Lots of Mommy Stuff Sunday Surf

Image by tarabrown via Flickr

Here’s the good stuff I’ve read this week. Enjoy!

Getting Rid of the Garbage – “I honestly can’t believe how amazingly all this stuff works – I was kind of doing it begrudgingly at first, because I thought I should…but all of it has worked better than anything I was using before.”

EC From Birth – “Fourteen months in, I am convinced that reading books and formulating a plan is really not all that important. All one needs in order to EC from birth is a desire to communicate with their newborn, and a desire to meet all of their needs in a timely and sensitive manner. EC flows naturally from the connection we instinctually form with our babies, and that connection is all we really need.”

This Week’s Small Change – What To Do When Your Child Behaves Inappropriately – “Sometimes you just wish you had a simple techniqueas an option when your child, tween, or teen is doing something you do not approve of.”

My First Birth Story, Part 1 – Mikko, June 2007: Labor at Home and My first birth story, part 2 — Mikko, June 2007: A hospital transfer – “I could hardly believe such a thing existed outside of my body, and here he was, and I was seeing him for the first time, and he was going to be mine for all time now, and I was just now getting a glimpse of what he looked like.”

Zinc Oxide Sunscreens For Safe Sun Protection – “Many brands offer Zinc Oxide based sunscreens. Here are a few of the better options.”

Got Melke? – “Most women can breastfeed.  But if you live in a country with poor breastfeeding rates it is almost like preparing for a war.  You have to be confident that you WILL do this for your baby.  You have to educate yourself, and arm yourself with a lactation consultant and facts and figures to wave in the faces of your family and friends.  Because so many unqualified (or just plain ignorant) people will be ready and waiting with bad advice, misinformation and bottles of free formula.”

On Labels and Boxes and Trusting Your Gut – “Let’s start trusting ourselves and our instincts about what we should do as parents instead of judging ourselves for not fitting perfectly into a box or judging others for choosing a different kind of box. Let’s just parent our kids the best we know how, instead of spending so much time competing with each other.”

Mom Wars – Guilt, Grief, and Healing – “Being sensitive about a subject is a clear indication that there are some unresolved issues surrounding that experience that need to be dealt with. Often the ‘guilty’ feeling is actually other emotions in disguise like anguish, anger, betrayal, disappointment, etc.”

Gently Responding to an Aggressive Toddler – “As a parent we get to guide behavior when necessary towards what is appropriate. We can see each situation as a perfect opportunity to learn and guide. Nothing more, nothing less. This takes away the stigma of dealing with a child who is defiant.”

Talking and Listening – “Please, for the sake of building a strong rapport with your child, slow it down.  Let your child process what you have just said before you say something else.  And use non-verbal communication:  smile while you wait for an answer, tip your head attentively while you listen to that answer, and offer hugs to go with your acceptance of it.”

Real Food School Lunches III – “…my hope is that one more lunch post will help rejuvenate us all so even during these last few weeks we can continue to send our kids to school with healthy, creative, homemade school lunches that contain nothing other than real food!”

How To: African Babywearing – “It might seem a little scary the first time around, but it is really rather safe and millions of babies are worn that way from dusk til down without accidents. Once you get the hang of it, you might come to love it, as I do, as there is no strain on your shoulders or arms like other ways of carrying might involve.”

Check out Adventures in Mommyhood, Authentic Parenting, Becoming Crunchy, Karen’s Healthy Lifestyle,The New Mommy Files: Memories, Milestones and Missteps, Hobo Mama, I Thought I Knew Mama, Mama Eve, Momma Jorje, One Rich Mother, Greener Cleaning Moms, and The Parent Vortex for more Sunday Surfing!

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For the Love of Mom Bloggers

10,000 hits is a big milestone here at A Little Bit of All of It and we are celebrating with a guest post from one of my favorite bloggers! Kelly is a first time mom and blogs at Becoming Crunchy about her family’s changing landscape from mainstream to granola. (Her husband very occasionally joins her on the blog.) She likes to talk about the challenges and rewards of making the world a safer, healthier place for her daughter, along with what she’s learning about natural parenting, pregnancy and birth, and more. I know you are going to enjoy her post below!

Why is Mom Blogging So Important?

I am so thrilled to be over here at A Little Bit of All of It today, and honored to be able to share with you here in your community.

There’s a question that’s been on my mind lately...how are there so many mom bloggers who give so much great information and get so much active feedback every day?

I never set out to be a mom blogger. I’m guessing that I’m not alone in saying I didn’t even know about the whole mom blogger movement until after I became a parent. I even used to blog – both for myself and others as a ghostwriter – but it was mainly all business type stuff – this world was totally not on my radar.

And it’s kind of become a joke of sorts…become a mom, start blogging! But this isn’t just a bunch of random women nattering on about baking cookies (although of course, blogs about baking cookies are awesome). This is a phenomenon. This is something that is affecting hundreds and thousands of families today, and will likely only grow in influence.

This is fascinating!

Because I have become part of it all and because I’m something of an analytical type, I want to set down some of the reasons I’ve seen for the amazing emergence of the mom blogger – not just to explore it, but to make my thanks known as well – I certainly don’t know what I’d do without them!

And that leads into reason number one: Moms need community.

Back in the day (before cities, essentially) women didn’t lack for community anywhere there were groups of people living together. I don’t want to idealize it – I believe those times were tough. But things that we struggle with for lack of support – breastfeeding, discipline, loneliness…they didn’t have to deal with it. The whole village literally was raising each child.

I believe there is a need for that within us still, and because the community of support may not be surrounding us in real life for various reasons, we’ve turned to the village of the blogosphere. Is it any less significant because it takes place over internet lines and long distances?

I like to think that Julia and you and all kinds of other people I’ve never met are part of my village – the women surrounding me who are actually helping me to raise my child. And it’s not to say that these interactions in real life are not important – they are, and we should take them when we can get them. But we often can’t, or if we can the opportunity is limited. Mom bloggers have stepped in to fill this gap.

So how is it that so many of them are so popular? Wouldn’t you think people would be sick of us by now? ;)

Here’s what I think (my reason number two): Moms have wisdom.

There’s a post here from Emerging Mummy that I feel sums up beautifully a small part of the wisdom that is unique to mommies – it very much elucidates something I’ve felt for a long time.

Being a mom gives you a secret understanding that no one who has not had the experience is privy to. That doesn’t invalidate those people. It certainly doesn’t mean that we are all knowing or super special or exempt from making mistakes.

But we do have a unique opportunity to have our worlds turned upside down by tiny, new beings. We have the chance to see a totally new way of looking at the world – through the eyes of someone who is experiencing it for the first time. We have the awe and terror of being responsible for guiding a person through this life.

I don’t think there is anyone who can go through the experience and not learn something – or a lot of somethings! – from it. And the exciting thing about mom blogging is that we can share that learning – that new wisdom. We also get the chance to learn it from others – things we may have never even contemplated.

The world of a living room filled with toys, a computer on a coffee table and a child upstairs napping can be mind-blowing.

And that community, and that wisdom, lead into reason number three: Moms need to hear each others stories.

The idea of the Mommy Wars is one that is well established. These battles do take place (though not as often as some media would have us believe), but the concept itself is ugly. I know for me, when I was a brand new mom, the fear of people judging me for my choices was something that terrified me in that extremely vulnerable state.

But the more I’ve shared my stories, and the more I’ve read from other moms…the more the judging and the arguing seems to fade into the background.

True, we all tend to mainly seek out people we resonate with, so the chance for disagreement may not actually come up that often. But I have found that when it does, it’s often not as bad as I thought it would be. And the reason behind that is that we have less and less opportunity to make assumptions about people’s decisions when we begin to hear and understand and really get their stories.

It’s a human tendency to think the worst of people, or to at least believe that we know the reason behind someone’s decision based on our assumptions. But these stories break all of that down. The more we hear them; the more they are told…the more the walls of judgment and ignorance can come crashing down.

And I truly believe we are longing for this. It’s why we’re all out there, posting that blog. It’s the basic need and desire to be understood, and understanding others comes right along with it.

So that’s why I love mom bloggers. There are probably many more great reasons they are so popular, but those are my top three. What do you love about mom blogging?