The Mom Crowd

In preparation for Mother’s Day, Entertainment Weekly posted another of their infamous lists this week: “17 Beloved TV Moms“.   I was glad to see Elyse Keaton (“Family Ties”), Lorelai Gilmore (“Gilmore Girls”), and Tami Taylor (“Friday Night Lights”) all made the list, as I highlighted them in my own “Favorite T.V. Moms” article last year.  As expected, the editors at EW cleverly chose several wacky moms, too, to spark conversation.  

Here’s their list:

• Carol Brady (“The Brady Bunch”)
• Lucille Bluth (“Arrested Development”)
• Nora Walker (“Brothers & Sisters”)
• Lorelai Gilmore
• Sophia Petrillo (“Golden Girls”)
• Lynette Scavo (“Desperate  Housewives”)
• Rosanne Conner (“Roseanne”)
• Clair Huxtable (“The Cosby Show”)
• Marge Simpson (“The Simpsons”)
• Tami Taylor
• Elyse Keaton
• Kirsten Cohen (“The OC”)
• Ruth Fisher (“Six Feet Under”)
• Peggy Bundy (“Married With Children”)
• Joyce Summers (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”)
• Marion Cunningham (“Happy Days”)
• “the missing mom” (various shows with no mother present)

A lot of beloved t.v. moms were excluded from the list.  I also feel there were some maternal figures merely included for their show’s “cult classic” factor.  I think their “missing mom” choice at the end was a cop out, as though the writers ran out of time.  Who should have filled that slot?  Should Mrs. Partridge be listed instead of Carol Brady?  What about classic moms Donna Reed and June Cleaver?  Weigh in with your opinion!

I’ll leave you with a Lorelai Gilmore classic:  “Okay, I’m just gonna let everyone deal with all this because I need to relax and get a cup of coffee and maybe hammer a nail into my head.”  Happy Mother’s Day!

Photo Courtesy of 4peterse

Imagine yourself living in post WWII England. There are buildings that have been condemned due to safety hazards with people living in them anyway.  There are bomb shelters and buildings that have been damaged by bombings.  You live in London’s East End and you work with people who you have been sheilded from your whole life.  You are a nurse, training to be a midwife and living in a convent with nuns and other nurses.  You aren’t too big into religious things so living in a convent with nuns is interesting. You are thankful that you don’t have  to go to the services, and yet thankful for living in community with these fascinating women.  You go out on a bicycle, your only means of transportation, on daily calls to the people in the East End–mostly in the tennements (otherwise known as slums)–even in the rain.  You do prenatal care and help to deliver babies.  Sometimes you help the other nurse nun who you don’t get along with too well do patient care visits to the older, sick people in the community. You discover that a family with 10 children can live in a two bedroom flat and that laundry can be hung anywhere and everywhere. 

Jennifer Worth, a midwife from the 1950′s did all of these things.  This book, The Midwife, is a biography of her life as a midwife. She went to live in the London Docklands to serve a wide community of people as a nurse-midwife. The area she served dealt with fighting, drunkenness, and poverty.  The overcrowded area seemed to welcome crime.  The people were also hard working, trying to make a living and the men trying to provide for their families.    

Her memoir is definitely an interesting read.  The chapters are story clips of women whose births she attended, difficult births, families with domestic violence, families with great love for one another, a prostitute, and nuns she worked with.  She paints an amazing picture of what life was like back then. I enjoyed learning about some of the history of London and especially enjoyed learning about the Cockney dialect.  Her stories are engaging and easy to read.  

You don’t have to be a midwife or even particularly interested in “birthy things” to enjoy this book.  This book helped me to appreciate some of the modern day conveniences we have as mothers.  Indoor toilets, running water, washing machines!  Can you imaging having 10 children with no running water in your house and no washing machine?  Can you imagine how much of your day would be spent simply washing clothes?  It helped me to appreciate the amount of space we have for our own living quarters and that there aren’t abandoned bomb shelters nearby with people doing all sorts of terrible things while my children are outside playing.

One of my favorite chapters is about a woman from Spain, who only speaks Spanish, who is married to a man who only speaks English.  Oh, and they have 25 children!!!  25 children!  Can you imagine?  Their story is heartwarming and leaves you with your jaw dropped.  

If you go on Amazon and read the other reviews of the book, I think you’ll want to find your own copy to read.

The very first ever National Mom’s Nite Out is this Thursday night! “National Mom’s Nite Out is the first nationally organized celebration of motherhood. Intended to bring together today’s moms, physically and virtually, National Mom’s Nite Out will unite over 150 social media groups, companies, local playgroups, mommy bloggers and mother social networks in giving moms a well deserved night off.”

There are many sponsored events around the U.S. You can click here to see if there is a party at a retail space in your part of the country. If not, then you could host one in your home or check out the websites hosting parties online. I am sure there will be many tweets about the joys of being kid-free for an evening. (Follow @MomsNiteOut on Twitter here.)

So leave the kids with Dad, a sitter, a family member, or a friend and take the night off!

The work of a Stay at Home Mom now equates to an annual income of $122,732. This is based on a survey of over 12,000 mothers on salary.com. They also based this number on how much it would cost to outsource 10 typical job functions of a mother: housekeeper, day care center teacher, cook, computer operator, facilities manager, van driver, psychologist, laundry machine operator, janitor and chief executive officer.

On mom.salary.com users can calculate for themselves how much a mom’s job is worth. And then, guess what? The user can print out a “pay check” and an Earning Statement and give it to their mom for Mother’s Day. For real? This is exactly what every mother wants for Mother’s Day -  a piece of paper that doesn’t really have any value.  (Of course, if this was a real check then I would be happy to receive it.)

The check is nice sentiment if the number on the check was 1 Zillion dollars or something else equally cute to show that your mom is worth more than current than current market trends.  There is no number that can be applied to the value of a mother’s love for her children.

* My check is only worth $115,757 because of where I live in Texas.

What do you think of Salary.com’s assessment of the value of a mother’s work?

I’m back!  My husband and I recently adopted a little girl from Ukraine and I took some time off of The Mom Crowd to focus on our new little one. I have not experienced anything in my life more rewarding than inviting this precious angel, who was abandoned, to be a part of our family.  The fact that she will not die in an orphanage without knowing what love is makes me wish for others to consider adoption!

Adding a 15 month old to your family is a little different than adding a newborn to your family!  Reese joined our family with an already somewhat formed personality.  The only language she understood was Russian and she has lived her entire life in an orphanage sharing 2-3 caregivers with 15 other children 24/7. So, the adjustment after an adoption has some unique challenges that adjustments immediately after childbirth do not have.

Our adjustment and Reese’s adjustment since coming home from Ukraine has gone remarkably well.  My older two children did better than I could have imagined, with very minimal jealousy from my two year old son as he relinquished his role of being the baby of the family.  Most of the adjustment issues I was prepared for with Reese became non-issues and I have spent the last month in awe at how {dare I say} easy this transition has gone.

I think the research I did on bonding and attachment issues in orphans really helped prepare us all for this transition.  It is not realistic to expect an orphan to feel an instant love for their new family and many times new parents do not feel an instant bond with the child they adopted.  I did not have the expectation that from day one, she would feel bonded to us and even us to her.  My love for her started before she came, but my bond with her may be something that I would acquire over time and not necessarily instantly feel.

Reese’s personality is pretty laid back, so she ended up being content with our routine and family dynamics quickly.  A lot of orphans are not comfortable with too much touch because they are not used to it.   I was prepared to teach Reese to enjoy being held, but there was no teaching necessary…she ate it up from the start!  The one place she is aversive to touch is her face, so we are sensitive when we have to wipe her nose.  While it was good that she loved being held from the beginning, she did not like being put down.  Reese had a hard time with making eye contact with us the first week she was home.  However, that changed pretty quickly. We also had to work very hard for her smiles and giggles in the beginning.

Even though she had very little difficulty in adjusting to our family, I am still amazed at the changes in her over the last month!  After about four weeks, it became quite obvious that she knew we belonged to her and that she was a part of our family.  Around the same four week mark, she began laughing and smiling much more, did not require being held all the time, and is even doing better when I wipe her nose.  It is hard to put into words, but she obviously feels very established in our little family now and it brings me so much joy!  We are all used to our “new normal” around here.  The only thing I am still getting used to is the logistics of transitioning from place to place with three kids rather than two. Getting in and out of the car with three kids is probably not my favorite thing to do…

The question my husband and I had before we met this little girl was whether we could truly love her as much as our biological children.  The answer is aboslutely “YES!” and it happened quicker than we thought!