Over the "mommy blog" world? me too.

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Maybe it is just me, but i've never been into the "mommy" blogs. I do not enjoy reading about people doing the same things i am doing everyday with my own kid. If i want to get advice, i seek PROfessional advice or advice from people i know and trust, not some random blog writer. If i read a blog it is because it goes outside of my life... it is full of adventure, beautiful things being created, amazing photography, and people writing about full spectrums of life.

And there are so many "mommy bloggers" out there these days. And although i do enjoy a cute kid photo, i am not really a fan of reading about other people's kids in mass DAILY doses.

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If i know you, then i might care about little Johnny going poop finally in the toilet. If i have never met you, who gives a crap {no pun intended} if your kid finally went poop in the toilet? Do you really need to write up an entire blog entry that equates to 2 pages about how little Johnny finally pooped? No. You really do not need to write about it. Being a mom doesn't make you an expert on anything other than your own child. Unless there is a "Dr." in front of your name... when you write about your trial and errors in raising your kid, you only have the advice that worked on YOUR kid. All children are created differently, so your telling your story is no different than Mr and Mrs Jones telling their story... heck, it might even be the very exact same story! Every kid has issues with pooping, it is why they write books about helping parents with helping their kids poop. So yeah, your blog story might be cute for your mom to read about their grandchild, but save it for an e-mail to them personally. Trust me, when little Johnny grows up, he will appreciate that you didn't tell your mass blog following about him finally going poop in a toilet. Your kid isn't special, like the book says, "everyone poops."

And the photos... Yes, i like to think of myself as an amateur photographer in training. I have much to learn and miles to go before i would coin the phrase "i am a photographer" to any kind of a business card or website listing. But every mom/dad/sister/brother/grandparent/uncle/etc thinks they have the most beautiful baby/toddler/child/grandchild in the world. It's how it works, we adore our own family members. But unless your kid is truly a beauty and unless you've managed to take the most adorable of adorable photos of your kid - really, Do you seriously need an entire blog full of photos of your kid standing there with a dumb look on their face? Do you think the world needs to view every aspect of your child living their life on your blog about them? Will it help them be better kids if you can convince yourself that people love your child because they read your mommy blog? Nope. It might make you a few creepy strangers friends who love kids, in a bad way! You aren't helping your child become the next big thing in the world of blogs by plastering their face in every entry... in fact you are probably harming them by giving them an EGO the size of a Buick before they can even enter school to understand right from wrong and fame and normal.

Can you imagine... The kid goes to school thinking they are hot shit because mommy has a blog and tells the kid, "you're famous... look at all those people who follow mommy's blog and love to read about you!" so the kid goes off to school actually thinking they are famous. Reality sets in that no one in their classroom reads mommy's blog, not even the teacher... they realize, *gasp* they aren't actually famous! nope, they are just an average kid, going to an average school, along with other average children.

I hope the trend of mommy blogging goes away soon. I love me a good blog to read, but i'm tired of running into mommy blogs that aren't about anything other then the blog owners kid. Having a kid doesn't make you any more special then any other mom. Women on crack have babies all of the time. Women in China squat out babies in the middle of fields. Women have been having babies and raising them since Human's came to be... so please stop fooling yourself into thinking that you have the corner on being the perfect mom just because you have a blog and can put words together to form a story. Trust me, spending time with your baby/toddler/kid instead of coming up with stories for strangers... that will mean more to them when they grow up than realizing they need therapy for their mom issues and ego issues; all because their Mom wanted attention for herself and used them from birth to adolescence to write stories about them.

xoxo

MB

you have a blog? me too! oh, but you have no idea who i am, do you?

There are so many amazing blogs out there. It is always hard for me to focus on a favorite blog, they each offer a wide variety of facets. I have party decorating blogs, fashion blogs, cooking/recipe blogs, interior design blogs, family blogs, friends blogs, and too many to sum up! I have been known to blog hop around. You might wonder what this means.... you start on a blog and wonder around, while on there they either have a sponsor or an entry about another blog, so you end up on another blog and then it happens again and again and again! Before you know it you are off task, off topic and 20 blogs down the line. It's truly a maze of blogs in the blogosphere.

But oddly enough, it is very common for me to come upon a blog that is linked in one way or another to a blog i am already familiar with and love. It is a close knit community of bloggers out there. I often feel like quite the outsider over here in my own little blog. I talk with many bloggers on twitter, but i do not broadcast my blog to the world. I kind of like being in my own little corner of the blog world... just me and my thoughts. No worries {or not a lot anyway} of people attacking what i say because they do not agree with me.

That being said, i'd love to one day be a part of the blog world. Go to a conference and meet some of the amazing people that i love in the blog world.

*** beauty found online ***

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{ah! jumping photos, we love doing jumping photos in our house!}

happy blog viewing!

having an eco friendly kid, and let them have their toys too?

Pokemon Toys on the kids dresser

The other day i was wandering the house trying to pick up the things that the kid left out, mostly hair accessories and jewelry. And the past few weeks i have been trying to make my closet a CLOSET and not a storage for boxes left over from the move. You are probably wondering what these two things have in common... my kid. All of the boxes are full of her things. Things she has collected and saved during her 11 years on this planet {there were 10 boxes when i started, i am down to 7 and still going through them all}

My kid is a collector of everything. And rightfully so, i should have put a stop to it years ago, but i did not. She started collecting Pokemon when she was 2. First it was cards, then the little plastic figures, then the stuffed animals, and then there are a few posters and coins and strange nic-nacks that go with her collection. She collects keychains as a trinket from all of our vacations. She collects pins that say funny things. She collects rocks {no joke. any rock in her life that she found to be "pretty" she kept it}. She collects coins from around the world. She also collects rare American coins. She collects/saves every card anyone gives her... heck it doesn't even have to be a card, write a note on a piece of paper and she will keep it. She has a hoarder side for sure! And it isn't so much that she keeps things. I'm ok with keeping things that you treasure and that will stand the test of time. She takes it a step further... once she starts, she doesn't want to stop. It is now part of a "collection" which is truly a collection of junk... for the most part.

A few years ago a friend of mine Karyn wrote a blog entry that i couldn't get out of my head these past few days. She wrote about how not having kids made her more eco conscious. And i remember reading that back in Feb 2009 and thinking, "my kid can't consume that much, she's just a tiny kid." But now that i am sitting her trying to figure out the Trash pile, the Goodwill pile, and the "oh my God are you kidding me, why the hell are you seriously keeping this crap" pile... i think Kayrn was spot on in her thinking!

Now, i would not trade my kid for anything in the world. I love her to pieces. But kids are a major contributor of the current eco system we find ourselves in. Take ANY kid under the age of 10 to a store and the first thing they say, "can we go to the toy isle?" And sure enough, that kid will complain their way into a new junk, er, i mean toy. It's bombarded into their brain on a daily basis.... BUY BUY BUY. The breakfast cereal has a junk toy inside of it, so they want the cereal that has a toy in it. The cartoons they watch before school have commercials telling them about how cool the newest toys are. Then all day at school they have Billy and Janie telling them all about their toys and how cool they are, and if you kid doesn't have what the other kids have... they now want what the other kids have!

I'm not sure what, if anything, we as parents can do to break the wants and desires of the children. I do know that by the time Claire was 7 i had her convinced of being more ECO friendly when it came to toys. It also helped that all of her Barbie toys were tainted with LEAD {thank you China!} and she had to throw them all away. She isn't exactly the best eco kid on the planet, but she hasn't asked for the toy isle since age 7.

Yesterday i turned my kid onto thrift stores. At first i took her to Goodwill a few weeks ago and her reaction was "ICK! can we leave? it SMELLS really bad in here!!!" but yesterday i took her to a thrift store and she was like a kid in a candy store looking at all of the old, previously used, still perfectly good, already manufactured, made to last things. She only bought 1 thing with her own money, a painting. But it is a start in the right direction.

My goal is to put her on a path to keep things OUT of the landfills by donating her gently used toys + not buying so many toys to begin with. We've always been big on recycling and reusing anything that we can. We donate and only trash things that are truly trash. But i think when it comes to a life with kids... it really is hard to live a truly eco conscious life style.

AH! Aging signs...

We all age... you can't stop it.  From the moment you go from the stage of "egg and sperm" you are growing older.  I sit back in awe of my daughter every day.  She is growing up to be such a beautiful little lady.  As i watch her growing up... i see myself growing older.  It was not until last year that i looked in the mirror and thought "ah crap.... i see wrinkles!"  And with all of the stress of the last year, the signs of aging are growing more and more everyday.  Why 30's why!?

funny blog entry that has a beauty tip!

Go on, click and read the link above.  And then do the little age in the mirror test.  Hold a mirror above your head, look up - that is what you use to look like 5 years ago!  Hold a mirror below your head - that is what you will look like in 5 years! I need an intervention now... i don't want to look like an old lady in 5 years!

I know we can't go backwards, but it would be amazing to be a kid again, even for just a day.  To run and play and not worry about "signs of aging" but being excited about getting older with each and every day.  When i was younger i loved to play sports... as an adult, well to be blunt - large breasts keep me from running around and playing like a child.  Sure i could pay $20,000 and have a reduction... but at the risk of infections and changing the way that God created me, i choose to just stay the way that i am today.  But i often wonder how different i would be in life if i was still able to run and play sports like i use to love to do in life.

Today i am searching for an organic lotion, treatment, something to just give my face that youthful glow again. I'm feeling old today.

The age of beauty

image taken by Rachel Devine

Remember that age where you didn't see beauty?  

Remember when your best friend had bright orange hair, millions of freckles, and you wanted to look just like her, so you drew little dots on your face to look just like her...

Remember when you wore whatever shoes you wanted, heck forget about the shoes just ran out the door to go play!  

Remember when you did your own hair and dressed yourself at age 4 and all of your little friends thought you looked "beautiful"...

Remember when you would just say the word fart and you would giggle for 10 minutes... someone might "tinkle" in their undies... all from laughing so hard about a silly word!

Remember looking past who your new friend at the park had for a parent/family, and just went running around having a great time...

Remember not caring or even understanding what religious affiliation your friend had, you just had a blast playing with them and only noticed they were different than you at Christmas, but honestly it did not even make a difference because she was your friend no matter what her faith was....

Remember the joy of just having these kinds of friends who loved you just for the fact that you were the same height, age, and playing in the same play area that they were...

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I've been struggling with the issue that, people on a whole, bug me! lol  Once you become an adult the innocent life of having a friend flies out the window.  People take notice of your appearance, the church you attend, the car you drive, the purse you carry, the shoes you wear, the people you know, and all aspects of your life.  I often long for the days where meeting new people was as easy as going to a park, running around from the swings to the slide and someone just joining in with you and just for that day... they were your bested friend ever.  

Imagine going up to a stranger as an adult... your in the store shopping, you see they are buying Organic too, you strike up a conversation with them over it and then follow them around and do your shopping together.  Uh, if someone did that i would call security on them! lol  It isn't as easy to meet new people once you are out of school.  Your guard goes up and strangers are just that... strangers.  They are no longer "potential friends".  It takes an effort to get to know someone and call them, friend.

I don't have many friends because i consider myself very private and i like to keep to myself and keep my personal family a bit private.  But the friends that i have made here in this town are the ones i have built the last 15 years of my life with here.  I know that i will not build friendships right away once we move, but i am starting to feel that feeling of... fear?.... wondering?... emotional pulling? (words are escaping me for how i feel exactly) how will i deal with day to day things when i do not know anyone where we are moving that i can just call up.  I have my brother and his new wife, but she only speaks a little English.  And my brother and i are close, but not BFF's.  It will be a new experience, knowing no one that i can just turn to to ask a question about the local life.

My new best friend... the Tom Tom GPS system!!  I wonder if it has a sexy male voice or am i stuck only with the "sexy" female voice on that thing ;-)

just me, just things

Do you have a box?  Is it filled full of things you had as a baby, perhaps just as a child, or even perhaps it is from collage?  When i was 17 i moved away.  My parents sold their house, whatever i did not take with me when i moved out, my mom threw it away.  I only have a couple of things that fit into a box that is 8 inches tall and about 5 inches square around.  It holds several things from when i was a baby.  My foot was broken when i was 3 days old and i wore a cast to fix a problem in my foot for 6 weeks.  I remember taking this cast in for show-and-tell when i was in Kindergarden!  It is a piece of my very start into life.  This box also holds my duckie stuffed toy, and my baby outfit that has duckies on it, and this cute little guy (seen above).  

It doesn't mean anything to anyone else.  But this tiny box, it is all that i have left from being a child.  I try not to dwell on the fact that i have nothing left.  I try not to harbor angry feelings towards my mom for throwing away all of my childhood things.  But there is something to be said where i am still excited to have just this one box left.  It holds few memories, but the ones that it does hold... they are the most important to me and i am excited to have what i still do have.

**

ALERT!  I'm giving everyone this blog to read... and it is a MUST read by anyone with children and especially those who do not have children and keep saying "i'm never having kids, kids are too much work..."  And this will be read by me daily still, because it is just a fun read.  If you are offended, get over yourself... kids are all kinds of crazy, daily!  It does take a special kind of person to be a parent.  you either have it (and know that you have it in you) to be a parent, or you do not have it in you to take care of a human every single day, for the rest of your life.  Trust me, my parents are 60 and they still help my sister and brother out with their lives!  You're never done, and you are locked in for your entire life.  I for one, i'm willing to have another one, and keep up this madness of being a parent.  But enough said by me... go, read it, read it all... you have to get to the 2nd or 3rd page and do a spit-take like me when you read about the exploding diarrhea in the snow suit!  So go on... READ IT! ;-)

Magnificent Monday {7}

in my search of yummy vegetarian food and being a vegetarian and having a love of food photography, this blog has the best of both worlds!
* Vegan Yum Yum

Take great photos, or write great poems... turn it all into a book, create the book with a free software download, then sell the book!  Sure does sound easy, right?  i found this little gem a few weeks ago and thought i would share!

*Blurb

this etsy find is just adorable art work...it would make an amazing Christmas card! 

*Art by Stephanie Fizer