About DC Metro Moms Blog & Our Contributors
DC Metro Moms Blog is a collaborative group of moms writing about their lives in Washington, D.C., where moms live and work in the shadow of the Capitol, Beltway driving is the adventure sport of choice, the Mall is flanked by national monuments instead of anchor stores, and bipartisan playdates easily gain constituency approval.
- CONTACT US by email: info(at)svmoms(dot)com
- Copyright & Permissions
- Our URLs: http://www.dcmetromoms.com and http://svmomblog.typepad.com/dc_metro_moms/
- Our Legal Guru/Lawyer: Linsey Krolik
- Our OH-SO-FABULOUS Graphic Designer (banner and buttons): Kris Loew
DC Metro Moms Blog is a member of the Silicon Valley Moms Group. Other blogs in the group include New York City Moms Blog, Chicago Moms Blog, Los Angeles Moms Blog, 50-Something Moms Blog, Silicon Valley 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 meet the contributors of the DC Metro Moms Blog.
Aimee Olivo's love of politics and need to bust out of small-town Pennsylvania brought her to Washington, DC for college. After graduation she moved to a group house on Capitol Hill and met her husband when he "answered an ad" and moved into the same house! They married in 2003 and moved to Cheverly, MD in March of 2005. Further evidence that there's something in the water in Cheverly, Lucas was born exactly nine months later.
These days, Aimee works part-time at her alma mater and spends the rest of her days helping Lucas burn off his deep, deep reserves of energy. When he goes to sleep she is able to spend time with her first love—politics. A staunch believer in the famous Margaret Mead quote, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has", Aimee is politically active in Cheverly and Prince George's County. Aimee blogs about the craziness that is life with a toddler at Smiling Mama.
Amie moved
to DC in 1993 to save the world, leaving behind a challenging
eight-week career as a Christmas hire for a large department store in
St. Petersburg, Florida. Her political science degree from Tulane University
was never intended to be used in the Nation's capital, but nearly
fifteen years later and still working in politics, she's reluctantly
ready to admit that it might have come in handy. Though if she's
honest, she learned more about being a successful political consultant
by slaving away for years at large reproductive health non-profit, the
fact that helps to allay her guilt over now working to increase the
political voice of corporate America.
Nowadays, Amie is raising three boys (11, 5 and 3) with her husband in the same Northern Virginia suburb where he grew up. She maintains a sneaking suspicion that her in-laws are enjoying the fact that she is enduring the same little league politics that they survived oh so many years ago. When not at the ball field, she's trying not to kill the plants in her garden, hanging out on the corner jawing with her neighbors or off to the family beach house in Rehoboth Beach, DE. Amie started her personal blog in 2006 as a place to dump the random thoughts floating through her head. The unexpected side effect has been an introduction to a fascinating community and a much lighter, humorous perspective on life.
When Amy G. grows up she'd like to be a Princess. Or maybe a
meteorologist. Still a few months shy of 40, she figures there's
plenty of time to decide.
Amy lives in Northern Virginia with her husband, her three kids; Jake, Noa, and Eli and her three imaginary kids: ake-Jay, oa-Nay and Eli-ay Amy's hobbies include college basketball (watching, not playing), scrabble (playing, not watching) and making up punctuation (and children.)
When she remembers, Amy blogs at LeShallowGal where her legal education reveals itself in her judicious use of footnotes. She is also the co-creator of Secret Spineless Whine. She's thrilled to join the fabulous women at DC Metro Moms and have another place to shoot off her mouth and overuse the word "dude."
Another transplant to the DC metro area from the Keystone state,
Amy M. is a Reading Specialist who taught high school English in two of
the area’s highest-performing counties. As much as she loved a heated
discussion on The Taming of the Shrew or to teach the parts of
speech, Amy—the naïve young thing she was--actually thought life would
be easier as a stay-at-home mom. Three babies and four years later,
she will quickly say that being at home with her children is NOT
easier, and, though her children are what she is most proud of in her
life, there are days when she tries to sneak into her husband’s
briefcase and enjoy a quiet commute to anywhere. She’s just now
emerging from the fog of non-stop dirty diapers, sleeplessness, and
bottle-washing and feels pumped that she can finally (almost) carry on
a coherent conversation with adults and leave the house with two
matching earrings.
A lover of backyard happy hours, good beer, and any chance to laugh with her three sisters, Amy is a testament to the fact that sometimes blind dates actually do work out and you can meet your prince charming-- even if the date is set up by your mother-in-law and he’s broken his leg on a soccer field the week before. You just better hope with all your might that the stars are aligned and that maybe, just maybe, you did a few things right in your life. Currently, Amy’s navigating her way through cyber-world on her site, teachmama, which chronicles the sneaky ways she tries to fit some kind of learning into her children’s daily lives. And in the short amount of time that she’s not busy tutoring other students, planning activities for her local MOMS’ group, or dragging her three kids to the area’s incredible monuments, museums, or zoo, she’s probably skipping off to her pilates class, pounding the pavement in her ‘hood, or daydreaming about getting flames painted onto the side of her mini-van.
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Andrea is an instructional designer and work-at-home mom to three rambunctious boys. A
classically trained singer and former teacher, she spent eight years
teaching at U.S. schools in Saipan, Colombia, and Saudi Arabia. She
first came to Northern Virginia in 1999 and worked for a DC law firm,
then for an education company in McLean. Her husband's job took them to
Hampton Roads for five years, where Andrea worked from home and had
three babies.
She and her family moved to Loudoun County in early 2007 and they plan to stay here forever, although they could possibly be talked into a home on the Chesapeake Bay if they ever win the lottery. Though most of her days are filled with trucks, trains, music, bikes, and games, Andrea enjoys teaching her boys how to cook and often the family can be found in the kitchen working on their latest experiment. She accidentally started a cooking blog a few years ago and has been writing about her adventures in the kitchen at Andrea's Recipes ever since. She also writes Andrea's Reviews and writes for FoodieView and The Daily Tiffin. In addition to her family and cooking, her favorite things include early morning bike rides, singing torch songs while cooking, yoga, dark chocolate, caramel, photography, and making blankets for Project Linus.
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A Michigan native, Claire Jess moved to Northern Virginia
after college to work at a feminist non-profit and returned in 2000
after getting master’s degrees in English and women’s studies. Having
studied critical pedagogy, she tried to apply theory to practice while
teaching high school English in Northern Virginia. Five years and too
many pregnant students later, Claire was about to throw in the towel
when she happily found herself in the family way and left the classroom
in spring 2006 when her son, E, was born. In the evenings, she tutors
kids whose parents have too much money and does copyediting work (when
she takes the time to look for it).
Claire hopes to return to a social justice field at some point but for now is focused on being a happy, natural-minded/green and yet decidedly suburban mama, sometimes-conflicting identities she explores in her blog Crunchy-Chewy Mama. She also blogs about her evolving relationship to mothering (a boy!) at Mama’s Mouth. Her blog Inexact Science: Raising Healthy Families is her public way-TMI: either a soapbox proselytizing about alternative medicine and nutrition or an enlightening account of Claire’s holistic health journey, depending on which side of Whole Foods you stand on.
Despite evidence to the contrary, Diana Funk was not raised by wolves,
though you are forgiven for making that assumption. When she's not
eating her young, she's busy keeping them alive
raising them in Northern Virginia. By "them," she means "her," since
she only has one child at the moment (an exuberant 23-month- old
daughter), but she’s hoping to be knocked up in a
family way again soon. In fact, this whole parenting thing is still a
bit of an unexpected thrill for her, since Madeleine (aka Lulu) was a
test tube baby and Diana wasn't ever sure she would actually get
pregnant (infertility journey – thrills! excitement! hormones! –
chronicled here). Diana was born in Brooklyn, NY, but grew up in New Orleans, y’all, and northwestern New Jersey, you guys. She
headed for the Mid-Atlantic to attend University of Maryland at College
Park, where she earned both a BA degree (English) and an MRS degree
(she met her husband as an undergrad). She and
Joe have been married almost 12 years, but were married twice: ever the
romantics, they eloped on their lunch hour to secure dental insurance
for Joe. 16 months and a root canal later, they had a more formal affair.
A former human resources manager, Diana traded the pleasures of disciplining employees for disciplining her toddler full-time, and has come to realize that people tend to make the same discipline-worthy mistakes at age 2 that they make at age 25. When she’s not chasing her kid around, Diana tries to manage the pet sitting business she’s owned for six years, her blog about life with Lulu, and all manner of daily chaos that surrounds her.
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Devra currently resides in Northern Virginia and is an author of the under-the-radar-cult-hit book "Mommy Guilt: Learn To Worry Less, Focus on What Matters Most and Raise Happier Kids" and Spanish edition "Mama Culpable." Devra and her family moved to The DC 3 years ago from the South of Illinois. Prior to that, she lived in Kansas, Louisiana, California, Arizona, Connecticut, and New York. It would be easy to assume Devra is a Suburban Bedouin, however Devra roams the country due to her husband's job working for the Military Industrial Complex. (AKA the United States Air Force). Devra is the mother of Son One and Son Two. Son One is a 6th grade Tween and Son Two is a second grader who seriously wishes he were older than Son One.
When Devra's OB announced, "Congratulations, it's a Non-Immunity to Rubella!" Devra put her clinical social work career in the freezer. When she was able to get a booster shot, alongside her first son, she put her career on defrost and returned to helping families once again. Devra has worn many professional hats from School Social Worker to Director of Volunteer Services for a hospice. Devra is co-founder of Parentopia, LLC along with certified parent education and child development specialist Aviva Pflock. Devra and Aviva travel the country speaking at conferences and fundraisers as well as conducting workshops and seminars for audiences of all kinds. Aviva and Devra have a mission to absolve guilt...One mom(or dad!) at a time! Parenthood may not always be fun, but it should at least be enjoyable!
Devra's commentary appears in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Arizona Republic, Parents Magazine, Woman's World Magazine, BabyTalk, American Baby, Fit Pregnancy, Cookie Magazine, The Globe and Mail and many others. Devra has been a guest on NBC, Fox and CBS television stations. In all her spare time, Devra can often be found at Wegmans wandering the aisles looking for Sarah and blogging with Aviva over at Parentopia.
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Gayle is a native Washingtonian who grew up, and still lives, within DC limits, a fact she will proudly tell anyone who will listen. She took a detour through Providence, Manhattan, Boston and San Francisco in her 20s, but is happy to be back in the nation's capital. She has twin 3 year-old daughters who keep her busy and tired but always entertained. Passions include reality TV (though that one is thankfully waning), Bottle Caps candy, the NYT crossword on the rare days she can get to it, The Police, her dog, and reading. She blogs about modern fiction at Every Day I Write The Book. Gayle spent 6 long years practicing law but has since left for greener pastures. These days, she works at a strategic communications company where she specializes in social media outreach, which means she gets to talk to a lot of bloggers. She's not particularly interested in politics, so don't ask her who's going to get the nomination.
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Jean, a.k.a. Stimey moved to Maryland in the fall of 2003. Prepared
to hate DC life, she was pleasantly surprised to find her home and
community here. She is now firmly ensconced in the DC-area mom life.
She is the mom of Sam, born in 2001; Jack, born in 2003; and Quinn,
born in 2005. All three of her kids were born in different states: Sam
in California, Jack in Alaska, and Quinn in Maryland. Jean will be
forced to live in Maryland for the rest of her child-bearing years so
she doesn't have to have any more kids.
Jean spends most of her time playing with her kids and her friends, writing, working part-time from home, and starting a videography business. Jean's main blog is Stimeyland, where she writes about all of the above, including parenting an autistic child. In addition to Stimeyland, Jean writes about decluttering at The Junk Pyramid and reviews products at Things and Stuff Reviews.
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JessicaJessica
is a California native that came to DC in 1998 as a straight-laced
Senate staffer by day, Adams Morgan bar crawler by night. She
transitioned to
life as a public relations executive and newlywed Home Depot frequenter
at the turn of the century. Her current and favorite persona is that
of the minivan
driving, bass-booming housewife and mom to a five year old son and
three
year old daughter.
Jessica writes A Parent in Silver Spring,
a blog that makes the rich resources available for parents and kids in
the DC area more apparent, served with a side of humor. She is a freelance writer, featured in The Washington Post Weekend, as well as a freelance communications & social media consultant.
Jessica is surprised everyday by how much she rejoices in being a mother, how crazy being a mom is making her and how she can fluctuate between the two feelings in the span of a second. She loves snuggling with her kids, her hot IT husband, hanging out with any of her four siblings, 12 siblings-in-law and 18 nieces and nephews, American literature, Smithsonian institutions, early morning runs, late night schemes, overpriced jeans, Real Simple, California bands and Outer Banks vacations. Much to Jodifur's dismay and her neighbors' delight, she always has a box of wine on tap in her kitchen.
Jess M. settled in the DC area in the Fall of 2005 after several years of
moving all around the country while she and her husband were in the
Army. Although she was born and bred in Boston and never expected to
live in "the South", she is happy to say that she has put down
roots and intends to stay in Northern Virginia for the long haul. Or
until she hits the lottery, at which time she is moving to a waterfront
home in Monterey, CA.
Jess and her superhero husband are loving parents to Sunshine, born in August 2004, Deuteronomy, born in September 2006, and Esau, born in July 2008. Jess was a stay-at-home mom for 16 months after the birth of her first child, then went back to work in the consulting field in January of 2006. After two years of precariously balancing full-time work and kids, she transitioned to working from home on a part-time flex schedule. Only time will tell how that works out. You can also find Jess at A Bushel and a Peck, where she writes about the trials and tribulations of being a work-at-home mom, the joy and pain of bringing up two toddlers, and the ups and downs of life as she knows it.
Jill Berry is a
writer/blogger/twitterer/Facebooker/social networker by day and a
chauffeur by night. She works up to the second before her children get
off their respective buses. The quiet of her dining room -- save the
chirping of www.Tweetdeck.com
-- is shattered by the clatter of shoes, the clunk of backpacks, and
the wailing of children who are tired and cranky from the school
day. The calm of her writing day becomes the eye of the storm as she
drives from one activity to the next. She is a keen planner who has
figured out how to get three children to two different activities with
only the bare minimum of tantrums. Jill may not always be on time, but
by golly she gets her children to their myriad of activities:
volleyball, swimming, clarinet, t-ball, and religious education classes.
Jill is coming off a stress-free SAHM stint with her youngest, a kindergartener. The reality of future college tuition has drawn her back to the workforce. Prior to her SAHM-ness she was a senior production editor in charge of books, manuals, and journals for a health care publisher. She vividly remembers editing a book on developmental disabilities in children while pregnant with her first child. As a mom of preteens and teens, Jill is all to aware of the dangers lurking on the internet for preteens and teens, she is proud to say that she is a Mom Advocate for www.yoursphere.com?coupon=YSMD-BERR: an online site for preteens and teens that puts safety first. Jill is the Preteen Editor at www.typeamom.net. When not dealing with kids (boy, 6), preteens (girl, 10), and teens (girl, 13), she blogs about kids, preteens, and teens at www.musingsfromme.com.
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Jim (Gunfighter), your token dude, was born in The San Francisco Bay area, into a military family. After sending most of his formative years in Northern New Jersey, he joined the U.S. Marines, who sent him to all sorts of countries, some pleasant, some not, before depositing him in Washington, DC in 1986. He is the twice-married father of daughters Fastpitch (18), and Soccergirl (8), and husband to Mrs GF, whom he met was a direct result of the first Guilf War. They reside in Prince William County, Virginia.
Gunfighter, a thorough-going rugby fan, is employed as a tactical firearms instructor at a federal law enforcement agency, and when he isn't doing that, he can be found cooking, beading, coaching youth soccer, teaching Sunday School, and pontificating at his blog,The View From Here, on all manner of things... most of which he knows nothing about.
J.J. aka JavaMom is a native of Miami, FL, but moved to Northern VA in 2002 from Silicon Valley – with pit stops in Missouri and Georgia in between. In her first career, as a television reporter and anchor, she especially loved crime stories, even eliciting a murder confession on camera. A move to California accidentally led to a career in Marketing Communications for high tech companies – which may or may not be much different from chasing down criminals, depending on your perspective! She is also the editor of the third and fourth editions of the book, Find It Online by Alan Schlein.
No longer chasing criminals or Silicon Valley execs, J.J. now chases two small children, JavaGirl and JavaBoy during the day, and dashes off to meetings for the Junior League of Northern Virginia at night. She couldn’t accomplish any of it without the help of her saintly spouse, JavaDad. To keep her sanity J.J. blogs about life, family, technology and anything else that amuses her atCaffeine and a Prayer.
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Joanne has always been crazy about Washington, D.C., but finally got to move to the area in 1988. After spending a decade in the "glamorous" world of broadcast news, Joanne gave law school a spin, practicing law at firms and a government agency in D.C. It finally became apparent to Joanne that writing (not the legal kind!) was her real passion, so to ring in the new century she bagged her law practice and took up freelance writing full time..
Jodi
is one of the few native Washingtonians actually living in Washington.
Besides a short stint in Connecticut for college, she has lived in the
DC area her whole life. She remembers the old "Giant" grocery store,
and knows why DCers rush to the grocery store to buy bread, milk,
toilet paper, and bottled water when they sense that first flake of
snow.
Jodi grew up in Montgomery County, Md, and went to law school in Downtown D.C. Jodi now lives in Montgomery County and works part-time as an attorney in child abuse. She lives with her husband, Doug, her preschool son, Michael, as well as a dog, Foster, who has many, many issues. She started Jodifur because her husband kept telling her she reads so many blogs so might as well write one. She also puts her expensive legal education to good use as the celebrity legal corespondent on mamapop.com, a pop culture blog
. Julie, a rural New England native accustomed to
yielding to cows on the road, moved to suburban DC in the summer of
2006. She juggles many identities: lawyer, professor, freelance
writer, and mom to three little ones. Years and years and years ago,
she swore that she would never live in a place like DC--but here she is
(and, shhh, don't tell the relatives she left behind, but she loves
it). She may have traded in her fleece, all-wheel drive Subaru, at-home
cooking, and calloused feet (hey, who has time to think about feet when
they're busy fixing up an old farmhouse) for tank tops, a minivan (that
fashionably blends in with all the others in the carpool lane),
take-out and regular pedicures, but don't think for a second she's
forgotten her roots or small town, rural values.
When she's not writing or trying to stay
current with the latest trends in the law and technology, Julie spends
her time reading the Washington Post, travelling, whining about how
quickly time flies and all the things she wants to do in her lifetime,
and chasing after her kids. Julie is author of the ABA Best Seller, Staying at Home, Staying in the Law: A Guide to Remaining Active in the Legal Profession While Pursuing Your Dreams. She awaits publication of her second book, which is due out in Summer 2009. Julie blogs about life and flexible lawyer at Darling Hill, and can be found Tweeting in 140 character spurts @darlinghill.
Justice Fergie
was very proud of having just gotten her hair done in this picture.
It's something that she rarely gets a chance to do since becoming a
mother of 2 daughters (ages 4 and 2.5), and a son (who is 6 months
old). When she's not figuring out a clever way to clean up grains of
rice and Jell-o from her kitchen floor, she is working full-time as an
attorney for the federal government. Born and raised in Montreal,
Canada (brrrr!), Justice Fergie came to the U.S. to attend college
where she met her hunk of a software engineer husband. Four years
later, she dragged her hubby to the D.C. Area where she pursued her law
degree. Since then, Justice Fergie has had (and
left) a high-paying job at a fancy schmancy law firm to join the
decidedly more family-friendly (albeit lower-paying) public sector. In
her spare time (ha!), she enjoys shopping, entertaining, reading, web
surfing, spending time with her fellow Mocha Moms
of Silver Spring, and watching delightfully cheesy reality T.V. Justice
Fergie is also a wannabe gourmet chef and has a growing collection of
cookbooks. You can catch more of her on her personal blog, MamaLaw, where she and two of her closest friends write about their lives as parents. It's riveting stuff.
Kate grew up in Washington, DC, and clings to the idea that deep
down she is still a "city person." But after several moves further and
further into Northern Virginia, she is starting to admit that life in
the burbs has its perks. There is something to be said for unlimited
parking wherever you go and the lack of people asking you for money
when you walk out your front door. This financially driven trajectory
out of her hometown has included Arlington, McLean and now Reston. She
expects to be in Leesburg by the end of 2012.
Kate's family includes a son diagnosed with PDD-NOS (Autism spectrum) and boy/girl twins. All were born within 18 months. And no - none of it was planned. Her husband would like to get a dog to step up the level of chaos, but Kate would rather wait until everyone is potty trained and she's finished picking up human poop. Because of her oldest son's delays, she is putting her career on hold for a while to take a more active role in his early intervention. She will also be using this time to focus on her writing and figure out what she wants to be when she grows up...That is, if she does in fact survive the Summer.
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KC spends her days in the hospital, hoping she doesn’t contract some deadly scourge while tending to her patients. At night, she gets into the ring with her aspiring sumo-wrestler (big but agile) 3 year-old daughter and her exceptionally large infant son, tag-teaming with her brilliant public health servant husband, JP. Despite their clear weight advantage (and the fact that one of their opponents cannot move independently), the matches are always too close to call. They love living in Montgomery County, MD, just steps away from JP’s childhood home and thus free babysitting.
To fill every remaining nanosecond of time in her day and because writing was one of her first loves before the whole biology thing, KC keeps a personal blog warm at Where's My Cape? which features fake Medical Advice (no litigation, please) and numerous software version upgrades. She also is the founder and contributor to the group blog Mothers in Medicine.
Kimberly is a DC area native growing up in and around the beltway until the age of 18 when she moved to New York City to attend The American Musical and Dramatic Academy. After graduation, Kimberly was accepted to the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in DC but instead of further schooling she opted to run off to Vegas and elope. She's a little crazy like that.
Her husband's career as a corporate executive allowed/forced Kimberly and her growing family to live around the country from Oklahoma to Georgia to the SF Bay Area picking up two wonderful daughters and three so-so dogs along the way. Kimberly finally returned to her DC area roots when the family moved to Virginia in 2004. Shortly after, Kimberly found her passion for expression and forum for sarcasm by way of blogging. Outside of her online time, Kimberly enjoys raising her kids, being a Jazzercise instructor, reading and trying to grow a green thumb.
Kimberly currently resides in Fauquier County, Va with her husband, 2 daughters, 2 Great Danes and a mutt. You can also find her at her personal blog Petroville where the Perfect Post Awards are held monthly.
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Kristen moved to the DC area 10 years ago for the career that had filled her nightly dreams. One job, 380 Match.com emails, and a law degree later, Kristen found herself married to the guy who sat at the end of her row in law school. As is sometimes the case, the baby soon followed. Not exactly family-friendly, her employer suddenly forgot the formerly agreed upon part-time work schedule and Kristen was out of a job.
Kristen promptly started her own screen printing business because what says "I'll show YOU, FormerBossinaTotallyUnrelatedCareerField" better than purchasing a 1,600 pound press and putting it in your basement? Started out as a smart ass maternity t-shirt business, Baby Brewing has taken on a life of its own.
When she is not writing about Reality Parenting of her two boys on her personal blog at Mommy Needs a Cocktail , Kristen can often be found hiding out from her children in her basement lair, printing up Mommy Needs a Cocktail t-shirts. Is she drinking a cocktail?
Nobody really knows.
Lisa
is a native of Northern Virginia and lives in Prince William
County with her two young boys, husband, and an old mutt. She attended
UVA (go Hoos!) and despite vowing never return to this area after
graduation, she is here for good. She fondly remembers the days of
light traffic and when Fair Oaks Mall was built. (yes, she is that
old!)
In her life before kids, she was a personal trainer and group fitness instructor who ran marathons in her spare time. These days her spare time is filled with laundry and changing diapers, so she tries to squeeze in any kind of workout whenever possible. She can be found blogging about mommy fitness over at Workout Mommy. Lisa is still trying to learn the ropes of motherhood and hopes it all comes together before her kids go off to college
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Leticia (aka Tech Savvy Mama)
never had any inkling that she would end up in the DC Metro Area. She
now finds herself loving everything about living here except Beltway
traffic. Born and raised in Northern California's Silicon Valley, this
Bay Area native spent 6 years as a New Englander and then moved to the
DC Metro Area to be closer to her now-husband and teach for a local
school system. Leticia is now the mom of two children and a technology
magnet coordinator in a local school system.
Leticia started her own blog, Tech Savvy Mama, where she uses her background in early childhood education and classroom technology integration to guide parents in selecting quality technology products for their children. She is also the City Editor for Being Savvy Washington DC, where she writes about fun activities for kids ages 2-6 with an educational twist.
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Linda has recently returned to Northern Virginia after three years abroad in the Middle East and Northern Europe. As if moving from one temperature and cultural extreme to the other wasn't enough, she threw in having two kids during those three years. Her monkeys, as she refers to them, are not even 16 months apart. Traveling the world with children has given her insight into how other cultures raise their children, and she's realized the American way may not always be the best way. As a former PR professional/writer turned stay-at-home mom, she's now finding her way back into the local culture of the DC area from the mom perspective.
Since her husband has now switched jobs and is working on Capitol Hill, she is coming to terms with the fact that their family will be in this area for a good while....but secretly she longs to return to Sweden, which she insists is paradise on Earth.
In her spare time from wrestling her three- and two-year olds into the car and/or various shopping carts around the area, she blogs on her site and is working on a book with her best friend on having kids less than two years apart. She's convinced there is a market for this and while a book might not make her rich, perhaps it will make her famous, at least among those other moms who've experienced the joys and frustrations of two kiddos under two.
Mary, aka FishyGirl, has lived in Montgomery County since she was five years old, when her mother insisted her father get out of the Navy and keep the family in one spot and they settled in the county where they had grown up. She had a brief stint outside of Baltimore while she attended Towson University, but the DC area is home, so that is where she returned. She intended for her English degree to be used to teach middle or high school, but the teaching profession, like all others, is cyclical and there were no jobs to be had when she graduated. Since full-time substitute just wasn't really what she had in mind, but she had to pay her rent somehow, FishyGirl ended up working as a technical writer for one of the many "Beltway bandits" that strengthen the economy of DC for 11 years before she decided she was pulled in too many directions after her third child turned one.
>Yes, third child. FishyGirl is a stay-at-home mom to four busy kids under the age of nine. Yes, she has her hands full, and yes, she knows how that happens, and yes, she happens to be Catholic, but that has nothing to do with how many children she chose to have. She spends most of her time driving someone somewhere, washing and trying to avoid folding laundry, feeding people, cleaning up messes, supervising homework and bathtime, changing diapers, and vacuuming, with occasional breaks for hiking all the local parks and forests, reading everything she can get her hands on, designing the perfect rubber stamped card or scrapbook page, and paying attention to her computer-nerd husband of almost fifteen years, who really IS her best friend. Notice she mentioned nothing about sleeping, which is the only piece of her pre-child life she misses. She blogs about her life, her kids, her marriage, her family, breastfeeding, postpartum depression, and whatever else is on her chaotic mind at The Fish Pond, and is a senior reviewer for Props and Pans.
Michelle, aka Wife and Mommy, moved to the DC area when she was
two. Other than living a few hours away for four years of college and
spending a year in Asia, she's lived in the NoVA area for 29 years.
She and the love of her life, The
Husband, have been married for seven years. They met and married at
the same church they
still attend today. They have three young children: Bito was born in
2003,
Cupcake in 2005, and BabyMuffin in 2007. J-dog, the family lab, rounds
out their family and home, although the kids have some crazy notion
that they are getting a cat sometime soon. Life is never boring in
their cozy, comfortable house!
Before becoming a mom, Michelle was an educator, teaching middle school science. Now she works from home part time when she's not keeping house, shuttling the kids to their activities and participating in activities at her church. Being a stay home mom has been her most fulfilling career and she's glad to keep notes of it in her blog, Wife and Mommy.
Michelle is a fan of the Orioles, the Redskins and anyone who is playing the Yankees. She loves a thick juicy steak, a draft beer, a bowl of ice-cream and a good book, but not necessarily all at the same time. Her lifelong goals include getting back to her pre-pregnancy body and finding memory some day.
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Nicole Crowley is a Washington native. She moved away to produce and report TV news. But DC kept calling to her, so she moved back to be a national radio producer. The first week she was back at work in DC, her girlfriends convinced her to go down to Dewey Beach with them for Labor Day Weekend. She reluctantly went, and met her husband. Turned out he was a DC native too and they remembered each other from high school.
Since they got ‘hitched’, Nicole has worked at Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill and been a freelance writer for the past several years. The freelancing flexibility has been nice while she’s been busy with her greatest accomplishment to date: her preschool-age son. She considers being a mom a privilege and a source of joy… although there have been some moments amidst throwing up or potty training when she has said, “How does everybody else do this so well?” With that said, Nicole likes to concentrate on the good stuff, that’s the rule of her blog, Bananablueberry.
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Robin is a transplanted New Englander with a detour to Hampton Roads for college and then some. She has been in Northern Viriginia for 8 years now. Despite the cost of living and traffic, she and her family have decided to make NoVa home and are enjoying all it has to offer.
She lives with her Husband and Son (a 9 year old with Aspergers) and George (a Leopard Gecko). They enjoy the family activities DC has to offer. Additionally they are involved at their Tae Kwon Studio with Husband and Son obtaining Black Belts almost 2 years ago. When not shuttling the Son there for his classes, Robin enjoys taking some kickboxing classes. Reading and scapbooking are other hobbies enjoyed in her spare time.
A special education teacher for the past 11 years, she is taking a year off to explore part-time options. Currently she is working for an organization that provides in-home behavior consultation for families with children on the Autism Spectrum. Robin also writes about her family life with a child on the Autism Spectrum at mylifeasitis.
Sandie is a recent New York transplant to the DC 'burbs. She misses three of the five boroughs terribly (two not so much), and the thin-crust slabs of pizza and fresh bagels with lox sold on every street corner in New York City but nowhere else. But she loves her house (a yard! a white picket fence! for way under $2 million!) and the terrific public school system, and relishes still being a Metro-ride away from some of the best museums in the world.
After more than eight years as a full-time journalist, Sandie's now at home, where she juggles multiple freelance deadlines, a six-year-old son, and three-year-old daughter (and hardly ever drops any of them). She also blogs about motherhood, marriage, and movies at Urban Mama. Whenever she's not chasing after or chauffering her preschooler and kindergartener around Montgomery County, Sandie writes movie and DVD reviews for Common Sense Media and entertainment feature articles for Daily Variety.
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Sarah lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and three year old boy/girl twins. She moved to the D.C. area after spending most of her life in Florida (Tampa, Orlando, and Ft. Lauderdale).
She was a stay at home mom until she realized that people would actually pay her to write. You can find her writing at Sarah and the Good Squad, BlogHer, Draft Day Suit and about 40 other blogs. In her spare time Sarah is a raging fan of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Bravo reality television and good food. Her hobbies include singing, drinking beer, potty training, blogging, writing bios about her self in third person and stealing jokes like the one about writing about her self in third person from Jason at Pet Cobra.
Stacy Kravitz is an almost-native Washingtonian having lived in the
DC-area since she was ten-years old. She grew up in rural
horse-country Virginia, attended college in DC and settled as a
singleton in the Maryland suburbs. Before meeting her darling
sports-enthused husband she drifted along a career-less job path of
nannying, librarian-work and the uber-unfulfilling executive
assistantship. Stacy landed her dream job in December 2007 when her
son was born. She now spends her days changing diapers, blowing
raspberries on a cute bloated-poochy baby
toddler belly and chasing after her little home-wrecker of a kid as he
empties shelves and drawers at lightening speed. When the kid naps,
she writes. Ergo, that
explains the ebbs and flows of her productivity.
In her "spare" time she often takes on home-owner projects like painting the kitchen and power-washing the deck. It has been said that she makes a great husband because she is the home repair person. When the gardening dirt and car grease have been scrubbed off her hands she can cook a mean and hearty meal usually opting for something grilled and something veggie, and peanut butter cream pie, of course.
Her friends not-so-jokingly say that she lives in a zoo but four cats, a dog, a husband and a baby are not enough to knock her down. Stacy has been blogging about it since 2005 as The Fabulous Miss. S.
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Stephanie, aka Lawyer Mama,
ditched the full time lawyer gig in the Summer of 2008 to concentrate
on turning Virginia into a Blue state. Along the way, she started two
businesses: a legal services and writing group and a portrait
photography business, LightHearted Photography. Stephanie is the New Media and Outreach Director for Blue Star Families,
a non-profit group acting as a bridge between military family members,
politicians and the civilian world. She is also the editor of Being Savvy Virginia Beach.
Steph and her computer geek husband T. moved from DC to Chesapeake, Virginia in the Summer of 2005 in an attempt to get away from D.C. traffic and closer to the beach. Steph and T have two little boys born only 15 months apart in 2004 and 2006. Hollis and Holden are known collectively as H&H. And yes, they really are just as much trouble as twins. No matter how hectic life gets, Steph always wears cute shoes. And then she blogs about them.
When she's not running around trying to remember her own name, Steph spends her time swimming, taking photographs, and reading. Oh, wait...that was before Steph had kids. Now she and her husband of 14 years just try to catch a few hours of sleep and maybe sneak in a date or two. She writes about her life, love, frustrations and joys at Lawyer Mama and her photography at LightHearted Photography: The Blog. Stephanie can also be found ranting about politics at MOMocrats, a collaborative site written by progressive mothers who are so damn smart, they intimidate Stephanie at times.
Sue is a native of the DC area. She went to college in
Ohio, but came back after graduating, followed by the boy who would
become her husband. She lives inside the Beltway, just down the road
from the University of Maryland, and can’t picture ever living outside
the bounds of 495.
In her former life, she was Metro-riding law librarian. Currently, she is a minivan driving, stay-at-home mom to four kids, two boys and two girls, who keep her on the road, on her toes and, more often than she would like, in the laundry room. In her free time, Sue enjoys watching the Discovery Health Channel, drinking margaritas and thinking up ways to stay in shape without actually exercising. She blogs about life and parenthood at My Party of 6 and is a contributor on MomSpark.
Susan McCorkindale was born and raised in New Jersey. She loves
Bruce Springsteen, the Jersey Shore, and the New York Giants. A
graduate of Marymount Manhattan College, Susan spent five long, hard
minutes pursuing an acting career before making a detour into
marketing. She has held top spots at Family Circle and Popular Science
magazines, and since 2005 has written advertising copy on a freelance
basis from the comfort of her 500-acre beef cattle farm in Northern
Virginia. Susan is also the author of Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl,
her laugh out loud true tale of her move from the suburbs to the
sticks, and how she learned the hard way that Manolos and manure just
don't mix.
The mother of two sons and wife of one very patient and understanding apprentice farmer, Susan spends her free time blogging about life on the funny farm, teaching P.E. and running the PTO at her son's elementary school, and reading everything Laurie Notaro, Jen Lancaster, Dave Barry, and Nora Ephron have ever written.
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Suzie still calls herself a recent transplant to the DC Area, although she arrived in March of 2006. A native Texan, she, her hubby, their three boys, and two cats left the great State of Texas and headed to Virginia for an adventure (actually her hubby's new job). In October of 2008 they were joined by a little girl (and finally a bit of hormonal balance in the family!)
While she has a Master's in Public Affairs from the University of Texas - LBJ School of Public Affairs (Hook'Em Horns!), Suzie considers herself retired and she now stays home and wrangles the aforementioned kids. In her spare time she is active with the PTA, the local MOMS Club, teaches scrapbooking classes, watches as much college football as humanly possible, and attempts to avoid anything and everything related to cooking. Her blog, Confessions of a Not So Well Behaved Woman chronicles her adventures in parenting, life in the DC area, and life with a house full of kids.
house full of kids.
When Thien-Kim isn’t chasing her active preschooler, she has
a blast working as a Passion Parties consultant, giving women tips and tools to take
charge of their pleasure. She met her husband during college in good ole Louisiana,
where she was born and raised.
She came to DC by way of Syracuse, NY, where she honed her burgeoning skills as a costume designer and stitcher. Now a WAHM, she squeezes in creative moments from sewing and crafts to playing Iron Chef with her pantry. She also encourages art and creativity with her daughter, while attempting to blog about it at PassionandArt.
Victoria a native Rhode Islander, came to the DC Metro area in 1996 as a college transfer. After a childhood of family vacations in the Capitol, dreams of becoming First Lady, and numerous ribbings of being a female Alex P. Keaton it seemed only natural to finally move there. After transferring to the University of Maryland, College Park, this true Yankee found her home and graduated with a degree in History. Many government, consulting and PR jobs, including a move to So Cal later, she is glad to be back in her element and the land of all things political and conspiracy filled. Hidden bunkers, lurking figures, dark shadows? SheâÂÂs on it! Victoria is now happily free of corporate America and a WAHM and freelance writer as well as the creator of the blog, The Mummy Chronicles, Mummy's Product Reviews and a co-founder of Flaming Tulle, a wedding blog. Her experience and writing skills can be seen on such sites as Parent Bloggers Network, She Speaks and The Hot Mom's Club, just to name a few.
When Vicky isn't writing she can be found running after her toddler T.D. (that stands for Tiny Dictator), baking herself into a Bree Van de Kamp frenzy, flipping houses with her incredibly sane former Marine husband H, or simply resisting the urge to smoke. That alone can take up a whole day. A self-proclaimed product junkie, a sometimes reformed shopaholic, and lover of British Chick-lit and Victorian feminist writing, Vicky hopes to one day put all this great knowledge to use and write her own novel. She'ÂÂs also a rabid Terps fan and lover of all things French country. She currently resides in the Northern Virginia suburbs and dreams of moving further into her favourite city in the world, Washington, DC.
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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 - 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.
xxx
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