young minds and bodies. Her ability to foster creativity and imagination is a gift to treasure for many years to come. As Miss Lori always says “Let Your SMILE Shine On!”TM
Marie lives on Chicago's North Shore with her husband, two sons, one lizard, and 22 (and counting) guppies. She was born in New York but grew up in sunny, scorching Arizona. She has lived in Florence, Italy; Geneva, Switzerland; and Manhattan, New York. She has a completely useless BA in Psychology from the University of Arizona and a well-intended but misguided Master of International Business from Thunderbird, the American Graduate School of International Management. She worked in Corporate Marketing and Communications for several years, but now stays home raising her kids and neglecting her house. In her free time she likes to read fiction, work on her photography, eat anything chocolate, and find ways to get her husband to take her to nice restaurants. She takes sick pleasure from feeding crickets to the lizard, hates unloading the dishwasher, and fully expects to live her next life as a sun-basking, ever-napping cat. Not a cricket. You can read more of her work at Three Chairs.
Mary Anne Mohanraj is the author of several books, including her
novel-in-stories, BODIES IN MOTION (HarperCollins 2005), an exploration
of sexuality, marriage, and Sri Lankan/American immigrant concerns.
Mohanraj has also written THE POET'S JOURNEY (a children's book,
2008), AQUA EROTICA (ed.), A TASTE OF SERENDIB (a Sri Lankan cookbook),
and several others. She is currently writing a travelogue/memoir
(ARBITRARY PASSIONS), a YA fantasy novel (RASATHI), and a mainstream
novel about a woman who was once a Tamil Tiger and is now a suburban
Chicago mom.
Mohanraj has received an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Prose, a
Neff Fellowship in English, a Steffenson-Canon Fellowship in the
Humanities, and the Scowcroft Prize for Fiction. She serves as
Executive Director of DesiLit (www.desilit.org), an organization that supports S. Asian and diaspora literature, and also directs the Speculative Literature Foundation (www.speclit.org).
Mohanraj lives in Chicago with her partner Kevin, their daughter Kavya
(born May 2007), and their dog, Ellie, where she teaches fiction and
Asian American literature at Northwestern University. She was born in
Colombo, Sri Lanka. http://www.maryannemohanraj.com
Melanie is adjusting to life in Chicago after moving here not so
long ago. The excitement of life in Chicago makes up for the tedium of
keeping her three kids healthy, fed and dressed each day. Her student
husband has promised that life will get easier when he is done with
school, but she isn't holding her breath.
Even though she's never had a real job, she dreams of the day when she can be . . . something. For now, she spends her days reading, folding laundry, cooking, eating, cleaning up, wiping noses, changing diapers, and blogging at tales from the crib. You can also read her online journal at blissfully domestic.
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MJ Tam is a
writer, avid blogger, mad tech lover, self-proclaimed marketing diva
and a social media enthusiast. She established the successful MomViews.net, an informational family product site for smart parents, and is also the Founding Partner and Co-Editor of the online magazine Chicagonista.com, "Movers, Shakers and Baby Makers dishing on hidden Chicago treasures for the family".
MJ started writing in her personal blog; SugarMyBowl.com,when her first child was born in 2000 and now have 3 beautiful children that keeps her going. Her love of upstarting blogs, writing for sites and other blogs has multiplied in time. She also runs FilipinaMoms.com and TwitterStories.
Follow MJ on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mjtam
Nancy Loo is an Emmy-Award winning Anchor/Reporter with Fox Chicago News. She currently anchors the weekday newscast at noon. Prior to joining the station in 2001, Nancy was an Anchor/Reporter at WABC-TV in New York City. She has also lived and worked in Hong Kong and Tokyo.
Nancy has a journalism degree from the University of Oregon. She lives with her husband and two children in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. She blogs regularly about life in television news and parenting at www.nancyloo.net.
Serena Beltz is a native San Franciscan who moved to Chicago in 1996
en route to New York. Little did she know she'd still be in the Windy
City twelve years later with a native East Coaster for a husband, a
house in a suburban-esque subdivision on the North Side of Chicago and
two little boys. She attended the University of California at Berkeley
(Go Bears!) and has a background in financial services, IT and Early
Childhood Education.
She now spends her days as a she is a WAHM/SAHM who works in retail part-time and runs her own online business, Petit Tableau, which ties into her foodie blog at Petit Tableau--Making Healthy Food Fun. In her "free time" she also blogs at Multicultural Mama, enjoys entertaining, reading, sewing and "hanging out" on Facebook.
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Shannon Capanna grew up in Southern California and moved to Chicago in 2004. She has worked as an elementary school teacher and as an editor for math textbooks. She is now a stay-at-home mom to her toddler son, born in 2007. In her spare time, Shannon enjoys swimming, flower arranging, baking, and cat appreciation. She drags her son all over Chicagoland to find fun new activities, some of which she writes about on Chicagonista. She also writes on her personal blog, Same Old Shannon.
Sophia Leto
is a pen name. After loving her life in the city during her twenties
and for a brief moment in her thirties, she and her husband moved to
Skokie. They moved there for the schools, for the affordable housing,
and for the diversity. Sophia has two children and a dog, her "first
born." She has two advanced degrees, but right now she is putting them
to use (some would argue non-use) as a stay-at-home mom. In addition
to parenting, her passions include breastfeeding, organic food,
chocolate, baking and politics (not necessarily in that order). In
addition to Chicago Moms Blog, she has her own blog where she can be
"heard" ranting and raving about anything and everything, especially
her severe PMS called Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder ("PMDD") at www.moodymommy.wordpress.com. She loves comments and you can email her at sophialeto(at)yahoo(dot)com.........................................
Susan is a writer with curly hair who usually wishes she
had straight hair. Clearly a word person, not a number person, she would
appreciate any help she could get adding up the following word problem: 6
children, 2 step children, 1 set of premie twins, 4 boys, 2 girls, 1 special
needs child, 3 schools, 115-year-old house, 1 husband, 1 dog, 0 nannies, 0
housekeepers, 0 personal chefs, 24 measly hours in the day and not nearly enough
cash.
Susan believes there are Two Kinds of People in the world and proves it on her personal blog. She has written practically everything, from white papers on neurosurgery to picture book manuscripts, and longs for the day when you can find one of her books in the library with her name on the spine. She firmly believes that day is coming. In the meantime, she and her family live in Evanston and own a pet store in Lincolnwood. They are deeply grateful for crazy pet people who help pay their mortgage.
Tracey is mother of 3(9 yr, 5 yr and 2 yr), living in the suburbs of Chicago. Having lived here her entire life, one would think that the cities of Oaks, Parks, Forests, and Groves would make sense to her.... One would be mistaken. Thank God for Mapquest!!Knowing that family would be her first "career" the jobs before children were just that: jobs. The ability to quit working when her eldest son was 15 months old was the beginning of a crazy career as a SAHM. 2 kids, 8 years and 2 houses later, she is still in love with her job and family.
Her time is spent carting the kids to and from school, helping with homework, and getting ready for soccer seasons. (though it never seems to truly end...) Cooking and cleaning are not top priority, but hanging out with the family definitely is. She spends the majority of her personal "free" time blogging at JustAnotherMommyBlog.
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The management team:
PARTNER - SILICON VALLEY MOMS GROUP & CO-FOUNDER: Jill Asher is the co-founder of Silicon Valley Moms Group. The idea came to Jill over two years ago (March 2006) to start Silicon Valley Moms Blog, after she finished her one year "Presidency" of PAMP.
After inviting friend after friend to join this "crazy idea" that moms
would want to write about parenting experiences in their regional area,
Jill has watched Silicon Valley Moms Group blossom into over nine collaborative blogging communities.
By far, her biggest challenge and greatest joy is motherhood. Jill and her husband are the proud parents of two elementary school aged daughters. Jill admits that she is NOT A PERFECT PARENT and fears her daughter's teenage years. Her girls can be heard running around the house screaming, "Mommy is blogging again!" and she needs to bribe from time to time them with treats. Is she allowed to admit that? On the bright side, Jill really digs living in Silicon Valley and tries her best to blend in, praying that no one will hear her "New Jersey accent". Unless, of course, she is royally upset.
Jill handles PR, Marketing, Business Development and outreach for this collaborative community.
PARTNER (Co-Founder) - SILICON VALLEY MOMS GROUP &
CHIEF TECHNOLOGY MOM: Beth Blecherman (Beth B at svmoms.) Beth Blecherman is a techie turned blogger mom who is in charge of blogging technology and development for the Silicon Valley Moms Group
network. She also works on the outreach/development to obtain new
bloggers and organizing events for the network. Beth started her
career in application development, then system auditing and her last
role was Senior Manager, Computer Process Integrity, for Deloitte. Beth's personal blog is on tips, tricks, and discussions about parents use of technology for their families (Techmamas). When not blogging, she can be found on Twitter, Facebook and tooling around other new online social networking sites...
MANAGING MEMBER, SILICON VALLEY MOMS GROUP: Tekla S. Nee,
a cofounder of the Silicon Valley Moms Group, serves as editor-in-chief
and CFO for the network of blogs. She has been writing about parenting
for more than 25 years for magazines like Parenting, BabyTalk, Working Woman, Special Reports: Family, and Better Health and Living. She blogged for five years before there was such a word, writing a weekly column about about her life with three kids for the Palo Alto Daily News. She's published three books, The Mommy Rescue Guide First Year; The Mommy Zone: Tales from the Trenches of Parenthood; and The Everything Baby's First Year Book (also published in Russian and Chinese).
And that's just in her spare time, during the day, she masquerades as a
mild-mannered technology journalist working for a major metropolitan
magazine.
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