NYC Moms

Watch Now: MomBloggers On The Today Show

If you missed mombloggers on the Today Show live, watch here, and find out just how influential bloggers and YOU readers are!

A Time for Children, A Time for Shopping

Now that all I have is two overgrown babies (they're 8), I love baby stuff.  I love the little onesies.  I love the hats.  I love these teeny tiny cowboy booties. And I really love buying stuff like that at a store I can feel good about supporting.  Recently opened on the Upper West Side, A Time for Children is just that type of place. 

Walk in, and someone greets you with a genuine "Hello, may I help you?"  It doesn't sound canned, like the cashiers at Old Navy asking the next "guest" to step down to the register.  (Hey, if I'm a guest, how come I'm paying?)  Here, the people working there really want to be there.  Why?  Because they're not just working, they're being trained in how to deal with customers, how to stock items, how to market.  And because they know that 100% of the net profits from the store go to The Children's Aid Society, a charity which has been helping New York’s children and families in need since 1853.  Let me say that again: 100% of the profits go to charity.

And lest you think that a store like that must carry hideous crocheted tea-cozies, acrylic knit afhgans, and macramé  belts, let me assure you that this store has GREAT merchandise.  Stuff like socks from Little MissMatched (a personal favorite of mine), baby clothes from Hanna Anderson, loads of Paul Frank items, and a well-edited selection of children's picture books. 

Katie Couric and the Mom Bloggers Video

As you have probably heard (cause gosh, we can't stop talking about it!!!), a few "Parent Bloggers" from  Silicon Valley Moms Blog, New York City Moms Blog, Chicago Moms Blog and DC Metro Moms Blog had a rare (and wonderful) opportunity to spend a Friday afternoon with Katie Couric.  Here is a video of our visit with Katie Couric from CBS, from her You Tube channel: 

... and just in case you missed Katie's writeup on CBS.com, here is what she said about our meetup: Meet The Parents (Who Blog)

 

Rita, I'm Aging!

Rita, I’m Aging!

That was the billboard I saw in the airport over spring break.  "What the...?"  but before I could read the details, I saw my son running in the wrong direction.  With thoughts of lurking pedophiles and abductors, I tore off after him. 

I think I’ve been preoccupied with aging and death from the time I understood the concept. When I was 12  I wrote in my diary, “Dear Diary, I had a horrible realization today.  Soon I will be 14, my sister will be 18 and my brother will be 21.  We are getting so old!!!”  My step-father still makes fun of me for  reading 29 Forever  by Oleda Baker when I was 14.   By the end of my twenties, I had read all of Elizabeth Kubler Ross as well as  The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Don’t you tell me I wasn’t a great date!

You would think with this neurotic preoccupation with life’s brevity, that I would have married young and had children young and, seized the day!  Instead, I had even more paralyzing fears of commitment, so I am now an older mother with an even older husband. Whenever I comment on this to my friends they say, “You are not an older mom!  You’re normal.”   However, my mother wasn’t going through menopause when I was a teenager, and I fear that may be my situation.  In fact, that may be the next run in non-fiction literature.  The dual hormonal wars:  teen girls and their mothers “of a certain age”.  Tip #1:  Keep all sharp items out of the house.

Mom Bloggers Meetup with Katie Couric - RECAP!

Want to hear more about our meetup with the fabulous-we-want-to-be-her-new-BFF, Katie Couric? Then click over to the post on the CBS Couric & Co. blog titled "Meet the Parents (Who Blog). Or take a look at the You Tube video of the event on Katie Couric's channel. Click on the "continue reading" link at the bottom of this post to see the You Tube video loaded on our site. And for more fun, here are the posts from our contributors:

• Meet The Parents (Who Blog):  Katie Couric from CBS News
• If You Knew Katie, Like I know Katie:  Kelcey from New York City Moms Blog    
  
• K-K-K-K-Katie: Holli from Baby Faith
• Katie Couric Knows Yiddish:  Nancy from New York City Moms Blog 
  
• Girl Crush: Kelcey from The Mama Bird Diaries
• You Had Me At Katie Couric: Beth from Role Mommy Confessions
• Meeting Katie Couric: Stacy from Laptop Television
• My Afternoon With Katie Couric - No. Really!:  Danielle from FoodMomiac
• Our Own Little "Digital-Era Sweatshop: Liz from Mom-101
• Meeting Katie Couric: Kimberly from Petroville
• Katie Couric:  "Mommy Bloggers" Heart You: Joanne from PunditMom
• Kudos To Katie:  Amanda May from New York City Moms Blog
• Katie Couric Rocks It With The Mommy Bloggers: Amy from The Ladybug And Her Blogging Mama
• Once More, Amy Is Famous: Amy from Mums The Word
• Original post on New York City Moms Blog about meeting Katie Couric.

Katie Couric Meetup With Mommybloggers

LATE BREAKING NEWS.... The Silicon Valley, DC Metro Chicago and New York City Mom Bloggers (and their special guests Mom 101 and Lisa Stone) met with  Katie Couric!!

We will update you as events unfold........

The Good Girl Myth

Recently my husband and I and our two daughters (ages four and one) visited friends who have a son, and the mother said to me, “We really try not to use Good Boy with him.  We do want him to understand manners,” she tried to explain.

“--and kindness,” I agreed. We both knew the fixation with being a Good Girl or Good Boy wasn't helpful, but part of me thought, please. Is avoiding two words going to create a magic new reality all by itself?

And then I had a suspicion—you may have felt it, too—that this friend was doing more than Just Sharing Her Opinion. Was she correcting me? In an indirect way, as in, I've heard you doing this and maybe I can gently help you out here?

Naw, couldn't be.  We never say Good Girl to our kids.

Not a week later, I started hearing it. Over and over; time and again. Coming from . . . my oldest daughter's lips. Good geh-rel, she cooed to her sister in her distinctive little accent. You said, Thank You! You used your fork! You picked up your toys! Good girl! Good girl!

Oh, dear, I thought.  Oh dear oh dear oh dear.  What. Have. We. Done.

Kid Hater

When my kids were two or so, we took a class at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan.  There was one little girl in the class, a beautiful blond, about the same age as my twins. She had a lovely smile, a cute little laugh, and I couldn’t stand her.

Something about her rubbed me the wrong way.  Even at two, it seemed to me (and I know this sounds insane) she was full of herself, like she was some miniature adult who knew how cute she was, and was flaunting it.  I’m not proud of this.  And to this day, I can’t really explain why. But there you have it.

See, we’re supposed to like all kids.  Think they’re special, or cute, or funny.  Like babies.  Who hasn’t heard the dictum:  all babies are cute? Puh-lease.  All babies are not cute.  Some babies look like a cherry tomato after it’s been in the fridge too long: wrinkled, red, and ready to burst with something that probably won’t look or smell too good.

Kids are the same way.  I’m here to tell the truth:  there are kids – little kids – that I don’t like.  They’re bratty, or pushy, or too whiny.  They’re bossy, they don’t share.  They just rub me the wrong way.  Do I think this makes me an exemplary parent?  Of course not.  Can I help it?  Not a chance.

Blogging to Nourish Mothers

I have a standard I try to live by when I'm talking to friends about my husband.  I try not to say anything I wouldn't say if he were standing right next to me.  It's just a matter of honor and respect.  We trust each other with the most intimate parts of our lives and our hearts, and that trust can only exist if we're not tearing each other down to outside parties.  Does he do things that drive me crazy?  Yep.  Do we have really tough seasons in our relationship?  You bet.  Do I let other people know my life and my marriage aren't perfect?  All the time.  But there is a way to communicate our struggles without vilifying and tearing apart the ones we love.

So why is it so hard to strike this balance when we're blogging about our children?  Why are so many of our stories about their flaws instead of our journeys as mothers?

Sex in America

It's been a bad week for sex in America.  First, New York governor Elliot Spitzer, well known moral-highgrounder is found to be consorting with prostitutes, and then today came the news that one in four teenaged girls has a sexually transmitted disease.

Sex scandals are nothing new.  Powerful men in politics from Alexander Hamilton to Bill Clinton, to Jim McGreevy have all gotten embroiled in sex scandals while in office. And some of these scandals (Bill Clintons comes to mind)became national  -- even international -- obsessions.  But if the men involved weren't famous, wouldn't it all just have been sex?  Seems to me it's the celebrity that makes it scandalous, not the sex act itself.

Let's face it, our culture glorifies sex as much as it vilifies it.  We want our politicians to be tv-ready (witness the fawning over Obama's good looks), but then are shocked, positively shocked I say, when they turn out to be sexual beings.  Music videos (mostly watched by teen-agers)feature sex acts only marginally presented as dance moves.  Horror movies like Saw and Hostel entwine horror and violent sexual images so completely that they've generated a new film genre: gore-nography.  The Victoria's Secret "Fashion Show," has become a soft-core prime time ratings bonanza; shows like The Bachelor pimp women out to generate ad-revenue, and on and on and on.

But still, a politician who has extra-martial sex?  With a hooker?  How could he? Or a teenaged tv star, getting pregnant?   I'm shocked, positively shocked, I say. But sadly, not at all shocked to find out that nearly half of the African American girls in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey had at least one sexual disease. Because a world as sexualized and sexually confusing as ours is bound to have consequences for those too young  -- or too arrogant -- to navigate it.

Pundits are very quick to denounce Spitzer's hypocrisy: he was a moralist who prosecuted prostitution rings, after all.  And I agree,  I think he's a hypocrite and a fool and he should step down.  He broke the law, and governors can't do that. But maybe it's not him that's wrong, but the law that's wrong.

So what I'm about to say, I say  as a mother of a little girl, and with the full knowledge that many (if not most) of the regular readers of this blog will disagree, but I think public schools should be able to hand out condoms along with strong recommendations  for abstinence, and that prostitution should be legalized.